ohthesetrees

Kelly

@ohthesetrees

Lovely lady into cute and cozy things, coffee, books, games, and music. Also lead engineer for Slime Rancher 2.

 

🏳️‍⚧️ Trans 🏳️‍🌈 Gay ♾️ Neurodivergent

 

All views are my own.

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website
ohthesetrees.com/
blog
blog.ohthesetrees.com/
ohthesetrees
@ohthesetrees

hey tailscale is pretty cool

i've been using tailscale for a while and it's be nice. i used it originally so my laptop could reach my (at-home) NAS remotely. however i've recently been finding even more uses for it:

  • tailscale ssh allows me to remote into any connected machine, even things like connecting to my laptop from my desktop if i want to check on something
  • tailscale ssh doesn't require me to setup SSH keys which was super neat when i setup a new VM the other day
    • i was able to block port 22 via ufw thus blocking all attempts at gaining ssh access from the outside, but since i'm hoping to setup my own oidc server for logging into tailscale at some point, that isn't really useful for this particular instance
  • tailscale's magicdns + the above mean i was able to run git clone kelly@treesinthecloud:ohthesetrees.com to clone a git repo from my VM and then git push my changes without needing any ssh keys
  • all of the above works completely as expected from a powershell prompt in windows which is SO NICE for when i'm in windows but want to check on something or make a small edit to my website
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in reply to @ohthesetrees's post:

exodrifter
@exodrifter

yeah!!! i started using tailscale as a way to give my friends and family access to an immich machine (and only that machine) to view pictures and it's worked pretty well! i can't wait to use it for more stuff like syncthing and gitea.

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exodrifter
@exodrifter

It has unfortunately been quite difficult for less tech-savvy people. I only want to share a single machine and I want to stay under the person limit for the free plan, so it involves telling each person how to set up their own tailscale network which is pretty involved for non-technical users.

There's also a few confusing bits:

  • Most of the time, the other person only wants to set up one computer because all they want to do is access the immich server. However, Tailscale's tutorial will try to get you to add two and they'll send you reminder emails if you only have one machine connected to your network.
  • If you send someone a share link, and someone doesn't have tailscale on it, clicking to accept the invite will only start onboarding to set up the network, and they have to click the invite again to actually accept the share.

I usually end up having to walk them through how to set it up or just do it for them, which is not great. Thankfully, after it's set up, it seems to work fine (or at least, I haven't gotten any requests for support yet)

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ohthesetrees
@ohthesetrees

Oof yeah. My mom and her wife would be a couple main users and I cannot imagine getting them through that process. I might end up going with my original plan of writing a little web app that can use OAuth so they can just login with their Google accounts or something.

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