This is Bitwarden server API implementation written in rust compatible with upstream Bitwarden clients*, ideal for self-hosted deployment where running official resource-heavy service might not be ideal.
Image is based on Rust implementation of Bitwarden API.
*Note, that this project is not associated with the Bitwarden project nor 8bit Solutions LLC.
Table of contents
- Features
- Missing features
- Docker image usage
- Starting a container
- Updating the bitwarden image
- Configuring bitwarden service
- Disable registration of new users
- Enabling HTTPS
- Enabling U2F authentication
- Changing persistent data location
- Changing the API request size limit
- Changing the number of workers
- Other configuration
- Building your own image
- Building binary
- Available packages
- Arch Linux
- Backing up your vault
- 1. the sqlite3 database
- 2. the attachments folder
- 3. the key files
- 4. Icon Cache
- Running the server with non-root user
- Get in touch
Features
Basically full implementation of Bitwarden API is provided including:
- Basic single user functionality
- Organizations support
- Attachments
- Vault API support
- Serving the static files for Vault interface
- Website icons API
- Authenticator and U2F support
Missing features
- Email confirmation
- Other two-factor systems:
- YubiKey OTP (if your key supports U2F, you can use that)
- Duo
- Email codes
Docker image usage
Starting a container
The persistent data is stored under /data inside the container, so the only requirement for persistent deployment using Docker is to mount persistent volume at the path:
docker run -d --name bitwarden -v /bw-data/:/data/ -p 80:80 mprasil/bitwarden:latest
This will preserve any persistent data under /bw-data/
, you can adapt the path to whatever suits you.
The service will be exposed on port 80.
Updating the bitwarden image
Updating is straightforward, you just make sure to preserve the mounted volume. If you used the bind-mounted path as in the example above, you just need to pull
the latest image, stop
and rm
the current container and then start a new one the same way as before:
# Pull the latest version
docker pull mprasil/bitwarden:latest
# Stop and remove the old container
docker stop bitwarden
docker rm bitwarden
# Start new container with the data mounted
docker run -d --name bitwarden -v /bw-data/:/data/ -p 80:80 mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Then visit http://localhost:80
In case you didn't bind mount the volume for persistent data, you need an intermediate step where you preserve the data with an intermediate container:
# Pull the latest version
docker pull mprasil/bitwarden:latest
# Create intermediate container to preserve data
docker run --volumes-from bitwarden --name bitwarden_data busybox true
# Stop and remove the old container
docker stop bitwarden
docker rm bitwarden
# Start new container with the data mounted
docker run -d --volumes-from bitwarden_data --name bitwarden -p 80:80 mprasil/bitwarden:latest
# Optionally remove the intermediate container
docker rm bitwarden_data
# Alternatively you can keep data container around for future updates in which case you can skip last step.
Configuring bitwarden service
Disable registration of new users
By default new users can register, if you want to disable that, set the SIGNUPS_ALLOWED
env variable to false
:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e SIGNUPS_ALLOWED=false \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Enabling HTTPS
To enable HTTPS, you need to configure the ROCKET_TLS
.
The values to the option must follow the format:
ROCKET_TLS={certs="/path/to/certs.pem",key="/path/to/key.pem"}
Where: - certs: a path to a certificate chain in PEM format - key: a path to a private key file in PEM format for the certificate in certs
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e ROCKET_TLS={certs='"/ssl/certs.pem",key="/ssl/key.pem"}' \
-v /ssl/keys/:/ssl/ \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-v /icon_cache/ \
-p 443:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Note that you need to mount ssl files and you need to forward appropriate port.
Enabling U2F authentication
To enable U2F authentication, you must be serving bitwarden_rs from an HTTPS domain with a valid certificate (Either using the included HTTPS options or with a reverse proxy). We recommend using a free certificate from Let's Encrypt.
After that, you need to set the DOMAIN
environment variable to the same address from where bitwarden_rs is being served:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e DOMAIN=https://bw.domain.tld \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Note that the value has to include the https://
and it may include a port at the end (in the format of https://bw.domain.tld:port
) when not using 443
.
