Chris wrote:
Good news: you don't need a dedicated IP to fix this — most VPN drops are just rough server moments, not something broken on your end. Quick fix: go to your SparkBox dashboard, Settings VPN, and try a different Surfshark location (country or city). Then wait 30 seconds and see if it stabilizes. If it's still dropping, restart the media apps from the Apps page, then give it a few more minutes. That combo usually clears it. If you're still hitting frequent drops after trying a different server, let us know and we'll check the actual VPN logs with you.
DjunaBug wrote:
I also use SurfShark and had VPN troubles this morning. As a Californian, I figured pointing SurfShark to 3 CA cities would be enough. But today all indexers were failing and while the TomSparkBox dashboard mostly showed a healthy VPN connection (only rarely and intermittently broken), TomAI reported that connections were being reset and failing every few seconds. I changed this directly in the SparkBox config file: sudo nano /opt/sparkbox/.env I commented out this line: SERVERCITIES=San Francisco,San Jose,Los Angeles and left only this line: SERVERCOUNTRIES=United States Now all running well!
Chris wrote:
Nice work — country-only is honestly the smoother setup. It lets Surfshark pick whichever US server is healthiest instead of cycling those three specific cities, which is usually what causes the constant reconnects. One small tip so an edit like that always sticks cleanly: after changing a VPN line in that file, run sudo sparkbox restart media (or just hit Save under Settings VPN) — that's what fully reloads the connection with your new setting, rather than leaving the old one running. Thanks for the detailed writeup too; that bit where the dashboard looked mostly healthy while the connection was actually resetting is genuinely useful, and Tom's been passed a note on it. Glad you're stable now.