Installing Tailscale via static binary

    Read online that it was possible to install Tailscale via static binary on LibreELEC; however, the tutorial assumed alot of general knowledge about the LibreELEC command system. I for one have zero experience outside the basics of the Raspi 5 OS hence why im here.

    Ive followed the tutorial set by Tailscale, yet I'm still facing errors.

    Tailscale Guide:

    Setting up Tailscale with static binaries (unsupported) · Tailscale Docs
    Learn how to use static binaries to install Tailscale on unsupported Linux distributions.
    tailscale.com

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    Setting up Tailscale with static binaries (unsupported)

    If you would like to try Tailscale on a Linux distribution we don't yet support, we offer statically-compiled binaries on a best-effort basis.

    If you use these binaries, contact us so that we can consider adding official support for your distribution.

    We offer static binaries for x86 and ARM CPUs, in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants.

    1. Download the static binaries for your CPU architecture:

    2. Unpack the archive:


      Code
      tar xvf tailscale_VERSION_ARCH.tgz

    3. Start tailscaled:


      Code
      sudo tailscaled --state=tailscaled.state

      If you want to configure systemd to run tailscaled automatically, a service configuration is available in the systemd/ subdirectory of the unpacked archive.

    4. Connect your machine to your Tailscale network and authenticate in your browser:


      Code
      sudo tailscale up

    5. You're connected! You can find your Tailscale IPv4 address by running:


      Code
      tailscale ip -4

    If the device you added is a server or remotely-accessed device, you may want to consider disabling key expiry to prevent the need to periodically re-authenticate.

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    What I've done so far,

    Enabled Raspi Tools in the LibreELEC add-ons

    wget https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/tailscale_1.74.1_arm64.tgz

    tar xvf tailscale_1.74.1_arm64.tgz

    tailscaled --state=tailscaled.state

    Error = -sh: tailscaled: not found

    I tried
    ./tailscale_1.74.1_arm64/tailscaled



    I proceed to get the error that tailscale has stoped.

    What am I doing wrong/ can anyone help me get to my goal.
    Have in mind that I am somewhat new to this system and the raspi 5 as a whole

    Hello toby2106


    Bellow is a copy and paste of my tailscale config file from: /storage/.config/system.d The top half of the tailscaled.service file is the system.d config for tailscale and the bottom half are notes to help remind me of how to setup tailscale.

    Hope the file help you to set up and runing tailscale !

    Reminder: use the command: ./tailscale set --exit-node-allow-lan-access=true

    Before you set the exit node so you do not get lock out from ssh to your raspi.

    Do a LibreELEC backup to be safe !!

    Regards: peter

    File name: tailscaled.service

    Interesting. I started work on a tailscale add-on about 18-months ago, but didn't get that far down the path of a working install to really make anything work. I might have to redo things as I use Tailscale more than plain WireGuard these days. Although, I'm so time-poor at the moment that I wouldn't hold breath on anything progressing :)

    • New

    Whilst looking for a way to access kodi when out of my home network, I stumbled upon this thread.

    I think my solution will only work if you, like me, have a seperate Pi/server running besides the kodi server/SBC/etc.

    When installing tailscale on my seperate Pi, I connect to it via Tailscale apps.
    Then, using subnets https://tailscale.com/kb/1019/subnets, I'm able to access my kodi player and stream from there.

    Maybe not your use case but wanted to share for any future searchers stumbling across this forum post.

    • New

    Using my method above led to unusable streaming performance. I can't believe my searches never let me to the following page: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tailscale/co…eelec_for_kodi/. The page describes how to run it tailscale on libreelec. I've added the description below should something happen to the reddit post in the future. If nothing is heard back from me, this will have solved my performance issues ;).

    The exact copy of the post

    Commenting here because this thread is the top google result for "libreelec tailscale" and "kodi tailscale".

    I was able to install tailscale on an x86-64 machine running libreelec using the provided binaries.

    First I sshed into the host as root then I used wget to retrieve the amd64 binary from https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/#static

    and saved it into /storage and extracted it using tar xvf tailscale_VERSION_ARCH.tgz

    it will include .\tailscaled the daemon, and .\tailscale the CLI.

    The command to start the daemon is

    Code
    tailscaled --state=tailscaled.state

    This will output the log through stdout and is blocking.

    The easiest way to run this command on startup is to use autostart.sh which is documented here. https://wiki.libreelec.tv/configuration/startup-shutdown

    so mine looks like this

    Code
    (
cd /storage/tailscale_1.26.1_amd64 &&
tailscaled --state=tailscaled.state
) &

    Note: to kill the tailscale daemon, you can find its pid using ps aux | grep tailscaled and then executing kill pid

    You can verify if the daemon is running by using

    Code
    ./tailscale status

    To login, just use

    Code
    ./tailscale up

    it will produce a link that you can copy paste from your ssh terminal into the browser to login. After logging in, it will save your config and automatically join your tailnet every time the daemon starts up.

    This should be enough info to get started. Hope this helps anyone coming from google.

    Perhaps in the future, someone could make a kodi addon that can wrap this.

    my abbreviated how to (via SSH)
    1. find the right binary on: https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/#static , right click -> copy link
    2. in your terminal type: wget [your link]
    3. find the download location and zipped file using 'cd' and 'ls' commands. Once found, unzip the file using: tar xvf [yourfile].tgz
    4. run nano /storage/.config/autostart.sh

    5. if there is already a line, place the following text right below it:

      Code
      (
cd /storage/[YOURFOLDER]&&
./tailscaled --state=tailscaled.state
) &
    6. exit, save, reboot machine
    7. log back in to your machine and navigate to the unzipped folder. Inside the folder use: ./tailscale up
    8. You will get a link, open it inside your browser and accept the machine into your tailscale network.
    9. You can check up on the service using ./tailscale status