How to install Tailscale?

[ClementNerma]

Installing TailScale requires to add their custom repository, which does not seem to be possible in VanillaOS.

How can I circumvent that and still use it? Installing inside an APX env does not work obviously.

Thanks :)

[taukakao]

Sorry for the late reply, but sadly, this requires a custom image. Instructions for that can be found here:
https://github.com/vanilla-os/custom-image

[rickysarraf]

GitHub is imposing a restriction on the size of .deb to 25 MiB max. So the procedure of just dropping a .deb file in includes.container/deb-pkgs is not going to work for large size packages.

[taukakao]

You can follow the instructions from here:
https://tailscale.com/download/linux/debian-sid
using a shell module in your vib recipe.

Just leave out the "sudo", since everything is running as superuser already while building the image.

[rickysarraf]

THank you. Yes. That's what I did.

rrs@deskhp:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Vanilla
Description:	Vanilla OS 2.0
Release:	2.0
Codename:	orchid

rrs@deskhp:~$ tailscale status
Logged out.

rrs@deskhp:~$ tailscale version
1.90.9
  tailscale commit: 6e8a4f2de795ae6801f4b599e3f64ca6b5465c01
  long version: 1.90.9-t6e8a4f2de-g19196f361
  other commit: 19196f3617f75c3898c4fdfd4e82dcf9d258a04b
  go version: go1.25.3

For anyone wanting to look at the changes, please see my fork.

@taukakao The way Vanilla OS is structured, I'm loving it. Thank you to the Vanilla OS team for such an awesome work. 🤟🏽

[0chroma]

For anyone looking for a way to do this without having to use an alternative image, this is the script I use to set up tailscale inside distrobox:

host-shell pkexec bash -c "
    mkdir -p /var/run/tailscale
    distrobox create --root --name tailscale \
        --image docker.io/library/alpine:latest \
        --volume /var/run/tailscale:/var/run/tailscale:rw \
        --init \
        --additional-packages \"tailscale\" &&

    distrobox enter --root tailscale -nw -- rc-update add tailscale default &&
    distrobox enter --root tailscale -nw -- rc-service tailscale start &&
    distrobox enter --root tailscale -nw -- tailscale set --operator $USER &&

    cat > /etc/systemd/system/tailscale-container.service <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Prepare and start the tailscale Podman container
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
After=local-fs.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/mkdir -p /run/tailscale
ExecStart=/usr/bin/podman start tailscale
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

    systemctl daemon-reload &&
    systemctl enable tailscale-container.service

    distrobox enter --root tailscale -nw -- tailscale login
"

Once it's finished, follow the link to sign in and add the machine to your tailnet