Logging, auditing, and streaming

Each Tailscale agent in your distributed network streams its logs to a central log server (at log.tailscale.io). This includes real-time events for open and close events for every inter-machine connection (TCP or UDP) on your network.

Because every connection requires two endpoints, and both endpoints log every connection, it’s possible to detect lost or tampered logs by comparing the double entries of each endpoint. You could also use IDS (intrusion detection system) rules to automatically detect suspicious activity on your network.

Client logs

Each client logs information about its own operation and its attempts to contact other nodes. The data collected and how it is used are described in our privacy policy.

Logs can be accessed locally for nodes on some desktop platforms.

Windows

Logs are stored in C:\ProgramData\Tailscale (or, more generally, $env:ALLUSERSPROFILE\Tailscale).

macOS

Open the Console application and search for IPN.

Linux

Logs are available in the shell:

journalctl -u tailscaled

Centralized log management

Some logs are centrally collected by Tailscale for debugging. This is done with a custom-built, high-capacity, high-reliability, distributed logging system.

Client operational logs are only accessible locally on each node, but you could stream your system- and container-level logs to the same centralized data store for further analysis. Network flow logs are available from the admin console when enabled.

Opting out of client logging

If you block client logging, Tailscale may not be able to provide technical support.

Windows

This is possible if you set the TS_NO_LOGS_NO_SUPPORT environment variable in %ProgramData%\Tailscale\tailscaled-env.txt:

TS_NO_LOGS_NO_SUPPORT=true

To track when you can instead use the --no-logs-no-support flag, follow our GitHub issue for making it easier to use environment variables.

macOS

If you are running the open source tailscaled macOS variant, pass the --no-logs-no-support flag to tailscaled:

tailscaled --no-logs-no-support

To track when you can use the --no-logs-no-support flag for other macOS variants, follow our GitHub issue for making it easier to use environment variables.

Linux

Either use the --no-logs-no-support flag, or set the TS_NO_LOGS_NO_SUPPORT environment variable.

To use the --no-logs-no-support flag, pass it to tailscaled:

tailscaled --no-logs-no-support

To set the TS_NO_LOGS_NO_SUPPORT environment variable, edit /etc/default/tailscaled and add the following line:

TS_NO_LOGS_NO_SUPPORT=true

Network flow logs

Network flow logs are available for the Premium and Enterprise plans.

Network flow logs are available to help you understand which devices are connecting to one another over time, i.e. the flow of traffic across your tailnet.

These logs strictly do not contain any information about client operations or contents of network traffic.

Network flow logs must be enabled.

Flow logs can be configured to stream to a security information and event management (SIEM) system.

Server logs

Configuration audit logs record actions that modify a tailnet’s configuration, including the type of action, the actor, the target resource, and the time.

All users who have access to the admin console can view configuration audit logs in the Logs page of the admin console, and can filter these logs to find specific events.

Configuration audit logs are enabled by default for all tailnets, and are available for the most recent 90 days.

Audit logs can be configured to stream to a security information and event management (SIEM) system.

Local SSH session logs

Local SSH session logs are not supported as of version 1.48.0.

You can use Tailscale SSH session recording to streaming recordings from the server device.