Hi David, thank you for your response.
I’ve installer docker and then Bitwarden.
See: How to Install BitWarden on Your Synology NAS – Marius Hosting
Just so you know, if you followed those instructions it does NOT install Bitwarden. It installs a Bitwarden imposter, like I mentioned. Just mentioning this so you can investigate yourself - it claims to be Bitwarden server and is designed to look just like Bitwarden server, but it is not software created or supported by Bitwarden. Beware how you use it!
Hint: It’s Vaultwarden.
Thank you both. I’m a bit shocked by this. I thought I installed Bitward on my Synology to be safe and run everything local. With this information I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe I will switch to the paid hosted version (Personal Family).
I believe there are many who are fooled, but glad you got it figured out.
Also, I hate to mention this, but Bitwarden server does not run on Arm devices (if your Synology is Xeon-based, you should be fine, but you may need to do a manual install which can be tricky I gather).
Thanks for letting us know, we’ve reached out to them to have any references of Bitwarden updated to Vaultwarden.
The error is on Marius Hosting referring to Vaultwarden as bitwarden. Those involved in the Vaultwarden project are very clear that the two are different and I haven’t seen much where they refer to their software as bitwarden. They also give a lot of credit to the bitwarden team.
The Vaultwarden server that is installed following Marius’s instructions uses prominent Bitwarden branding in its UI (see screenshot below). I had to look at this login page many times before I finally noticed the fine print at the bottom that says “© 2022 Bitwarden Inc. (Powered by Vaultwarden)” — emphasis mine. I can see how this use of Bitwarden branding is quite misleading.
(screenshot copied from mariushosting.com)
True but it all starts by downloading it from docker repository which clearly indicates it’s not bitwarden.
When I say the error is on Marius, what I mean is I don’t think the Marius article should be referring to bitwarden as much as it does in that article, considering it’s not bitwarden. I found that article more misleading than the docker image considering the docker image is not named bitwarden; so from the get go I knew it wouldn’t be a bitwarden product prior to even downloading.
It would be clear for somebody who is familiar with docker and understands the syntax of the docker run
command, but not for somebody who is inexperienced with docker and is just copy-pasting some mysterious command string from an online step-by-step guide.
My point, though, was that no matter what source is used to install Vaultwarden, it doesn’t seem appropriate that their web vault interface uses Bitwarden branding.
I’m in agreeance with that. But this was specific to synology docker, which the way the user gets to it isn’t by docker commands. The docker image in synology specifically says Vaultwarden
In regards to this, I do not believe Vaultwarden provides “their own” web-vault but again primarily only presents as a compatible backend server.
Similarly to how the official Bitwarden browser extension and mobile clients are needed to access a Vaultwarden server, their devs simply pull the official Bitwarden web-vault and apply some minor tweaks, (removing billing information fields, adding the (Powered by Vaultwarden)
tag, and a few others) as I understand.
This all stems from the rename from the previous name of Bitwarden_RS
which was changed to Vaultwarden
as a measure to avoid confusion.
Which can be read more about here
BlackDex on Jun 30, 2021 Collaborator
If i’m not mistaken, @dani-garcia spoken with the founder of Bitwarden regarding this, and they agreed upon adding a
(Powered by Vaultwarden)
message to be enough. Also the web-vault is of course still code from 8Bit, with just minor adjustments, i don’t see a big issue in leaving it there. We also are not going to provide custom mobile clients, so having the web-interface keeping the same style/layout seems like the best thing to do i think.
dani-garcia on Jun 30, 2021 Maintainer Author
Yeah, what I got from Kyle when we talked about the rename was that the footer message in the web vault would be enough.
Initially I left the original branding to keep all the clients with the same branding thinking it would avoid confusion, but I’ve noticed some people have gotten confused seeing the bitwarden brand in the included web vault, so I’m not so sure about it now.
BlackDex on Jun 30, 2021 Collaborator
Maybe something to change with the new vault version then?
We do need to keep the © notice right? But the rest could be changed i think.
Though that being said, as Bitwarden becomes more popular so will any articles and sites referring how to install “Bitwarden” yourself to self-host. As @Gerardv514 explains
I do believe ultimately this fault lies in those creating the articles and how-tos, and some I have seen expressly mention that Vaultwarden is not affiliated with the official product or its team. But some articles unfortunately do not mention this difference, I am not sure if this is intentional or simply due to negligence.
