frame the public server as common to all three, not a cost of offscale

"offscale runs on a publicly reachable server" read as a demand offscale makes
and the easy route does not. It is not. Tailscale's coordination server is
publicly reachable too — they run it for you, and that is the entire difference
between option 3 and hosting it yourself.

Said that way round, the requirement stops being a reason not to self-host and
becomes what self-hosting means. Same sentence in all three places: the menu
entry, the branch taken when 1 is chosen, and the long answer.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-12 20:37:26 +00:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent a989f8fbfa
commit 4fcc34de18
2 changed files with 18 additions and 10 deletions
+14 -7
View File
@@ -67,10 +67,12 @@ tailscale_network_menu() {
echo " neither — it runs headscale's open-source code. What changes is"
echo " the work: managed from an app rather than a terminal, and"
echo " enrolling a device is a link and a tap."
echo " It runs somewhere publicly reachable — a small VPS — not on this"
echo " machine and not at home. Every device has to be able to find it,"
echo " including the ones that are not on your network, so it needs an"
echo " address that resolves from anywhere."
echo " offscale — just like headscale, and just like Tailscale's own"
echo " service — needs to run on a publicly reachable server of its"
echo " own. A small VPS is enough. Not this machine, not behind a home"
echo " router: every device that joins has to find it, including phones"
echo " on mobile data. The only difference from option 3 is who runs"
echo " that server."
echo " Follow that setup through first, then come back here with its"
echo " address and a key."
echo " https://officer.dev/infrastructure/offscale.html#install"
@@ -136,12 +138,17 @@ tailscale_networks_help() {
# Where it runs matters more than how it installs, and is the thing people
# get wrong: a coordination server at home is unreachable from exactly the
# devices a private network exists to reach.
echo " Where it runs: somewhere publicly reachable, on its own — a small"
echo " Where it runs: on a publicly reachable server of its own — a small"
echo " VPS is enough. Not on this machine, and not behind a home router."
echo " Every device that joins has to find it, including phones on mobile"
echo " data and laptops in other buildings, so it needs an address that"
echo " resolves from anywhere. That is true of headscale too; it is a"
echo " property of being the thing everyone checks in with."
echo " resolves from anywhere."
echo ""
echo " This is not something offscale asks for and the others do not. It"
echo " is true of headscale, and it is true of Tailscale — their"
echo " coordination server is publicly reachable too, they simply run it"
echo " for you. That is the whole of the difference between choosing"
echo " option 3 and choosing to host it yourself."
echo ""
echo " What it does that plain headscale does not:"
echo " · installs in one command on that server, certificates included"