Regular users lose peer list visibility after upgrading from 0.69.0 to 0.70.x (Possible PR #6006 regression)

Community Support Self-Hosted
1

Description

After upgrading the self-hosted NetBird server from 0.69.0 to any 0.70.x version, regular users (role = user) can no longer see the peer list in the dashboard. They only see the single peer they personally registered. Rolling back to 0.69.0 immediately restores the correct behavior.

The WireGuard connections themselves continue to work fine — netbird status -d on the CLI shows all peers connected correctly. The issue is purely with the dashboard HTTP API returning an empty/restricted peer list for regular users.

Environment

  • NetBird server version before upgrade: 0.69.0 (working)

  • NetBird server version after upgrade: 0.70.5 (broken)

  • Deployment type: Self-hosted, combined netbird-server container

  • Store engine: PostgreSQL

  • IdP: Embedded Dex with Google OAuth

  • TLS: Disabled on server (reverse proxy handles TLS)

  • Dashboard version: v2.37.1

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Run a self-hosted NetBird instance on 0.69.0 with regular users (role = user) who can see the peer list in the dashboard via group/policy membership

  2. Upgrade the netbird-server Docker image from 0.69.0 to 0.70.x

  3. Log into the dashboard as a regular user

  4. Navigate to the Peers page

Expected Behavior

Regular users should see all peers they have access to via group/policy membership, as they did in 0.69.0. This is the documented behavior:

“User role - has limited access to the account, allowing users to view peers they own and others they can connect to.” — https://docs.netbird.io/manage/team/add-users-to-your-network

Actual Behavior

Regular users only see the single peer they personally registered/own. All other peers — which they are connected to via group policies and can reach over WireGuard — are invisible in the dashboard.

The management server logs show repeated 403 permission denied errors for the regular user on every dashboard API call: ERRO … HTTP response: GET /api/locations/countries status 403

2

It appears that Netbird left the visibility peer control panel disabled by design for the User role, starting with the versions you mentioned.

You can now enable it manually by switching off this setting:

  • Settings → Permissions → Restrict dashboard for regular users

My setup is a fresh, self-hosted install via docker:

  • Management: v0.71.2
  • Dashboard: v2.38.0

In any case, you won’t be able to see other peers accessible via access control (even if the documentation suggests it). You will see just your own peers. Of course access control continue functioning fine, this only cover dashboard visibility.

I think documentation is outdated at this point, and will wait to updates in this section to clarify this functionality.