This project is a slightly modified version of this guide.

Set the environment variables for the Tailscale version and your router's architecture:

export VERSION="1.58.2"
export ARCH="mips_24kc"

• Clone the Tailscale repository and checkout to the release you are building for:

git clone https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale
cd tailscale
git checkout v$VERSION

Follow this guide to build the tailscale.combined binary for your device.

GOOS=linux GOARCH=$ARCH go build -o tailscale.combined -tags ...

• Run the final built tailscale.combined through upx to compress it:

upx --lzma --best ./tailscale.combined

wget https://github.com/du-cki/openwrt-tailscale/releases/download/v$VERSION/tailscale_$VERSION-1_$ARCH.ipk

• Transfer the tailscale.combined binary and the IPK file to your router's /tmp directory:

scp -O ./tailscale.combined [email protected]:/tmp
scp -O tailscale_$VERSION_$ARCH.ipk [email protected]:/tmp/tailscale.ipk

opkg update
opkg install kmod-tun iptables-nft
opkg install /tmp/tailscale.ipk

• Replace the installed tailscale and tailscaled binaries with the portable version:

rm /usr/sbin/tailscaled
rm /usr/sbin/tailscale
cd /usr/sbin
cp /tmp/tailscale.combined .
ln -s tailscale.combined tailscaled
ln -s tailscale.combined tailscale

• Verify your installation:

tailscale --version

If you see an error, it means that the tailscale.combined binary is not compiled for the correct architecture. Remove the tailscale.combined binary and compile it again for the correct architecture.

• Restart the Tailscale daemon:

service tailscale restart

• Start Tailscale with the --netfilter-mode=off flag to prevent iptables rules from being created. This setting will be preserved in /etc/tailscale/tailscaled.state for future boots:

tailscale up --netfilter-mode=off