Threshold

Threshold provides simple and secure access to hosts and services. It is a community-maintained fork of HashiCorp Boundary Community Edition (CE).

About this fork

Threshold is a community fork of HashiCorp Boundary Community Edition. HashiCorp (an IBM company) archived the upstream Boundary CE repository on 2026-10-09 and announced that no further CE releases, maintenance updates, bug fixes or security patches are planned. Threshold continues maintenance of the Community Edition code base so that existing self-managed deployments can keep receiving fixes.

• Threshold is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1, the same license as the upstream code. The original license text and all copyright headers are preserved. See NOTICE for attribution.
• Threshold is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by HashiCorp or IBM. "Boundary", "HashiCorp" and "HCP Boundary" are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to describe the origin of this project.
• Upstream project: https://github.com/hashicorp/boundary
• This repository: https://repo.anhonesthost.net/CyberCoveLLC/threshold

Compatibility with Boundary CE

This is the first phase of the rebrand and is designed to keep existing Boundary CE deployments working:

• The command-line binary is now threshold (built from cmd/threshold).
• The wire protocol, HTTP API paths (/v1), database schema, plugin protocol and configuration file format are unchanged.
• The Go module path is repo.anhonesthost.net/CyberCoveLLC/threshold (with /api and /sdk submodules); protobuf code has been regenerated for it.
• Release versions are still reported on the wire with the upstream Boundary v prefix so mixed clusters keep working. Threshold v is also accepted when parsing.

Environment variable and path fallbacks

Threshold prefers THRESHOLD_* environment variables, and transparently falls back to the legacy BOUNDARY_* name when the THRESHOLD_* variable is not set. For example THRESHOLD_ADDR, THRESHOLD_TOKEN, THRESHOLD_SCOPE_ID, THRESHOLD_KEYRING_TYPE, THRESHOLD_TOKEN_NAME, THRESHOLD_CONNECT_*, THRESHOLD_SKIP_CACHE_DAEMON and the other CLI and server variables are read first, then BOUNDARY_ADDR, BOUNDARY_TOKEN, and so on. A THRESHOLD_* variable that is set to a non-empty value always wins. Existing scripts and deployments that only set BOUNDARY_* variables do not need to change.

Notes:

• env://VAR references inside configuration files and flags (for example url = "env://BOUNDARY_POSTGRES_URL" or url = "env://THRESHOLD_POSTGRES_URL" as used by the bundled container config) name an environment variable literally and are not rewritten; keep using whichever variable name you export.
• threshold connect -exec exports both THRESHOLD_PROXIED_{PORT,IP,ADDR} and the legacy BOUNDARY_PROXIED_{PORT,IP,ADDR} variables to the child process.
• The container image entrypoint mirrors any BOUNDARY_* variables to the matching THRESHOLD_* variable when it is unset.

Other fallbacks:

Item	New	Legacy fallback
Client cache directory	~/.threshold	~/.boundary is used if it exists and ~/.threshold does not
Keyring entry (macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Manager)	Threshold Auth Token	HashiCorp Boundary Auth Token is read if the new entry is not found, and removed on threshold logout
Keyring prefix (pass, libsecret)	Threshold	HashiCorp_Boundary is read if the new entry is not found, and removed on threshold logout

Tokens are always written using the new names.

Upgrading from Boundary

Threshold is designed as an in-place replacement for HashiCorp Boundary CE: the same database, the same configuration files, and a binary that can still be invoked as boundary.

Compatibility guarantees

These are unchanged from upstream Boundary CE, so a mixed fleet of Boundary and Threshold controllers and workers interoperates, and you can upgrade (and roll back) one node at a time:

• Database schema: the schema migrations are untouched and the boundary_schema_version table keeps its name. Threshold runs against an existing Boundary database as-is (threshold database migrate applies the same migrations Boundary would).
• Wire protocol: protobuf packages, gRPC service names and the /v1 HTTP API paths are unchanged (only Go import paths were renamed). Versions are still reported to peers with the Boundary v prefix.
• Plugin protocol: the plugin magic cookie (HASHICORP_BOUNDARY_PLUGIN / boundary-plugin) is unchanged, so existing boundary-plugin-* binaries keep working.
• Configuration file format (HCL) is unchanged.

