How to setup Tailscale on NETGEAR READYNAS Devices

READYNAS-Tailscale.md

How to setup Tailscale on NETGEAR READYNAS Devices

Download and Extract Tailscale

1. Go to the the Tailscale Linux Download Website and select 'Other' as the distro.
2. Enable SSH on the NAS, and SSH into the admin account
3. Do su and type in the admin password
4. Download the stable release for 'arm' not arm64 in the admin home directory
5. Unpack the archive with tar xvf tailscale_VERSION_ARCH.tgz

Moving files into locations

1. tailscale -> /usr/bin
2. tailscaled -> /usr/sbin
3. systemd/tailscaled.service -> /etc/systemd/system

Chmoding files to execute

1. chmod +x /usr/bin/tailscale
2. chmod +x /usr/sbin/tailscaled

Editing the systemd service to work

1. Remove lines 4 & 5 (the Wants= line and After= line)
2. Remove line 8 (the EnvironmentFile= line)
3. Remove everything after tailscaled.sock on the line starting with ExecStart=

The file should look like this

Starting / Enabling the service

1. systemctl start tailscaled
2. tailscale up
3. systemctl enable tailscaled

Done! 🎉

Tell me if anything is broken or doesn't work.

Hello [tux7k], Thanks for your reply. I don't know much about the innards of Linux. From the text of the error message, and some update attempts, some kenel component needs to be updated — which is very tricky, if not hopeless. But you knowledge of Linux is surely far deeper than mine. If you ever find a way, please post it here and send me an e-mail.

@rlsx The ReadyNAS kernal doesn't have the iptables NAT table/module available, so exit node, subnet routing, and stateful filtering aren't going to be possible on the ReadyNAS without rebuilding or patching the kernal yourself.. which is just crazy overkill (and likely not even possible) on a blackbox appliance like this.

You can get rid of the warning by running tailscale with netfilter mode turned off:

tailscale up --reset --netfilter-mode=off

but it's not going to do anything to make exit nodes/subnet routing possible it'll just give you a quieter health report by disabling Tailscale's automatic iptables manipulation.

To add on to what @bradleyhodges said, I wouldn’t try any updates on the distro itself either, I presume it could brick things. I don’t think it’s possible at the moment to use exit nodes and I don’t think it will be either. An exit node is better done with a small device like an RPi or something anyways, and that’ll work smoother :)