The synthesised agent network gateway service is unconditionally private: agents reach it over the WireGuard tunnel and are authorised by ValidateTunnelPeer against the enabled policies' source groups, and its only target is the cluster itself with DirectUpstream. Only a proxy running embedded in a netbird client can serve that, which management already reports per cluster as the `private` capability. CreateSettings accepted any hostname as proxy_address, so a labeled bootstrap could pin an account to a cluster that cannot serve its gateway — another account's BYOP cluster, or one whose proxies are all centralised. The endpoint assigned at bootstrap is immutable, so the account is then stuck with a dead gateway until someone deletes and re-bootstraps the settings row. Validate the cluster before allocating an endpoint beneath it. Whether management knows a cluster is decided on its proxy rows, never on how fresh their heartbeats are: the rows outlive their proxies' liveness, so a known cluster stays judged as one and has to prove with a live embedded proxy that it can serve the gateway. Deciding on liveness instead would let the same centralised cluster pass or fail depending on whether its proxies had heartbeated in the last couple of minutes, turning "wait for the proxy to go quiet" into a way to pin the endpoint to a cluster that can never serve it. Ownership comes from the same time-independent source, so a foreign cluster stays refused while it is offline. Only a cluster no proxy has ever declared is still pinnable — that is the address-first order the dedicated (self-addressed) path documents, and the one self-hosted setups follow when they configure before deploying.
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=.