August Tailscale newsletter

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Summer has come to an end in the northern hemisphere, and as we sharpen our pencils and compare Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers, we have some exciting updates to share. The team worked alongside some wonderful partners to extend on-demand access to your Tailscale resources with Opal, Indent, Sym, and ConductorOne. Brad Fitzpatrick did some moonlighting on the 9to5 Apple @ Work podcast talking about Tailscale SSH. Microsoft’s Paul Yu detailed how to access your Linux machine on Azure with Tailscale SSH.

We also have lots of community contributions and Tailscale improvements to spotlight. Let’s jump in:

From the community

• Simple multi-user Jupyterlab using Docker and Tailscale
  GitHub user @vincenzon shares a simple JupyterHub-like setup and explains how he secures it with Tailscale: “With Tailscale, it is a simple matter to grant users secure access to a single port on a server.”

• Using Tailscale on Windows to network more easily with WSL2 and Visual Studio Code
  Scott Hanselman’s blog walks through the steps for setting up Tailscale on WSL2 and notes that Tailscale “levels the playing field” between devices and networks.

• How to use the iPad as a development device
  Medium.com writer Doğukan Aydoğdu shares how to use SSH to connect to your MacBook Pro from your iPad and concludes, “It works very well with the VPN that was created from Tailscale.”

• We now have Tailscale for private VPNs (Spanish)
  Jorge Reyes Escaño from Enteratec.com recommends Tailscale for simplifying the creation and configuration of private VPNs.

• Using Tailscale and iptables to roll your own port forwarding
  Ben at Siraben’s Musings shares how to host a Minecraft server without extra hardware.

• Using Tailscale certificates in Kubernetes
  Chris at Old Man Yells at Clouds says, “I’m a huge fan of Tailscale. Last year, they added a beta ability to issue X.509v3 certificates (via Let’s Encrypt) to systems on your tailnet” — and then puts it to the test.

• 4 ways to optimize your workflows with Docker Extensions
  Felipe Cruz from Docker talks about Docker Extensions and the benefits of sharing your containers securely with Tailscale.

• Securely connect to your Azure Linux virtual machine with Tailscale SSH
  Microsoft senior cloud advocate Paul Yu details how to use Tailscale SSH to securely connect to your VM without exposing it to the internet, and concludes: “It is simple to set up and can be used in a variety of environments, from enterprises to hobbyists.”

• Tailscale Pi-hole setup
  Over at Erraticbits, Jeff Clement documents setting up an internal Pi-hole server and using that for DNS privacy and ad blocking across his tailnet.

• Gitpod demo with remote resources and gpg signing (video)
  Chris Barker explains how he used Tailscale to bridge his workspace to a VPC where a MySQL instance was running.

• Tailscale subnet router using Azure container instances and Terraform
  Reddit user u/cocallaw shares: “Taking the concept from what u/danhermes created with AWS Fargate, I built out the Azure version using Azure Container Instances (ACI). The Tailscale container is deployed into an ACI container group that is injected into the subnet of the VNet specified.”

• Tailscale VPN in Docker without elevated privileges
  Blog Asselin.Engineer details how to add Tailscale to a docker-compose.yml without elevated privileges for situations where you want only the container (not the entire host device) to be accessible in the VPN.

• TrueNAS: Full setup guide for setting up Portainer, containers, and Tailscale (video)
  YouTube channel Level1Techs walks through installing Portainer and Tailscale on TrueNAS for a home server.

• How to set up a private web site with Tailscale in 5 minutes (video)
  YouTuber Pat Maddox explains how he used Tailscale to set up a private website he can access on the go. His verdict? “Not only does it not suck, it works really well.”

• How I do computer things in 2022 (video)
  “Listen to me ramble for a while about my computing setup in 2022,” says YouTube channel endeavorance in this video that includes a discussion of Tailscale.

Want to be included in future Tailscale newsletters? Tag us in your rant, guides, or tutorials on Twitter.

From the team

• The Cloudcast — Cloud Computing
  Tailscale Head of Product @MayaKaczorowski talks about the new world of remote systems access, zero-config VPNs, and why everyone loves using Tailscale.

• Apple @ Work Podcast: Tailscale rethinks how VPN and SSH work for remote teams — 9to5Mac
  Brad Fitzpatrick from Tailscale joins the show to talk about creating a better VPN solution, the new SSH tool, and how the company got started.

What’s new and improved

You can now use Tailscale SSH to access tagged nodes that are shared with you.

On-demand access for your Tailscale resources with our new partners: Now you can limit access to the resources your team needs when they need them:

• On-demand access to your Tailscale resources with Indent
• On-demand access to your Tailscale resources with ConductorOne
• On-demand access to your Tailscale resources with Sym
• On-demand access to your Tailscale resources with Opal

• Ephemeral nodes… now more ephemeral!
  Maisem Ali explains you can run tailscale logout on an ephemeral node to remove it from your network immediately.

• Manage your Tailscale resources with Terraform Tailscale is adopting the Tailscale Terraform provider and taking responsibility for ongoing support and development. The community, notably David Bond, originally created the Tailscale Terraform provider, and we are very thankful for the work they’ve done to provide this valuable tool to others.

Tailscale learning library

We are building a learning library to help folks at any stage in their career. If you have a topic you’d like to see covered, send us a tweet @Tailscale.

• How to generate SSH keys
• How to SSH into Docker containers
• Understanding software-defined networking
• How to provide secure remote access to Grafana dashboards

That’s all for now. Stay well!