Obsidian Rest on Windows Host, Access from WSL

[delize]

Hello,

I have set this up on 2 different macOS devices and it is working great. However, I am struggling with Windows and WSL for use with MCP / Claude.

If Obsidian is running on the Windows Host, the WSL claude command cannot seemingly communicate. I am attempting to use the same script that I am using on macOS for WSL. However, even when using curl, it is still failing to accept the auth key.

I can validate that the connection is being made:

$ curl -k https://192.168.50.65:27124/status                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         [20:32:33]
{
  "message": "Authorization required.  Find your API Key in the 'Local REST API' section of your Obsidian settings.",
  "errorCode": 40101
}%                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
 

$ curl -k -H "Authorization: OMIT" https://192.168.50.65:27124/status                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    [20:32:44]

{
  "message": "Authorization required.  Find your API Key in the 'Local REST API' section of your Obsidian settings.",
  "errorCode": 40101
}%     

Yet the API Key being passed is correct. I have triple checked.

Is it not possible to bind to anything else besides localhost?

I did see this: #18

But as it is 3 years old, I figured something might have changed between now and then.

#157
Haven't found any PR by him yet.

Edit 1:
If I access the status page from the Windows Host, it responds with:

{
  "status": "OK",
  "manifest": {
    "id": "obsidian-local-rest-api",
    "name": "Local REST API",
    "version": "3.2.0",
    "minAppVersion": "0.12.0",
    "description": "Get, change or otherwise interact with your notes in Obsidian via a REST API.",
    "author": "Adam Coddington",
    "authorUrl": "https://coddingtonbear.net/",
    "isDesktopOnly": true,
    "dir": ".obsidian/plugins/obsidian-local-rest-api"
  },
  "versions": {
    "obsidian": "1.8.10",
    "self": "3.2.0"
  },
  "service": "Obsidian Local REST API",
  "authenticated": false
}

So I know it is working properly.

EDIT 2:

I also already attempted to install the Self Signed Certificate into the CA Store in WSL:

Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs...
rehash: warning: skipping ca-certificates.crt,it does not contain exactly one certificate or CRL
1 added, 0 removed; done.
Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d...
Processing triggers for ca-certificates-java (20240118) ...
Adding debian:obsidian.pem
done.
done.

Still didn't help the situation.

[coddingtonbear]

Whatever it is that's going on, it's certainly not going to be #18 -- your request is clearly being processed by an instance of Obsidian Local REST API, and if it were #18, you'd just either not get a reply, or get a refused connection. It's definitely not a binding problem.

My guess, given what you've talked through above, is that you're actually running two instances of Obsidian Local REST API -- maybe one in WSL and one outside it? If that's the case, your curl command would be interacting with a different instance than you're expecting. You can troubleshoot this by opening the inspector in Obsidian (ctrl+shift+I) and seeing if you actually see a request being processed by the instance you're expecting -- the relevant log entries would be prefixed with "[REST API]". I'd be surprised if you were!

[coddingtonbear]

I'm afraid I don't know enough about WSL to make any other speculations, but I'll be following along to see what you and whoever helps you comes up with!

[coddingtonbear]

I have to say, though, to be clear: I've got a lot of gray hair at this point so I'm not often surprised about technical things, and it would be extremely, extremely surprising to me if you were to prove positively that you were able to connect to the right Obsidian instance using the right API key, but that whether you got an "Authorization required" error varied based upon whether the request was coming from outside or within WSL. I know this isn't the kind of answer you want to hear, but Occam's razor still points toward either the API key you've entered being incorrect somewhere, or that you're running another instance of Obsidian that you've forgotten about.

[delize]

I think I found the issue:

Nothing was wrong with the setup exactly.

Calling a URL with /status results in the API Key error, even though it was the correct api key.

Got it all working. 👍🏻

[coddingtonbear]

I'm not able to reproduce any similar problems w/r/t adding or removing a trailing slash, but looking through the defined routes in docs or code, I also don't have a route named /status/ in the API. The / route does return status information, but it also does appear to respond correctly with the right data indicating whether or not the API request was correct. I think you might actually be using a fork of this API maintained by somebody else, or have installed or written your own API extension that's coded slightly incorrectly w/r/t handling of authentication.