Nebula Tower

What It Is

Nebula Tower is a user-friendly server and client application that simplifies managing a Slack Nebula mesh network.

If you run the server component on a machine with a public IP address (like a $6/month Digital Ocean droplet), you can use the web interface to:

• 🔒 Create a Certificate Authority (CA) Certificate
• 🌐 Set up a Lighthouse server and its configuration
• 🖥️ Create hosts and generate their respective certificates and configs
• 🎟️ Create invites to connect users to a host

Clients (hosts) can easily download Nebula Tower generated configuration files and connect to the Nebula network using either a simple script or a Menubar application.

Important Considerations

This is a very early version of Nebula tower. If you find the concept helpful, let's collaborate to improve the app.

To keep things simple, Nebula Tower handles some things differently than the standard Nebula setup. We store the CA, lighthouse, and host certificates all on the tower itself. While this makes administration easier, it also means the security of your network is less decentralized than a typical Nebula deployment.

We also use the nightly version of Nebula with v2 certificates. This is because we need IPv6 support to create enough internal hosts without running into address conflicts. You can find more details on this approach in the official Nebula documentation on upgrading to v2 certificates and IPv6.

Server Screenshot:

Menubar App Screenshot:

Get Started

Run the server:

(currently works on MacOS and Linux)

1. Install uv

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

2. Download and unzip or clone this Repo

3. Build backend

cd nebula-tower # CD into the root directory of this project
./install_nebula_binaries.sh` # downloads nebula nightly
cd frontend
npm install # build the react app

4. edit frontend/.env and set VITE_API_BASE_URL to your server's address e.g. http://162.243.38.134:8000 (make sure you are editing your frontend/.env as there is a different .env in the root of the project)

5. Build the frontend and copy sample env

npm run build
cd ..
cp .env.sample .env

6. Edit .env and set the variables

7. Run uv run create_admin.py and follow the instructions to create your first admin user (make sure to enable the promote flag)

8. Now run uv run main.py (you will have to do sudo in front if on macOS)

To run this in development:

Do the above but then run the frontend separately cd frontend; npm run dev

Run the Client Menubar App

Fyne Client app

For Development:

go to cd client/nebula-tower-menubar-app-tyne ./dev.sh

Build for production:

./build.sh

Repo Organization:

Path	Description
main.py	Root file, server starting point
frontend/	React app for the server
data/	Directory where the server stores data
bin/	Directory where Nebula binaries live
client/nebula-tower-menubar-app-fyne	Directory for the client Menubar application

Credits

This wouldn't be possible without the awesome work of Slack Nebula. If you are looking for enterprise Nebula, you should work with the creators of Nebula at: https://www.defined.net/

We also use: Fyne, SQLite, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, FastAPI-users, React, MUI Joy, Lucide Icons, SWR, and more.

License

GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE v3