Bitwarden unified self-host Issues

[justindbaur]

Bitwarden unified community beta

We recently announced a beta offering of the Bitwarden unified self-host deployment option, a lighter and flexible method for self-hosting Bitwarden. You can read more about the offering here: https://bitwarden.com/help/install-and-deploy-unified-beta/.

Warning: This is a beta release, which means that this deployment option may be unstable and have issues. If you manage a Bitwarden organization vault, we recommend using the officially-supported, standard deployment option.

With Bitwarden unified, you can now self-host with 2 new database options, Postgres and MySQL. This was achieved by using Entity Framework Core providers with a new written Repository layer to support EF Core which can be found here. The team has done initial QA but the offering is still unstable at this time. If you are using one of these database options, please report any issues you discover. We will update this PR as new issues are discovered. Before reporting an issue, please review the below list to ensure it is not already known. New issues should be reporting using the Bitwarden unified issue template.

Known Issues

• Postgres 15 does not work #2481
• Allow for setting of container UID/GID #2483
• EF: bitwarden-api: Collections not shown to users - query can't be translated #2008
• BW Unified always trying to generate a new SSL key pair / requiring a fixed name for private key #2489
• HTTP 500 response when viewing the admin page #2494
• SSO: Invalid redirect URI when using Azure OIDC or SAML 2.0 #2500
• After Data import, Item binding to Folder missing (only with PostgreSQL Database) #2506
• Custom MySQL port for BW unified #2516
• Inconsistency with docker volume name #2527
• https link generated for non https server #2529
• Web Installed: Unable to fetch installed version #2530
• Protected data will be unavailable when container is destroyed. #2531
• Inconsistent volumes #2532
• Cannot send emails using docker run #2533
• Internal Proxy IP being logged instead of remote WAN IP when behind proxy #2535
• WebAuthn broken on clients for Unified server #2536
• Vault items not displaying #2545
• Missing asset /admin/css/webfonts.css #2549
• Gateway timeout when used behind reverse proxy #2552
• Links in emails are sent without custom port number #2553
• Bitwarden Unified - SSO (404)  #2556
• failure on add yubikey #2557
• Cannot see items in vault #2561
• Install and Deploy - Unified (Beta) - setup instructions incorrect - yubikey #2565
• Bitwarden Unified - Nginx - Permission denied #2567
• New Bitwarden installation Create Account button does not function. #2584
• Docker container (Debian based) can not be stopped cleanly #2595
• Site icons not loading, defaults to NotFound icon #2598
• Unhandled exception (notifications.log) on container stopping #2612
• Default "stop_grace_period" (docker compose) is too short #2614
• account revision date not bumped with EntityFramework DBs #2615
• Cannot bulk copy items to Organization #2624
• Verify Email send produces error #2647
• Bitwarden Unified with MariaDB leads to "SIGABRT (core dumped); not expected" #2718
• Unified Beta. Cannot login anymore after adding 2FA #2721
• Possible migration failure using SQLite DB backend #2744
• Collections cannot be managed in family organization #2750
• Can't register with certain email address domains, ex: .media #2756
• Enterprise account unable to perform automatic or manual license sync when using Dev release #2784
• Edit Collection/Save throws error. Includes changing names of collection and access permissions. #2788
• Login entries disappear after adding Organization when using SQLite #2815
• Unable to start after fresh install #2839
• bw-unified ram usage get's higher every minute until reboot #2843
• Install and Deploy on Windows stops and does nothing #2848
• version installed higher than version latest: "You should update" #2888
• Container should not run as root #2903
• Admin panel "users" tab returns nginx 404 error #2910
• SSO login returns token missing in keyring error #2911
• Adding single members to collection below Admin level does not work #2924
• Stream all logs to stdout/stderr #2930
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.Antiforgery.AntiforgeryValidationException in AWS Fargate #2944
• Unable to spin up unified deployment (container image broken?) #2948
• ./bwdata from container not mapped to host/server for easy backup / restore #2950
• Unmatched version number between web and admin portal #2956

Helping

If you want to help fix these issues, we have written documentation for getting set up to develop Bitwarden against these new database options. Before developing, we recommend reading the Entity Framework Core documentation. We will also be requiring tests for any changes to the EF Repository layer because even though a query compiles and may even work against MySQL that is not a guarantee that it will work against Postgres. An example of that happening is #2459 where Postgres does not support using Min on boolean values while MySQL does. We also want to make sure that permissions work the same across all database options.

[mattcen]

we have written documentation

That link is a 404; I think it is supposed to point at https://contributing.bitwarden.com/getting-started/server/ef/ ?

[djsmith85]

we have written documentation

That link is a 404; I think it is supposed to point at https://contributing.bitwarden.com/getting-started/server/ef/ ?

@mattcen: Thank you. I have updated the link.

[mjkent]

Hi @justindbaur - just wondering if there is an update on the bitwarden-unified project. Is there a plan to bring this out of beta or has this been mothballed?

I saw the bitwarden-unified project and really liked it, would love to use it. It would be a great alternative to self hosting options as they currently stand(either a higher resource usage docker container or a community supported clone) If there is a roadmap on what needs to be completed to take this out of beta, would be great to see it and see if we can get community involvement to help bring it over the finish line.

cc: @kspearrin

[kspearrin]

We have been recently discussing what it takes to move unified over the finish line. I don't have any definitive dates or commitments, but we will be discussing it in our Q2 2025 planning here soon.