Files
netbird/management
Maycon Santos f65f7b347e [management] Deny reverse proxy access to pending and blocked users (#7105)
A user in the Pending Approval state could complete SSO and reach any
SSO-protected reverse proxy service distributed to a group they belong
to, including the All Users group. The reverse proxy authorization path
checked the session token signature, that the user exists, that the
user's account matches the service's account, and group membership —
never the user's account status. The REST API (`permissions/manager.go`)
and peer registration both gate on that state, but the proxy gRPC
service does not go through the permissions manager, so neither gate
applied. A pending user is persisted as blocked and pending approval, so
blocked users reached those services the same way.

`ValidateSession` now denies on account status, reporting
`pending_approval` or `user_blocked` so the proxy access log and the
denied page carry the cause rather than a generic refusal.
`GenerateSessionToken` refuses to mint a token for such a user at all,
so the browser never receives a session cookie and the OIDC callback can
tell the user why instead of showing "Service configuration error".
`ValidateUserGroupAccess` and `ValidateTunnelPeer` close the same gap;
for the tunnel path this covers a user blocked after their peer was
registered, since peer group membership alone kept mesh-origin access
open.

A single helper produces both the denied reason for the RPC responses
and the sentinel error for the error-returning callers, so the four
entry points cannot drift apart. A user the store cannot resolve is
denied rather than passed through.

One thing deliberately left out: session cookies are validated locally
by the proxy against the service public key with no management
round-trip, so a cookie issued before a user is blocked stays valid
until it expires (24h by default). That is a revocation-propagation
problem rather than this authorization gap, and every option for it
(per-request validation with a cache, short-lived tokens with refresh,
push-based revocation) changes the proxy hot path or the
proxy/management protocol. Worth its own ticket.
2026-08-08 20:48:34 +09:00
..

netbird Management Server

netbird management server will control and synchronize peers configuration within your Netbird account and network.

Command Options

The CLI accepts the command management with the following options:

start Netbird Management Server

Usage:
  netbird-mgmt management [flags]

Flags:
      --cert-file string            Location of your SSL certificate. Can be used when you have an existing certificate and don't want a new certificate be generated automatically. If letsencrypt-domain is specified this property has no effect
      --cert-key string             Location of your SSL certificate private key. Can be used when you have an existing certificate and don't want a new certificate be generated automatically. If letsencrypt-domain is specified this property has no effect
      --datadir string              server data directory location
  -h, --help                        help for management
      --letsencrypt-domain string   a domain to issue Let's Encrypt certificate for. Enables TLS using Let's Encrypt. Will fetch and renew certificate, and run the server with TLS
      --port int                    server port to listen on (default 33073)

Global Flags:
      --config string      Netbird config file location to write new config to (default "/etc/netbird")
      --log-file string    sets Netbird log path. If console is specified the the log will be output to stdout (default "/var/log/netbird/management.log")
      --log-level string    (default "info")

Run Management service (Docker)

You can run service in 2 modes - with TLS or without (not recommended).

Run with TLS (Let's Encrypt).

By specifying the --letsencrypt-domain the daemon will handle SSL certificate request and configuration.

In the following example 33073 is the management service default port, and 443 will be used as port for Let's Encrypt challenge and HTTP API.

The server where you are running a container has to have a public IP (for Let's Encrypt certificate challenge).

Replace with your server's public domain (e.g. mydomain.com or subdomain sub.mydomain.com).

# create a volume
docker volume create netbird-mgmt
# run the docker container
docker run -d --name netbird-management \
-p 33073:33073  \
-p 443:443  \
-v netbird-mgmt:/var/lib/netbird  \
-v ./config.json:/etc/netbird/config.json  \
netbirdio/management:latest \
--letsencrypt-domain <YOUR-DOMAIN>

An example of config.json can be found here management.json

Trigger Let's encrypt certificate generation:

curl https://<YOUR-DOMAIN>

The certificate will be persisted in the datadir/letsencrypt/ folder (e.g. /var/lib/netbird/letsencrypt/) inside the container.

Make sure that the datadir is mapped to some folder on a host machine. In case you used the volume command, you can run the following to retrieve the Mountpoint:

docker volume inspect netbird-mgmt
[
    {
        "CreatedAt": "2021-07-25T20:45:28Z",
        "Driver": "local",
        "Labels": {},
        "Mountpoint": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/mgmt/_data",
        "Name": "netbird-mgmt",
        "Options": {},
        "Scope": "local"
    }
]

Consequent restarts of the container will pick up previously generated certificate so there is no need to trigger certificate generation with the curl command on every restart.

Run without TLS.

# create a volume
docker volume create netbird-mgmt
# run the docker container
docker run -d --name netbird-management \
-p 33073:33073  \
-v netbird-mgmt:/var/lib/netbird  \
-v ./config.json:/etc/netbird/config.json  \
netbirdio/management:latest

Debug tag

We also publish a docker image with the debug tag which has the log-level set to default, plus it uses the gcr.io/distroless/base:debug image that can be used with docker exec in order to run some commands in the Management container.

shell $ docker run -d --name netbird-management-debug \
-p 33073:33073  \
-v netbird-mgmt:/var/lib/netbird  \
-v ./config.json:/etc/netbird/config.json  \
netbirdio/management:debug-latest

shell $ docker exec -ti netbird-management-debug /bin/sh
container-shell $ 

For development purposes:

Install golang gRpc tools:

#!/bin/bash
go install google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/protoc-gen-go@v1.26
go install google.golang.org/grpc/cmd/protoc-gen-go-grpc@v1.1

Generate gRpc code:

#!/bin/bash
protoc -I proto/ proto/management.proto --go_out=. --go-grpc_out=.