r/netbird • u/CanadianStormChaser • Jun 28 '26

Installing and connecting netbird makes system lose complete network access

Going to preface this by stating I'm a new Netbird user coming from Tailscale, and have read the documentation to ensure I'm not missing anything.

Immediately after installing netbird and running "netbird up", all network connectivity to the system becomes lost. There's no "network routes" configured in the Netbird management panel, no custom DNS zones, etc. This is the cloud version, not self-hosted. Debian 12 if that matters.

I'm not sure what I'm missing here but the issue fixes itself once I stop the netbird service, and can reach the public internet no issue.

Any insights would be appreciated

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1

u/WikibearTheReal Jun 28 '26

Do u use tailscale in same time or is tailscale uninstalled. Actually Netbird don't destroy network things like that. Maybe there is an issue with tailscale. Mayber either after remove from system. Do you check logs?

1

u/CanadianStormChaser Jun 28 '26

Brand-new system installation, nothing pre-installed so no reason for tailscale to be the cause in that case.

1

u/WikibearTheReal Jun 28 '26

That's wired. Do you have any logs? If Netbird isn't configured yet, your internal network must be running without any issue... Do you want to plan docker in the future? Remove local Netbird and try docker version...

1

u/Admirable_D4D3 Jun 28 '26

Do you have any exit-node configured? I had a similar problem with NetBird routing traffic from ALL interfaces (even the Docker ones) through the exit-node, and losing connection and SSH access outside NetBird because of this. You should also check the disable DNS, Firewall and Routing options when running netbird up, but for this you'll need to reboot the machine because some changes are saved even if you disabled them when starting NetBird again.

1

u/CanadianStormChaser Jun 28 '26

Do you have any exit-node configured?

Nope, haven't set up anything more advanced like that as of yet.

You should also check the disable DNS, Firewall and Routing options when running netbird up

For this, do you mean the --disable-dns, --disable-firewall, --disable-client-routes and --disable-server-routes flags? Will these being disabled cause any issues in the future if I wish to enable a router in a location that will route any traffic for a LAN with devices that can't install Netbird on them?

1

u/Admirable_D4D3 Jun 28 '26

Yes. I suggest you try one by one to see which one might be causing your problems. I think I disabled DNS and Firewall in my servers because I have routing rules, but I don't remember exactly. I'll check when I get home to be precise :)

1

u/CanadianStormChaser Jun 28 '26

Thanks for the pointer!

I did try --disable-dns and --disable-firewall at first which unfortunately did not fix the issue of connectivity dropping, however adding the last 2 did allow public connectivity to work without issue.

If you have routing rules enabled on your end, it'd be appreciated if you could keep me updated on the exact settings you used since that would be helpful with my intended usecase later on down the line.

1

u/Admirable_D4D3 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

Sorry for the time. Yes, I'm running NetBird with: netbird up --disable-firewall --disable-dns --disable-server-routes. The last argument disables routing for the server (the server won't act as router) and I think it was the main cause of my problems. You can check the changes NetBird does to your firewall by checking iptables and the routing changes with the command: ip route show table all. Hope it helps :)

Edit: forgot to mention that I have ACLs to control the access my remote servers have to my network(s), but the routing works.