when I comment out rpcallowip it listens at 127.0.0.1:18332, as soon as i set this line active, it stops listening to both localhost and outside
well i've set the url, port, user and password for the miner to connect to but it can't
That's not much to go on. What kind of debugging tools are available for you with the miner? Does it have a screen? Can you access it via SSH from your computer? What operating system is it running?
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Also, just a shot in the dark.. Is there a testnet option that you might have to set in the miner's configuration? It might be necessary to explicitly set such a flag, beyond setting the RPC port to 18332.