Changing persistent data location
/data prefix:
By default all persistent data is saved under /data
, you can override this path by setting the DATA_FOLDER
env variable:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e DATA_FOLDER=/persistent \
-v /bw-data/:/persistent/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Notice, that you need to adapt your volume mount accordingly.
database name and location
Default is $DATA_FOLDER/db.sqlite3
, you can change the path specifically for database using DATABASE_URL
variable:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e DATABASE_URL=/database/bitwarden.sqlite3 \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-v /bw-database/:/database/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Note, that you need to remember to mount the volume for both database and other persistent data if they are different.
attachments location
Default is $DATA_FOLDER/attachments
, you can change the path using ATTACHMENTS_FOLDER
variable:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e ATTACHMENTS_FOLDER=/attachments \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-v /bw-attachments/:/attachments/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Note, that you need to remember to mount the volume for both attachments and other persistent data if they are different.
icons cache
Default is $DATA_FOLDER/icon_cache
, you can change the path using ICON_CACHE_FOLDER
variable:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e ICON_CACHE_FOLDER=/icon_cache \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-v /icon_cache/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Note, that in the above example we don't mount the volume locally, which means it won't be persisted during the upgrade unless you use intermediate data container using --volumes-from
. This will impact performance as bitwarden will have to re-download the icons on restart, but might save you from having stale icons in cache as they are not automatically cleaned.
Changing the API request size limit
By default the API calls are limited to 10MB. This should be sufficient for most cases, however if you want to support large imports, this might be limiting you. On the other hand you might want to limit the request size to something smaller than that to prevent API abuse and possible DOS attack, especially if running with limited resources.
To set the limit, you can use the ROCKET_LIMITS
variable. Example here shows 10MB limit for posted json in the body (this is the default):
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e ROCKET_LIMITS={json=10485760} \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Changing the number of workers
When you run bitwarden_rs, it spawns 2 * <number of cpu cores>
workers to handle requests. On some systems this might lead to low number of workers and hence slow performance, so the default in the docker image is changed to spawn 10 threads. You can override this setting to increase or decrease the number of workers by setting the ROCKET_WORKERS
variable.
In the example bellow, we're starting with 20 workers:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
-e ROCKET_WORKERS=20 \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-p 80:80 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Other configuration
Though this is unlikely to be required in small deployment, you can fine-tune some other settings like number of workers using environment variables that are processed by Rocket, please see details in documentation.
Building your own image
Clone the repository, then from the root of the repository run:
# Build the docker image:
docker build -t bitwarden_rs .
Building binary
For building binary outside the Docker environment and running it locally without docker, please see build instructions.
Available packages
Arch Linux
Bitwarden_rs is already packaged for Archlinux thanks to @mqus. There is an AUR package (optionally with the vault web interface ) available.
Backing up your vault
1. the sqlite3 database
The sqlite3 database should be backed up using the proper sqlite3 backup command. This will ensure the database does not become corrupted if the backup happens during a database write.
sqlite3 /$DATA_FOLDER/db.sqlite3 ".backup '/$DATA_FOLDER/db-backup/backup.sq3'"
This command can be run via a CRON job everyday, however note that it will overwrite the same backup.sq3 file each time. This backup file should therefore be saved via incremental backup either using a CRON job command that appends a timestamp or from another backup app such as Duplicati.
2. the attachments folder
By default, this is located in $DATA_FOLDER/attachments
3. the key files
This is optional, these are only used to store tokens of users currently logged in, deleting them would simply log each user out forcing them to log in again. By default, these are located in the $DATA_FOLDER
(by default /data in the docker). There are 3 files: rsa_key.der, rsa_key.pem, rsa_key.pub.der.
4. Icon Cache
This is optional, the icon cache can re-download itself however if you have a large cache, it may take a long time. By default it is located in $DATA_FOLDER/icon_cache
Running the server with non-root user
The root user inside the container is already pretty limited in what it can do, so the default setup should be secure enough. However if you wish to go the extra mile to avoid using root even in container, here's how you can do that:
- Create a data folder that's owned by non-root user, so you can use that user to write persistent data. Get the user
id
. In linux you can runstat <folder_name>
to get/verify the owner ID. - When you run the container, you need to provide the user ID as one of the parameters. Note that this needs to be in the numeric form and not the user name, because docker would try to find such user defined inside the image, which would likely not be there or it would have different ID than your local user and hence wouldn't be able to write the persistent data. This can be done with the
--user
parameter. - bitwarden_rs listens on port
80
inside the container by default, this won't work with non-root user, because regular users aren't allowed to open port bellow1024
. To overcome this, you need to configure server to listen on a different port, you can useROCKET_PORT
to do that.
Here's sample docker run, that uses user with id 1000
and with the port redirection configured, so that inside container the service is listening on port 8080
and docker translates that to external (host) port 80
:
docker run -d --name bitwarden \
--user 1000 \
-e ROCKET_PORT=8080 \
-v /bw-data/:/data/ \
-p 80:8080 \
mprasil/bitwarden:latest
Get in touch
To ask an question, raising an issue is fine, also please report any bugs spotted here.
If you prefer to chat, we're usually hanging around at #bitwarden_rs:matrix.org room on Matrix. Feel free to join us!