Now that we have Headscale installed, and configured, it is time we connect to our Headscale (well, Tailscale) VPN Network. In this article we will use Android, but as we will see, there are multiple apps for a variety of Operating Systems we can use.
Step 1: Get the app
Seeing as Headscale is an implementation of Tailscale, we will need to use the Tailscale App to connect to our Headscale instance. Go to the official site here: https://tailscale.com/download Select the app for your operating system to download and install it.
Tailscale website download page – select your opertating system
Step 2 – Get the connection command
From our newly installed app, we need to first add the new address we created. Click on the settings menu in the top right. From here, select Accounts then click the three dots in the top right. An option will appear to Use an alternative server. Here we need to edit the server to the name of our set up server, in our case it will be https://vpn.techdecode.online. As soon as the server is added, we will be presented with an install command that we need to run on our Headscale instance. Copy this command to and get it to the machine we are going to use to connect to Proxmox.
Step 3: Authenticate the device
From Proxmox, we need to access the console of our Headscale LXC again. It is in this console that we need to run the command from the previous step. HOWEVER, we need to first create a new user. Form the console, run the command:
headscale users create <USERNAME>Add any username you prefer that will make it easier for you to remember.
Take the register command from the previous step and add this username into the command after the --user part. Run the command in the command console to regitsre the device and link it to a specific username you select. It should complete without any issues.
Once the command is run, go back to your Android phone to see that you are connected:
Screen showing that Headscale is now connected
Quick view of the exit node screen
Congratulations, you are now connected to your “Tailnet” as they call it in Tailscale. However, we still cannot access our network resources, even if we enable Allow LAN Access. This is due to our Headscale server not being an Exit node, so we will need to set that up as well. Although that is fairly straightforward, we will look at that in our next instalment, stay tuned for the final article in our Headscale series in our Build your own homelab lineup.