Do not run database migrate from a newer Threshold than your other nodes understand; as with Boundary, upgrade controllers before workers and follow the usual rolling-upgrade guidance for schema migrations.

Linux packages (deb/rpm)

1. Back up /etc/boundary.d and take a database backup.
2. Install the Threshold package. Do not purge the old boundary package (removal is fine); purging runs its scripts, which may delete the boundary user that Threshold will reuse. Installing Threshold while the old package is still installed is supported.
3. The package scripts then, automatically:
   • copy /etc/boundary.d to /etc/threshold.d (boundary.hcl becomes threshold.hcl, boundary.env becomes threshold.env; subdirectories such as TLS material are copied as-is). Existing files in /etc/threshold.d are never overwritten and the originals are never modified or deleted;
   • keep reading /etc/boundary.d/boundary.env as a fallback environment file (threshold.env takes precedence), so BOUNDARY_* variables keep working;
   • reuse the existing boundary service user and group instead of creating a threshold user (through a managed systemd drop-in, /etc/systemd/system/threshold.service.d/10-legacy-boundary-user.conf), so ownership of your data, log and key directories keeps working;
   • if boundary.service was enabled and/or running, stop and disable it, enable threshold.service, and start it if the old service was running. If threshold.service fails to start, the old service is restored;
   • make systemctl restart boundary (and status, stop, ...) address threshold.service via a boundary.service alias symlink in /etc/systemd/system, and provide /usr/bin/boundary as a symlink to threshold if no such file exists. The boundary command prints a one-line deprecation notice to stderr only (silence it with THRESHOLD_NO_DEPRECATION_NOTICE=1); stdout, flags and exit codes are identical to threshold.
4. Verify: systemctl status threshold, threshold version.

What is not migrated automatically:

• Paths inside your configuration files are not rewritten. A config that refers to /etc/boundary.d/... or /var/lib/boundary keeps working because those locations are left in place; update them at your own pace.
• A custom /etc/systemd/system/boundary.service unit (a regular file) is left alone and the legacy service is not touched; migrate it by hand.
• If /usr/bin/boundary is still the old binary from the Boundary package, it is left alone. After removing the old package: ln -s threshold /usr/bin/boundary.
• Distribution-specific package-manager behavior such as --force-confnew (dpkg) can replace /etc/threshold.d defaults; your originals remain in /etc/boundary.d.
• Data directories, the database, KMS keys and the client cache are not moved (the client cache directory is covered by the table above).

Rollback: stop threshold.service, remove the boundary.service alias symlink (/etc/systemd/system/boundary.service) and the drop-in, reinstall the old Boundary package, and systemctl enable --now boundary. Because the database schema is unchanged and /etc/boundary.d was never modified, nothing else needs to be restored. If you ran a Threshold release that applied schema migrations newer than your Boundary version, restore the database backup instead.

Container image

The image's configuration directory moved from /boundary to /threshold (default command: threshold server -config /threshold/config.hcl). For compatibility the image:

• contains /boundary as a symlink to /threshold, so existing -v "$(pwd)":/boundary/ mounts land in the right place;
• falls back to /boundary/config.hcl (printing a deprecation warning) when -config /boundary/config.hcl is requested, or when the stock demo config is still in place and a config exists at /boundary/config.hcl;
• accepts boundary ... as the command and BOUNDARY_* environment variables (mirrored to THRESHOLD_*).

Plan to switch your mounts, -config arguments and environment variables to the /threshold and THRESHOLD_* names; the compatibility paths print warnings and may be removed in a future major release.

Other installs (binary / zip)

Replace the boundary binary with threshold (or keep the file name boundary, which behaves identically). Existing BOUNDARY_* variables, ~/.boundary and stored credentials are picked up as described above.

Development mode

threshold dev creates the ssh.threshold.dev and postgres.threshold.dev aliases and, for compatibility, the legacy ssh.boundary.dev and postgres.boundary.dev aliases pointing at the same targets.

Building

make build        # builds bin/threshold (requires the embedded UI, see Makefile)
make build-no-ui  # builds bin/threshold without the embedded admin UI

The embedded admin UI is built from the upstream boundary-ui project and is not part of this repository.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.