Bug: Core SuperMQ services restarting due to missing `permission.yaml`

[dhanush-ninja]

Description

After performing a fresh installation of Magistrala latest version, multiple core services keep restarting continuously.

The affected services are:

• supermq-clients
• supermq-channels
• supermq-groups
• supermq-domains

All of them fail with the same error related to a missing permissions file.

---

📦 Version

I am using Magistrala v0.18.3 from the official GitHub releases:
https://github.com/absmach/magistrala/releases/tag/v0.18.3

---

Docker Status

d21ce94fdb7a   supermq/clients:latest  "/exe" 12 minutes ago   Restarting (1) 40 seconds ago   supermq-clients
b0723023e5f0   supermq/channels:latest  "/exe"  12 minutes ago   Restarting (1) 41 seconds ago  supermq-channels
57ed57d52a27   supermq/groups:latest  "/exe"  12 minutes ago   Restarting (1) 42 seconds ago  supermq-groups  
c2b7afd02445   supermq/domains:latest  "/exe"  12 minutes ago   Restarting (1) 27 seconds ago  supermq-domains

---

Error Logs

Logs from all services show the same error:

{"time":"2025-12-20T04:07:28.370309486Z","level":"ERROR","msg":"failed to parse permissions file: failed to read permissions file: open permission.yaml: no such file or directory"}

---

Expected Behavior

• Services should start successfully after a fresh installation

---

Actual Behavior

• Services continuously restart
• Startup fails because permission.yaml is missing

---

[dhanush-ninja]

@arvindh123 is there any update?

[arvindh123]

@dhanush-ninja This was fixed in the recent merge 6f44c66

Please let me know still you have the issue

[dborovcanin]

@dhanush-ninja closing this, considering it resolved. Feel free to reopen if the fix from the previous comment does now work for you.

[dhanush-ninja]

Hello @arvindh123 ,

I am facing a new issue after I update this.

the Rules API is returning an authorization error.
API endpoint:
GET {{url}}:9008/37dd6b24-1s428a-8435-df43231304b4/rules

Response:

{
    "error": "",
    "message": "not authorized to view rules in domain"
}

The same authorization error is also shown in the UI when trying to view Rules

and like this same error on Alarms and Reports page

[drasko]

@dhanush-ninja should this be reopened, or it is OK now?

[dhanush-ninja]

@drasko should be reopened, but I don’t have permission to do

[arvindh123]

@dhanush-ninja
I hope this ticket also mentioning the same problem #370

[arvindh123]

Hello @dhanush-ninja

As a quick workaround, please update the Docker image tag to use the latest stable version instead of latest.

In docker/supermq-docker/.env, change:

# Docker image tag
-SMQ_RELEASE_TAG=latest
+SMQ_RELEASE_TAG=v0.18.3

Using latest can pull in breaking or incompatible changes. Pinning to a specific release version ensures consistent and predictable behavior.

We will update the release docker/supermq-docker/.env to pin the image tag to v0.18.3 as part of the fix.

[dborovcanin]

@dhanush-ninja While this is dev env and was not mean to be stable, I have added new targets for running tagged ("stable") versions for both Magistrala and underlying SuperMQ. Can you try fetching all tags again (or fresh cloning Magistrala; this is very important since I updated this in the release as well, so it actually works for the latest tagged version and future tagged versions) and running make run_stable - or simply follow instructions.