I had to disable security momentarily and now I have lost all my RBAC setup

Last Reviewed:2025-12-31()
1 minute readKnowledge base

Issue

After temporarily disabling security settings in CloudBees CI, the Groups and Roles configuration from my RBAC setup is no longer visible or accessible.

Environment

Resolution

The RBAC configuration files may still exist but are not being loaded due to an incorrect authorization strategy setting.

Follow these steps to restore access to your RBAC configuration:

  1. Verify that the RBAC configuration files exist in your CloudBees CI filesystem:

    • $JENKINS_HOME/nectar-rbac.xml

    • $JENKINS_HOME/jobs/$JOB_NAME/nectar-rbac.xml (for each job/folder with RBAC settings)

  2. Navigate to Manage Jenkins  Security  Authorization.

  3. If you disabled security momentarily, you will probably see Anyone can do anything configured as the Authorization strategy. Change the Authorization strategy to Role-based matrix authorization strategy.

  4. In the Import Strategy dropdown, select Retain any existing role-based matrix authorization strategy configuration.

  5. Click Save to apply the changes.

Your existing Groups and Roles configuration should now be restored and accessible.

Tested product/plugin versions

This article is part of our Knowledge Base and is provided for guidance-based purposes only. The solutions or workarounds described here are not officially supported by CloudBees and may not be applicable in all environments. Use at your own discretion, and test changes in a safe environment before applying them to production systems.