Initially, I wanted to lean into my masochistic nature and configure my own VPN protocols with pfsense, but I only have one router and I didn’t want to fuck it up.

So, I opted for the simpler, quicker VPN setup - Tailscale. It’s absurdly simple - all you have to do is make an account, add your machine (s), click a couple of buttons for magic DNS, and you’re golden.

19/10/2025

Why did I torture myself.

It was worth it, though, since my connection is much more secure now. It turns out I had been exposing my Navidrome, which I should have noticed much, much earlier.

Also, I was stuck wondering what I should do after generating the certification and key. The Tailscale documentation doesn’t really tell me anything other than the command to generate the TLS certification and key. 1

So, I wasted even more time, REFERRING TO ANOTHER SOURCE, 2 when I could have just referred to an old source.

Regardless, this deserves it’s own topic.

Footnotes

  1. https://tailscale.com/kb/1153/enabling-https ↩

  2. https://medium.com/@TomVance/local-domains-with-https-469036775818 ↩