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nyx/docs/notes/2023-11-11-using-headscale.md

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+# Notes for 11th of November, 2023
+
+Today's main attraction is the Headscale setup on my VPS running NixOS, which
+I've finally came around to self-host.
+
+There has been much talk about this new product called Tailscale recently
+around the web, especially in the last few years. Tailscale is a VPN
+service that makes the devices and applications we own accessible anywhere
+using the open source WireGuard protocol to establish encrypted point-to-point
+connections. I have been using Tailscale for a while now, but in an effort
+to move all of my services to self-owned hardware some of my services have
+been moved over to my NixOS server over time.
+
+Many of Tailscale’s components are open-source, especially its clients, but
+the server remains closed-source. Tailscale is a SaaS product and monetization
+naturally is a big concern, however, we care more about controlling our own data
+than their attempts of monetization.
+
+This is where the (very appropriately named) Headscale comes in; Headscale is
+an open-source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server. The
+configuration is extremely straightforward, as Headscale will handle everything
+for us.
+
+## Running Headscale
+
+Below is a simple configuration for the Headscale module of NixOS.
+
+```nix
+services = let
+  domain = "example.com";
+in {
+  headscale = {
+    enable = true;
+    address = "0.0.0.0";
+    port = 8085;
+
+    settings = {
+      server_url = "https://tailscale.${domain}";
+
+      dns_config = {
+        override_local_dns = true;
+        base_domain = "${domain}";
+        magic_dns = true;
+        domains = ["tailscale.${domain}"];
+        nameservers = [
+          "9.9.9.9" # no cloudflare, nice
+        ];
+      };
+
+      ip_prefixes = [
+        "100.64.0.0/10"
+        "fd7a:115c:a1e0::/48"
+      ];
+    };
+  };
+};
+```
+
+## Using Headscale
+
+We must first create a user, which we can do with
+
+```console
+headscale users create myUser
+```
+
+Then on the machine that will be our client, we need to login.
+
+```console
+tailscale up --login-server tailscale.example.com # replace this URL with your own as configured abovea
+```
+
+Followed by registering the machine.
+
+```console
+# machine key will be obtained visiting the URL that is returned from the above command
+headscale --user myUser nodes register --key <MACHINE_KEY>
+```
+
+And finally logging into your Tailnet using the URL and your machine key.
+
+```console
+tailscale up --login-server https://tailscale.example.com --authkey <YOUR_AUTH_KEY>
+```
+
+And all done! Now try connecting to one of your machines using the hostname now
+to test if the connection is actually working. If anything goes wrong, make
+sure to check your DNS settings: remember, it's always the DNS.