Three places in one request path each had their own notion of "same
management URL": the config layer compared the parsed URLs as strings, the
privileged-change gate compared scheme + host + effective port, and the MDM
conflict check compared strings after filling in the default port. Only the
middle one was right.
A string comparison answers the wrong question. "https://api.netbird.io",
"https://api.netbird.io/" and "https://API.netbird.io:443" are one endpoint
written three ways, so a client restating its own management URL with a
trailing slash — a normal way to write it — was still read as a client asking
to be repointed, and the update-settings gate refused it. The MDM check had
the same flaw against the enforced value.
profilemanager.SameServiceURL is now the single comparison: same scheme, same
host case-insensitively as DNS names are, same effective port. The config
layer, the privileged-change gate and the MDM conflict check all defer to it,
so there is one answer to "did this URL change?" instead of three.
The update-settings gate needs the stored config to decide whether a request
changes anything, so the previous commit moved that read ahead of the refusal.
The read is not side-effect free: profilemanager.GetConfig writes the config
back whenever apply() has to fill in a default the file was missing. A request
that the gate then refuses had therefore already rewritten the profile file.
PeekConfig is GetConfig without that write-back. The returned config is still
normalized in memory, which is what the decision needs; the file is left
exactly as it was found. Every caller of storedConfigAtPath feeds a gate that
can refuse, so they all peek.
Note for reviewers: the daemon still normalizes the file on startup and on
every real update, so nothing depends on a read performing that write.
The update-settings kill switch (--disable-update-settings /
NB_DISABLE_UPDATE_SETTINGS / the MDM DisableUpdateSettings key) forbids
changing settings, but it decided what a "change" was by looking at
whether a field was present in the request. The CLI fills the whole
config surface of SetConfigRequest and LoginRequest from its flags and
environment on every `netbird up` (setupSetConfigReq in cmd/up.go), so a
client configured by environment restates its own configuration on every
start and tripped the gate every time.
SetConfig only warned about that, but Login carries the same fields and
was gated the same way, and Login runs inside the CLI's backoff loop: the
daemon answered every attempt with codes.Unavailable, `netbird up` never
completed, and a container with NB_DISABLE_UPDATE_SETTINGS plus any
config env var (NB_MANAGEMENT_URL, for one) could not come up at all.
Both gates now compare values. Config.WouldChange is the dry-run half of
UpdateConfig: it runs the very same diff logic (Config.apply) against a
copy of the stored config, so the gate cannot drift from what an actual
update would do, nor go stale when a field is added. A request that
restates what the profile already holds changes nothing and is allowed; a
request that diverges is refused exactly as before, and a dry run that
cannot be evaluated fails closed. A profile with no config on disk yet is
judged against the config the daemon would create for it.
For Login, the compared input comes from loginOverridesInput, which
persistLoginOverrides also uses to perform the write, so the gate judges
precisely the two fields a login can persist (management URL, pre-shared
key) and no field it ignores.
Two adjacent defects surfaced while making the comparison exact:
- Config.apply compared URLs as raw strings, so the same endpoint spelled
without its default port ("https://api.netbird.io" vs
"https://api.netbird.io:443") counted as a new value and rewrote the
config. It now compares the parsed forms.
- UpdateConfig did not collapse the redacted pre-shared key, unlike
UpdateOrCreateConfig and DirectUpdateConfig, so a UI round-trip of the
mask replaced the stored key with asterisks.
The CLI warning for a refused SetConfig said the method was not available
in the daemon, which sent people looking for a version mismatch that was
not there; it now reports the refusal.
riccardom