Tailscale: Smoother onboarding/install process for Ubiquiti gear

[loganb]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I have three locations (one Office, two Retail), each with about 3 subnets routed by an Ubiquiti Edgerouter. Each location has a large number of embedded devices on the network that cannot run arbitrary software. I'd like to be able to easily remotely access them without playing with firewall rules, etc.

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like to install Tailscale on the Edgerouters and announce routes for the attached subnets. It looks like this is theoretically possible with the available binaries, but also I'm busy with real life and don't want to fiddle with stuff.

Possible solutions in order of desirability from least to most:

• Clear, concise HOWTO on how to install tailscale on an Edgerouter in a way that survives reboots and firmware updates.
• An install/configuration script of some kind
• Integration with Ubiquiti's/Vyatta's configuration GUI

Describe alternatives you've considered

I've considered messing around with just downloading the binaries and trying it out, but having a real life has mostly limited time and inclination to do real work on that front.

Additional context

Not sure how much you consider this as in-scope for your work. I like Tailscale because it feels like you have a gentle enough pricing path that it would be attractive for a small business like mine (I have a small office staff that's entirely non-technical) relative to other VPN options. Plus it's technically more sound.

[bradfitz]

Some keywords for searching: UniFi Dream Machine Pro (UDMP) (from dup bug #894)

[bradfitz]

Reportedly works fine on ER4:

Well I installed the mips package from here on my ER4 by hand.... https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/tailscale_1.2.8_mips.tgz It seems to just work. Commands below...

tar xvfz tailscale*.tgz
cd tailscale*_mips
sudo cp tailscaled.service /lib/systemd/system
sudo cp tailscaled.defaults /etc/default/tailscaled
sudo cp tailscale /usr/bin
sudo cp tailscaled /usr/sbin
sudo systemctl start tailscaled
sudo tailscale up

[elsbrock]

To my knowledge this is not permanent though and will likely be removed during system upgrade.

[lg]

thanks @bradfitz, used your post as inspiration to write a quick guide on how to get it to stick around after system upgrades: https://gist.github.com/lg/6f80593bd55ca9c9cf886da169a972c3

[gabefair]

Considering how popular MIPS processors are on routers.
I have followed tailscale's request for an email to let them know that MIPS binaries should be supported directly.

It is also worth making note of the fact that EdgeOS (The OS on Ubiquiti gear and 7.1% of global WLAN market) weakly supports adding Debian packages to the linux machine.
https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/205202560-EdgeRouter-Add-Debian-Packages-to-EdgeOS

And since Debian supports the 64bit MIPS (little-endian) Architecture this check should be included when following the Debian tailscale install guide.

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Edit: #1085 was opened regarding providing install instructions for MIPS64 devices like Ubiquiti gear running EdgeOs.

[danderson]

We have both mips and mipsle binaries already: https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/#static

Do those not work? Is there a mips sub-architecture we missed?