[GH-ISSUE #4869] SSH broken on Debian 13 due to new login package #9456

New Issue

saavagebueno · 2026-08-05T01:22:11-04:00

saavagebueno commented

2026-08-05 01:22:11 -04:00

Originally created by @afonsofrancof on GitHub (Nov 27, 2025).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/4869

Environment

NetBird Version: 0.60.3
OS: Debian 13 (Trixie)
Architecture: amd64
Installation Method: apt repository

Description

NetBird SSH connections fail immediately on Debian 13 (Trixie) systems. After successful authentication and PTY allocation, the session closes immediately without spawning an interactive shell. Non-interactive commands work correctly.

Root Cause

After looking through logs and debugging this issue for hours I finally found the cause.

NetBird's SSH server uses login with some flags for interactive sessions which works fine with shadow-login (Debian 12) but fails with util-linux login (Debian 13).

Debian 13 switched from shadow's to util-linux implementation of the login binary (check the right side of the page on those two links. It also shows it on the man page of the packages). The util-linux version behaves differently when invoked by NetBird and exits instead of spawning an interactive shell.

Behavior

Connection authenticates successfully
PTY allocation is accepted
Shell request is accepted
Session immediately closes
Non-interactive commands work: ssh user@peer 'echo test' succeeds

Receiving peer logs (without prefix because of horizontal space):

... client/ssh/server/server.go:607: SSH connection from NetBird peer 100.64.0.5:62942 allowed

... client/ssh/server/session_handlers.go:35: SSH session started

... client/ssh/server/command_execution_unix.go:147: starting interactive shell: /usr/bin/login

Connecting peer output

❯ ssh afonso@togepi.netbird.selfhosted
Shared connection to togepi.netbird.selfhosted closed.

Workaround

The only way I could get NetBird's ssh to work again was to do the following:

1 - Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change the repositories back to bookworm
2 - sudo apt update
3 - sudo apt install login=1:4.13+dfsg1-1+deb12u1
4 - Use NetBird's SSH (here I didn't use netbird.selfhosted suffix but it's the same)

This is obviously not desired and I only used it for testing.

Change

Something needs to change here

aca0398105/client/ssh/server/userswitching_unix.go (L77-L100)

I will try to experiment with some of the login command flags and will report back in case I find something.

Hope this can be fixed.
I was going crazy trying to get this to work 😅

Originally created by @afonsofrancof on GitHub (Nov 27, 2025). Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/4869 # Environment - **NetBird Version**: 0.60.3 - **OS**: Debian 13 (Trixie) - **Architecture**: amd64 - **Installation Method**: apt repository # Description NetBird SSH connections fail immediately on Debian 13 (Trixie) systems. After successful authentication and PTY allocation, the session closes immediately without spawning an interactive shell. Non-interactive commands work correctly. # Root Cause After looking through logs and debugging this issue for **hours** I finally found the cause. NetBird's SSH server uses `login` with some flags for interactive sessions which works fine with shadow-login (Debian 12) but fails with util-linux login (Debian 13). Debian 13 switched from [shadow's](https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/login) to [util-linux](https://packages.debian.org/trixie/login) implementation of the `login` binary (check the right side of the page on those two links. It also shows it on the man page of the packages). The util-linux version behaves differently when invoked by NetBird and exits instead of spawning an interactive shell. # Behavior - Connection authenticates successfully - PTY allocation is accepted - Shell request is accepted - Session immediately closes - Non-interactive commands work: `ssh user@peer 'echo test'` succeeds ## Receiving peer logs (without prefix because of horizontal space): ``` ... client/ssh/server/server.go:607: SSH connection from NetBird peer 100.64.0.5:62942 allowed ... client/ssh/server/session_handlers.go:35: SSH session started ... client/ssh/server/command_execution_unix.go:147: starting interactive shell: /usr/bin/login ``` ## Connecting peer output ``` ❯ ssh afonso@togepi.netbird.selfhosted Shared connection to togepi.netbird.selfhosted closed. ``` ### Workaround The only way I could get NetBird's ssh to work again was to do the following: 1 - Edit `/etc/apt/sources.list` and change the repositories back to `bookworm` 2 - `sudo apt update` 3 - `sudo apt install login=1:4.13+dfsg1-1+deb12u1` 4 - Use NetBird's SSH (here I didn't use `netbird.selfhosted` suffix but it's the same) <img width="930" height="246" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/65c7654e-199c-4f60-b8df-dd799f33a614" /> This is obviously not desired and I only used it for testing. # Change Something needs to change here https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/blob/aca0398105fd0662c09533e1368a8682310efd94/client/ssh/server/userswitching_unix.go#L77-L100 I will try to experiment with some of the `login` command flags and will report back in case I find something. Hope this can be fixed. I was going crazy trying to get this to work 😅

saavagebueno added the triage-needed label 2026-08-05 01:22:11 -04:00

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Reference: DYNR/netbird#9456