Could we please have Tailscale installed in the My Cloud Home now that WD Discovery is retiring for the desktop

My Cloud Home - Personal Cloud Storage My Cloud Home Ideas
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Now that WD Discovery is not being updated for desktop integration after June 2023, My Cloud Home (MCH) users will be in great need of a replacement for the desktop file management and perhaps even mobile apps. The clear and simple alternative would be to allow Tailscale to be run on the MCH. There should be few obstacles in the way of the install as Tailscale has up to date builds for the Debian platform and the install is straight forward:

Without Tailscale installed in the MCH OS, MCH users will have to resort to the more resource complicated Tailscale subnet routing in order to see the device remotely.

Setting up Tailscale on Debian Bullseye

Packages are available for x86 and ARM CPUs, in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants.

  1. Add Tailscale’s package signing key and repository:
curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/debian/bullseye.noarmor.gpg | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/tailscale-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null
curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/debian/bullseye.tailscale-keyring.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tailscale.list
  1. Install Tailscale:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tailscale
  1. Connect your machine to your Tailscale network and authenticate in your browser:
sudo tailscale up
  1. You’re connected! You can find your Tailscale IPv4 address by running:
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.

Last updated Jun 3, 2022

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Please see this post on how to install a Windows Tailscale subnet router, also reproduced below:

Available now, although not optimally and more resource intensive than a native Tailscale client running on the My Cloud Home.

Here is the how-to-configure TailScale Subnet Router for Windows Machine

The Windows installer places a tailscale.exe command in %PATH%. You set Windows up as a subnet router using a cmd.exe shell with the same command as Linux:

tailscale up --advertise-routes=…

So, if the home router IP Range is 192.168.1.1,

you’d likely want to use the following on CMD:

tailscale up --advertise-routes=192.168.1.0/24

OPTIONALif you have another set of subnet, remember to add rightaway after the first one, otherwise you will have to reset everything and do it again but with all the subnet you want to add.

example of multiple subnets cmd : tailscale up --advertise-routes=192.168.1.0/24,10.8.0.0/24

then, go to Tailscale

click Edit Route Setting on that Windows Machine.Turn on the Subnet Route , all done!

that’s it! :slightly_smiling_face:

Note: Tailscale wraps the network stack around gVisor Netstack for Windows platforms which has limitation. For full-on performance mode, you will have to set up Subnet Route on Linux.

Windows SR : only TCP/UDP is supported

More information : Kernel vs. netstack subnet routing & exit nodes · Tailscale

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how can i send these commands to the MCH?

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Thank you for your interest. This is the “My Cloud Home Ideas” subforum which means users propose ideas to WDC and hope that WDC will incorporate new features for the MCH.

It is not possible to send user issued SSH commands to the MCH currently, that is why we need to have WDC install the Tailscale feature which is not complicated because all the code is open source already built for the Debian OS which is what MCH is running with the new firmware 8 or above.

But all is not lost because Tailscale could be run on a “subnet router” on a host such as Windows or macOS as described above - the drawback is that the host has to be ON and running for the subnet routing to function - that is the reason why we need to have the Tailscale feature on the MCH so that a host subnet routing is not required.

The link below shows how to install a Windows or macOS subnet router which is currently possible and working:

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I’m interested in support your idea!

Great job creating this thread!

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