[Updated on 2/2, 2025, after setting TailScale on RT2600AC and seeing this post]
TailScale is great VPN. It is even greater if it runs all the time on a router! Currently it is available as 3rd party package for Synology NAS (X64-based) machines, but not for Routers (usually ARM64-based). *sigh* This blog talks about a way to set it up.
Grab the binaries
- Go to the TailScale web page for synology prebuit packages
- Find the one for DSM7 and for ARMv8 (arm64)
- Today this package is tailscale-armv8-1.56.0-7000056000-dsm7.spk, ARMv8 (arm64)
- Note for RT2600AC we need to choose the armv7 version (32bit arm)
- Untar or unzip the package a couple of times and extract two binary files, tailscale and tailscaled. See pictures below.
- Copy (scp) over these two files to Synology router, say under your home directory’s subdirectory, “tailscale”.
Testing
- Download the script below that starts/stops the tailscale daemon
- This script is derived from TailScale’s original script and is adapted to SRM environment
- MODIFY SCRIPT with your own path for PKGVAR variable
- Now type “./start-stop-status start” and “./start-stop-status status”
- For the first time running, type “./tailscale --socket tailscaled.sock up --advertise-exit-node --advertise-routes 172.30.1.0/24″ and perform web-based login/setup, which will
- connect to your tailscale account and join your VPN network;
- advertise itself as exit node (router to internet) (if needed);
- route traffic to nodes on its own subet.
- Refer to my previous post.
Start up TailScale automatically
This only works on RT2600AC!!
- Create /etc/rc.local
#!/bin/sh
/var/services/home/jsun/tailscale/start-stop-status startFollowing method should work on RT6600AX, but it does’nt. Please help!!
- Copy the start-stop-status script to /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ directory
sudo cp start-stop-status /usr/local/etc/rc.d/tailscale