[Bug]: Seems critical - removing "Name (Optional)" resulted in NM to UI error and ghost wg config.

Contact Details

No response

What happened?

Hey, i think i found a pretty nasty bug in the UI/API interaction regarding external clients. I was checking the API docs at learn.netmaker.io and noticed that while nodeid is mandatory for creating a config, the Name field in the UI is marked as optional. I got curious what would happen if I just cleared the Name field in the edit modal to see which ID or field the API would fallback to.

Well, it didn't end well. As soon as I cleared the name and hit Update Config File, the UI threw "Unable to get record key Failed to update config file" followed by "client not found". The scary part is that the config just straight up vanished from the list. Even worse, clicking the "X" to close the modal didn't help — the record was already gone from the UI, but since I had the public key saved, I could see that the wireguard handshake was still active. So now I have a ghost client that still has access but is completely invisible and unmanageable in the Netmaker dashboard. It's a bit crazy that clearing a field marked as "optional" in the UI can essentially nuke a config and potentially kill a production connection with no way to revert it.

Please advice how to remove ghost host...

Version

v1.5.1

What OS are you using?

Linux

Relevant log output

2026-05-11T15:27:01.589434513Z [netmaker] 2026-05-11 15:27:01 admin updated ext client T030NPRM 
2026-05-11T15:28:09.875906482Z [netmaker] 2026-05-11 15:28:09 admin updated ext client T030NPRM 
2026-05-11T15:30:47.052215171Z {"time":"2026-05-11T15:30:47.050872097Z","level":"ERROR","source":"ext_client.go 1037}","msg":"failed to save ext client","user":"admin","id":"","network":"test","error":"unable to get record key"}
2026-05-11T15:31:35.270425318Z {"time":"2026-05-11T15:31:35.270197884Z","level":"ERROR","source":"ext_client.go 1037}","msg":"failed to save ext client","user":"admin","id":"","network":"test","error":"unable to get record key"}
2026-05-11T16:19:11.868926679Z {"time":"2026-05-11T16:19:11.868642588Z","level":"ERROR","source":"ext_client.go 1037}","msg":"failed to save ext client","user":"admin","id":"","network":"test","error":"unable to get record key"}
2026-05-11T16:20:35.277386991Z {"time":"2026-05-11T16:20:35.277184588Z","level":"ERROR","source":"ext_client.go 955}","msg":"failed to retrieve extclient","user":"admin","id":"T030NPRM","error":"client not found"}
2026-05-11T16:20:42.179065477Z {"time":"2026-05-11T16:20:42.178888284Z","level":"ERROR","source":"ext_client.go 955}","msg":"failed to retrieve extclient","user":"admin","id":"T030NPRM","error":"client not found"}

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