Edit: It is now working and I will not be touching anything 🫪

Hello my setup is pretty similar, slskd seems to be updating its port to the one provided by gluetun, and I can download from some users, but with other users i get 'User appears to be offline' in the logs even though soulseek says they are online.

From a second profile on a machine without the forwarded ports, I can see my shares but cant download from them, which means theres a misconfiguration on my end right? Netcat says the port is indeed open.

Anyone have any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

services:

 gluetunslskd:
  image: qmcgaw/gluetun:latest
  container_name: gluetunslskd
  cap_add:
   - NET_ADMIN
  devices:
   - /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
  ports:
   - 8000:8000
   - 5031:5031
  volumes:
   - ./app:/app
  environment:
   PUID: 1000
   PGID: 1000
   VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER: protonvpn
   VPN_TYPE: wireguard
   WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY: -----
   WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES: -----
   SERVER_COUNTRIES: -----
   TZ: -----
   PORT_FORWARD_ONLY: on
   VPN_PORT_FORWARDING: on
   HTTP_CONTROL_SERVER_AUTH_DEFAULT_ROLE: '{"auth":"apikey","apikey":"-----"}'
   VPN_PORT_FORWARDING_UP_COMMAND: >
    '/bin/sh -c "sed -i 's/listen_port:.*/listen_port\: {{PORTS}}/' /app/slskd.yml"'
  restart: unless-stopped

 slskd:
  image: slskd/slskd:latest
  container_name: slskd
  environment:
   TZ: -----
   PUID: 1000
   PGID: 1000
   SLSKD_SLSK_ADDRESS: server.slsknet.org
   SLSKD_SLSK_PORT: 2242
   SLSKD_SHARED_DIR: /music
   SLSKD_DOWNLOADS_DIR: /downloads
   SLSKD_INCOMPLETE_DIR: /incomplete
   SLSKD_USERNAME: -----
   SLSKD_PASSWORD: -----
   SLSKD_SLSK_USERNAME: -----
   SLSKD_SLSK_PASSWORD: -----
   SLSKD_VPN: true
   SLSKD_VPN_PORT_FORWARDING: true
   SLSKD_VPN_GLUETUN_URL: http://localhost:8000/
   SLSKD_VPN_GLUETUN_API_KEY: -----
  volumes:
   - ./app:/app
   - /home/user/media/music/library:/music:ro
   - /home/user/media/music/downloads:/downloads:rw
   - /home/user/media/music/incomplete:/incomplete:rw
  network_mode: 'service:gluetunslskd'
  depends_on:
   gluetunslskd:
    condition: service_healthy
  restart: unless-stopped

Things seem to be working now; I can reach my slskd profile from other user profiles, browse and download shares, etc.

I didn't need to mess with my router at all. Instead, I made use of this guide to enable slskd's baked-in gluetun integration with a control server.

I am still a little confused about why I needed a control server, and it seems to be forwarding the wrong port, but things appear as they should on the client side.

I'll comment my compose.yaml under this. I hope this is helpful.

Can I answer my own question?

Yes! Stack Exchange has always explicitly encouraged users to answer their own questions. If you have a question that you already know the answer to, and you would like to document that knowledge in public so that others (including yourself) can find it later, it's perfectly okay to ask and answer your own question on Stack Overflow.

The only people I'm blocking on soulseek are those ghouls that lock all their files away and then have lists of things for people to buy for them in exchange or straight up ask for bandcamp vouchers.

Fuck all those guys. That goes against the spirit if the whole thing.

All my files are open and available to everyone possible, just don't be a cunt and try and charge people for stuff!

You don't need port forwarding for sharing. If you do not have port forwarding you will only be able to download from people with port forwarded. And only them can download from you. It's better that that not share at all. So just share what you have the way you can.

Leechers only matter if you're capped-read, bandwidth, whatever. You can throttle that. Its fine. I turn off my torrents when I need my full bandwidth for things. Why be a dick about leechers?

Your distro doesnt matter. The VPN provider matters and you should ask their support to tell you how to do that. Or switch to another one

Yes you can do that and I also see the benefits of sharing with everyone.

But the downsides are not only those. You will feed AI scrapers like Meta's torrent servers that have configured to never upload etc.

Most people upload for everyone, so you can do what you want and know you are not the only one XD

Idgaf about leeches.

The point of that kind of thing is open access to the media. It's not some kind of non monetary business. I'm not injured or out of anything if someone can't port forward and needs to just get stuff. I can't always share from every device, and me grabbing files than is no worse than when I can.

The only time leechers matter is if it's slowing down your connection.

True, and in my experience, you usually are notified by the ISP to stop sharing the file and that further notices may result in them ceasing to provide service to you. Even if you aren't hit directly with a lawsuit losing access to the only broadband provider in one's area is still a major problem. I'd hate to have to switch to something like Starlink.

An IP is enough to bring suit against the ISP subscriber related to the IP address, even if courts have held it is not proof of culpability. Most people can't afford a lawsuit.

they do not have a guide that works for me. can you please give more details, and screenshots on what i should click, what i should type, and when? I also need possible fixes for errors I may run into. I need this for Linux Mint, Debian, and CachyOS.

Because I am skittish about illegally sharing material I do not have a legal right to redistribute, hence my question about people getting in trouble. I live in the United States.

I should set up my slskd instance to run through a VPN with port forwarding (I already have a subscription) and share everything, I've been lazy. I will say, though, plenty of people download from me regardless. I don't know why you would download OCRemix music from me instead of the official site, but hey, as long as someone finds it useful I guess.

Why dont you share everything worth sharing?

Your account is pseudonymous after all, with no PII attached apart from your IP and client maybe

Do they not have a guide for that? In that case you are probably not using a good one.

Generally it is very simple. Configure open ports on their website or maybe in a custom client. Then configure the same ports in your software, done.

How often are people getting into trouble for sharing on soulseek, I wonder?

I share a small subset of my media that I consider less legally risky. It isn't copyright free, but not exactly mainstream either. So I don't look like a total leech.

you're forgetting the barrier to figure out how to get your vpn to allow port forwarding. it's not that i don't wanna share, it's that after this many years i still haven't figured out how. who's gonna teach me?

D'oh

I am evil homer! I am evil homer!

I'm not mad at a little bit of humorous and mildly annoying chaos. "Poisoned" seems like quite the hyperbole. The whales hardly carry the good "rare" shit, anyhow. They also have the worst speeds and queues. Source from meticulously sorted libraries, and at the very least preview what you accumulate.

The bar for good news has moved such that even bad news is better than most.

In 2002 I was on Kazaa.
I read this post as "guy hides AI crap posing as real books in public libraries", a lot of Slsk is maintained by big whales automatically downloading and resharing libraries, to find it funny having this poisoned by AI crap... perhaps we don't deserve to have nice things after all...

Joke's on you pal, I'm into homercore.