Tailscale VPN

Introduction

Tailscale is a zero-config, end-to-end encrypted, peer-to-peer VPN based on Wireguard. Tailscale supports all major desktop and mobile operating systems.

Compared to other VPN solutions, Tailscale does not require open TCP/IP ports and can work behind Network Address Translation or a firewall.

Prerequisites and assumptions

The following are minimum requirements for using this procedure:

• The ability to run commands as the root user or use sudo to elevate privileges
• A Tailscale account

Installing Tailscale

To install Tailscale, we first need to add its dnf repository (note: if you are using Rocky Linux 8.x, substitute in 8):

dnf config-manager --add-repo https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/rhel/9/tailscale.repo

Then install Tailscale:

dnf install tailscale

Configuring Tailscale

With the packages installed, you need to enable and configure Tailscale. To enable the Tailscale daemon:

systemctl enable --now tailscaled

Subsequently, you will authenticate with Tailscale:

tailscale up

You will get a URL for authentication. Visit that in a browser and log into Tailscale:

Next, you will grant access to your server. Click Connect to do so:

When you've granted access, you will see a success dialog:

Once your server is authenticated with Tailscale, it will get a Tailscale IPv4 address:

tailscale ip -4

It will also get an RFC 4193 (Unique Local Address) Tailscale IPv6 address:

tailscale ip -6

Conclusion

Traditionally, VPN services operated in a Client-Server model where a VPN gateway was centralized. This required manual configuration, firewall configuration and giving user accounts. Tailscale solves this problem by its peer-to-peer model combined with network-level access control.

Author: Neel Chauhan

Contributors: Steven Spencer, Ganna Zhyrnova