Update on the Cloudron NetBird package
The packaging scaffold at https://github.com/marcusquinn/cloudron-netbird-app is fairly complete -- it uses the combined netbird-server binary behind an internal nginx that consolidates all the path-based routing (gRPC, WebSocket, REST API, dashboard) onto a single HTTP port for Cloudron's reverse proxy.
What works (in theory -- needs real-world testing):
Management API, Signal, Relay, STUN, and Dashboard all in one container
Cloudron SSO via the OIDC addon
Cloudron's built-in TURN server for NAT traversal relay
PostgreSQL via Cloudron addon
Backup/restore of all persistent state
The one feature that can't work on Cloudron: NetBird's Reverse Proxy (v0.65+)
This is NetBird's newer feature that exposes internal services on mesh peers to the public internet with automatic TLS. It requires Traefik with TLS passthrough -- the NetBird proxy container needs to terminate TLS itself. Cloudron's nginx terminates TLS before traffic reaches the app, so there's no way to pass through the raw TLS connection that NetBird's proxy needs.
I looked at whether alpine/socat (TCP socket forwarder) could bridge this gap, but it can't -- the problem is Layer 7 (HTTP path routing, gRPC protocol handling, TLS termination order), not Layer 4 (TCP forwarding). socat only does port-to-port TCP forwarding and has no understanding of HTTP paths, gRPC, or WebSocket upgrade headers.
This doesn't affect the core VPN functionality at all -- peer-to-peer WireGuard tunnels, NAT traversal, access control, DNS, network routes, and the management dashboard all work fine without it. The reverse proxy is an optional add-on for publicly exposing internal services.
What's needed next:
Testing on a real Cloudron instance (I haven't done this yet -- the packaging is based on docs and the combined container architecture)
Verifying the internal nginx correctly handles the gRPC h2c proxying that Signal and Management need
End-to-end OIDC flow testing with Cloudron SSO
TURN relay testing for peers behind strict NAT
If anyone wants to help test, the repo has a full testing checklist in the README. Would be great to get this into the Cloudron App Store.
feedback welcome!
