Files
netbird/management
Maycon Santos 13d32d274f [management] Fence peer status updates with a session token (#6193)
* [management] Fence peer status updates with a session token

The connect/disconnect path used a best-effort LastSeen-after-streamStart
comparison to decide whether a status update should land. Under contention
— a re-sync arriving while the previous stream's disconnect was still in
flight, or two management replicas seeing the same peer at once — the
check was a read-then-decide-then-write window: any UPDATE in between
caused the wrong row to be written. The Go-side time.Now() that fed the
comparison also drifted under lock contention, since it was captured
seconds before the write actually committed.

Replace it with an integer-nanosecond fencing token stored alongside the
status. Every gRPC sync stream uses its open time (UnixNano) as its token.
Connects only land when the incoming token is strictly greater than the
stored one; disconnects only land when the incoming token equals the
stored one (i.e. we're the stream that owns the current session). Both
are single optimistic-locked UPDATEs — no read-then-write, no transaction
wrapper.

LastSeen is now written by the database itself (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP). The
caller never supplies it, so the value always reflects the real moment
of the UPDATE rather than the moment the caller queued the work — which
was already off by minutes under heavy lock contention.

Side effects (geo lookup, peer-login-expiration scheduling, network-map
fan-out) are explicitly documented as running after the fence UPDATE
commits, never inside it. Geo also skips the update when realIP equals
the stored ConnectionIP, dropping a redundant SavePeerLocation call on
same-IP reconnects.

Tests cover the three semantic cases (matched disconnect lands, stale
disconnect dropped, stale connect dropped) plus a 16-goroutine race test
that asserts the highest token always wins.

* [management] Add SessionStartedAt to peer status updates

Stored `SessionStartedAt` for fencing token propagation across goroutines and updated database queries/functions to handle the new field. Removed outdated geolocation handling logic and adjusted tests for concurrency safety.

* Rename `peer_status_required_approval` to `peer_status_requires_approval` in SQL store fields
2026-05-18 20:25:12 +02:00
..

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=.