Setting Up Tailscale

Audiences: Replicator

This tutorial walks through establishing a Tailscale mesh network as the foundation for your homelab infrastructure.

Why Tailscale?

Tailscale solves several problems at once:

Secure connectivity - WireGuard-encrypted traffic between all devices
No port forwarding - Devices connect directly through NATs and firewalls
MagicDNS - Human-readable names like server.tailnet.ts.net
ACLs - Fine-grained access control between devices

For BlumeOps context, see Tailscale Reference.

Step 1: Create Your Tailnet

Sign up at tailscale.com
Choose your identity provider (Google, Microsoft, GitHub, etc.)
Note your tailnet name (e.g., yourname.ts.net)

Step 2: Install on Your Devices

macOS

# Option A: GUI app (recommended for desktop Macs)
brew install --cask tailscale
# Then launch Tailscale from Applications and follow the UI
 
# Option B: Headless CLI (servers/VMs)
brew install tailscale
brew services start tailscale
tailscale up

Linux

curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
sudo tailscale up

Other Platforms

See Tailscale Downloads for iOS, Android, Windows, etc.

Step 3: Verify Connectivity

After installing on two devices:

tailscale status
# Shows all connected devices
 
ping <other-device>.yourname.ts.net
# Should work immediately

Step 4: Configure ACLs

Default Tailscale allows all-to-all connectivity. For a homelab, you’ll want restrictions.

You can edit ACLs directly in the Tailscale admin console, or manage them as code with tailscale policy (see tailscale policy --help). Here’s an example policy to start from:

{
  "groups": {
    "group:admin": ["your-email@example.com"]
  },
  "tagOwners": {
    "tag:homelab": ["group:admin"]
  },
  "acls": [
    // Admins can access everything
    {"action": "accept", "src": ["group:admin"], "dst": ["*:*"]},
    // Homelab servers can reach NAS
    {"action": "accept", "src": ["tag:homelab"], "dst": ["tag:nas:*"]}
  ]
}

If editing as code, save this as policy.hujson and apply it with tailscale policy set policy.hujson.

BlumeOps manages ACLs via Pulumi — see Tailscale Reference for the actual configuration.

Step 5: Enable MagicDNS

In the Tailscale admin console:

Go to DNS settings
Enable MagicDNS
Optionally add a search domain

Now ssh server works instead of ssh 100.x.y.z.

Step 6: Tag Your Devices

Tags enable role-based access control:

# On your server
sudo tailscale up --advertise-tags=tag:homelab

Tags must be defined in ACLs before use.

Tip: If you plan to use subnet routing or Tailscale ProxyGroup Ingress, clients must also run tailscale up --accept-routes (or enable “Accept Routes” in the GUI). Without this, advertised routes are invisible to the client.

What You Now Have

Encrypted mesh network between all your devices
DNS names for each device
Foundation for exposing services securely

Next Steps

With networking established:

Set Up Core Services - Install Forgejo and optionally a container registry
Bootstrap Kubernetes - Your cluster will join the tailnet via the Tailscale Operator

BlumeOps Specifics

BlumeOps’ Tailscale configuration includes:

Multiple device tags (homelab, nas, registry, k8s-operator)
Group-based access for family members
SSH access rules with authentication requirements

See Tailscale Reference for full details.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
Device won’t connect	Check firewall allows UDP 41641
Can’t reach other devices	Verify ACLs don’t block traffic
DNS not resolving	Enable MagicDNS in admin console
Tags not applying	Ensure tags defined in ACL policy

BlumeOps Docs

Explorer

Tailscale Setup