Tailscale Setup Guide: Self-Hosted and UniFi Integration

Tailscale is a modern VPN built on WireGuard with automatic mesh networking. For complete self-hosting, use Headscale—an open-source Tailscale control server implementation. UniFi Devices: If you run UniFi hardware (Dream Machine, Dream Router, etc.), install Tailscale directly on your gateway: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 # Install the latest version of Tailscale on UniFi OS 2.x+ curl -sSLq https://raw.github.com/SierraSoftworks/tailscale-udm/main/install.sh | sh # Start Tailscale tailscale up # Advertise routes to your local network tailscale up --advertise-routes=10.0.0.0/24 --advertise-exit-node The installation automatically restarts after UniFi updates, runs via systemd on UniFi OS 2.x+, and supports Tailscale SSH. It works on UniFi Dream Machine, Dream Router, Cloud Key Gen 2, and similar devices. ...

January 24, 2026 · 3 min · 549 words · rustikus

Nix Setup on macOS: An Overview

A collection of resources for setting up Nix on macOS with nix-darwin and home-manager. The nix-darwin-kickstarter repository is a good starting point for macOS. Run programs without installing them with nix-shell -p cowsay. Remote Deployment: nixos-rebuild announcement Example configurations: jdheyburn/nixos-configs Great examples for: Caddy web server FreshRSS deploy-rs Tailscale integration wimpysworld/nix-config - Production-ready configuration Remote installation with nixos-anywhere: nixos-anywhere uses kexec. If kexec doesn’t work, boot with NixOS ISO instead. Wireless in initrd: Unlocking encrypted drives over WiFi ...

January 14, 2026 · 1 min · 130 words · rustikus

Auto-mounting Encrypted External Drive in NixOS

Note: This article is heavily based on The Uncommitted Changes Blog by Pankaj Raghav. All credit goes to the original author. Setting up auto-mounting for a LUKS-encrypted external drive on NixOS requires coordinating LUKS decryption, udev device detection, and systemd mounting. Here’s how to configure it so the drive automatically decrypts and mounts when connected. First, encrypt the drive if you haven’t already: 1 2 3 4 5 6 cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda1 ## Enter password cryptsetup open /dev/sda1 vault dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/random of=/root/keyfile.key iflag=fullblock cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda1 /root/keyfile.key sudo mkfs.btrfs -L vault /dev/mapper/vault The keyfile allows automatic decryption without typing a password each time. Your device layout will look like: ...

January 11, 2026 · 3 min · 428 words · rustikus