However it does remain clear, as more people flock to Bitwarden that will simply add to those who wish to self-host, possibly on unsupported hardware such as ARM CPUs.
In turn more articles and how-tos, more people unintentionally installing Vaultwarden, and more support questions directed towards to incorrect forums for the best support.
I do agree with @dwbit in that more can be done to reference Vaultwarden, particularly in the web-vault addition scripting can be done to remove the official Bitwarden logo and other branding and utilize further Vaultwarden’s custom icons and logos.
This is already done in various email templates sent via SMTP from a Vaultwarden server, presumably it would be fairly easy to use the current existing Vaultwarden logos in place of the official Bitwarden ones in the custom web-vault.
This would ideally help to brand the separate project further, and hopefully to further avoid confusion between the two projects and their relevant teams.
First @cksapp on your response, knowing and learning the full scope here goes along way, instead of others just simply
’ing post.
I know it was discussed here, but it would be great if Bitwarden can provide their own solution to a lightweight self hosted solution that could run on a synology nas. I can tell you the only reason why people run a Vaultwarden is because they love bitwarden but the self hosted solution that bitwarden provides does not capture the audience that Vaultwarden appeases to.
As I understand this is something on their radar but nothing set in stone for even evaluation at this point from what I understand.
Though I agree there is definitely a market for those tinkers and geeky types that may want to install Bitwarden but currently do not have the supported hardware to do so.
But rest assured it’s at least something they are already aware of, when it may come though is TBD
I have a ton of clients that would love to host Bitwarden themselves but do not have nor need not only the hardware complexity but the technical know how of installing/configuring/updating, that is required from the traditional/existing Bitwarden self hosted solution.
Either way you guys do great work!
I knew that Vaultwarden users use the official Bitwarden client apps for desktop, browsers and mobile, but I had assumed that the web client Javascript code is hosted and served by the local server – is the web vault script pulled directly from Bitwarden’s servers each time that that a Vaultwarden user accesses their self-hosted web vault? That would seem to defeat the purpose of self-hosting.
If the web vault script is hosted and served by the Vaultwarden server, then it would seem that they can (and should) use their own logo instead of the Bitwarden logo. In fact, I think it would be more appropriate to brand the web vault as “Vaultwarden (powered by Bitwarden)” rather than the other way around.
Sorry for any confusion, you are correct in that the web vault is bundled directly with the Vaultwarden Docker container, but maintains a separate repo for this.
The web vault simply being another “client application” here, this typically gets installed and hosted by the self-hosted server regardless.
But I do agree, while the web-vault remains a “Bitwarden” client that is needed to interact with the backend Vaultwarden server, the devs at Vaultwarden do provide some customization to the web-vault in order to fit their project.
As mentioned things like adding the footer, removing billing fields, and disabling some features that are not compatible such as groups, SSO, etc.
All of these are done to prevent issues with the backend server and maintain compatibility between the web-vault and Vaultwarden even in the event Bitwarden made changes to their clients, (mobile apps and browser extension) that would otherwise break compatibility between the two. This way the Vaultwarden web-vault is always available and compatible with the backend Vaultwarden server.
Hopefully with the request from the team as mentioned by dwbit the logos and wording can be updated for further clarification and distinction between the two.
Correct. I have no experience with Docker at all. The only think I know is that Docker works with containers
I’ve just followed the instructions.
I am a bit confused by all the comments indicating Bitwarden doesn’t run in a Docker container on a Synology NAS.
I have been a premium Bitwarden user for about 2 years and self-host Bitwarden on a Synology NAS with an Intel processor. I am currently running server and web versions 2022.10.2.
While Bitwarden installation guide doesn’t give specific instructions for running Bitwarden on a Synology NAS, I followed the instructions for Linux starting here: https://bitwarden.com/help/install-on-premise-linux/
Once Docker was set up, I logged in to the NAS via Putty and executed:
curl -Lso bitwarden.sh https://go.btwrdn.co/bw-sh && chmod 700 bitwarden.sh
as per the instructions.
None of my screens indicate “Powered by Vaultwarden”. They all indicate: © 2022 Bitwarden Inc.
Version 2022.10.0.
Dennis