A Tailscale Client Updater for Windows - ARCHIVED

Important

This project is archived - Tailscale now has a built-in automatic updater so is no longer required

This is a little project to develop an updater & release collector for Tailscale on Windows. Tailscale is a multi-platform peer-to-peer mesh vpn using the Wireguard protocol. See https://tailscale.com

Unfortunately something the Tailscale client doesn't do is provide the ability to update your clients automatically, and they could be quite numerous! That is what this little project is attempting to tackle, on Windows at least. Once installed as a scheduled task this script will download and install the latest version of the Windows Tailscale client each day.

The script requires PowerShell 5 or 7 and has been tested in both. To use as an updater the script should be launched as an administrator from a scheduled task.

If you use the installer script to setup the updater the default is to run once per day and at machine startup. The updater will also attempt to update itself too.

The script can be provided a number of switches which slightly alter its behaviour.

Available switches

-Track [string, optional] <stable (default)>\<unstable> - choose release to get (stable/unstable)

-DownloadOnly [switch, optional] <true>\<false (default)> - if specified just download then exit

-SiloPath [string, optional] <local or full path to release storage folder> - where to store release files

-Verbose [switch, optional] <true>\<false> (default)>

-TaskMode [switch, optional] <true>\<false> (default)> - reserved

Installation

You can download and install the job using the following PowerShell one-liner (as admin preferably) to do the whole thing:

try{Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope:LocalMachine -Confirm:0}catch{}; [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12; $f=(irm 'https://api.github.com/repos/needscoffee/tailscale-updater-windows/releases/latest').assets; $f|%{irm $_.url -Headers:@{Accept="application/octet-stream"} -o:$_.name}; $f.name|%{Unblock-File $_}; saps 'powershell.exe' -ArgumentList:"-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command `"& {cd $((pwd).Path);.\Install-Updater.ps1}`"" -Wait -Verb:RunAs; $f.name|ri;

Manually this would be:

• Download the .ps1 files from the latest release
• Run powershell as admin
• Change to folder where you downloaded the files
• Run .\Install-Updater.ps1
• Tailscale-Updater-Windows.ps1 will be copied to C:\ProgramData\Tailscale-updater\
• Then a scheduled task will be created to run the script on a daily basis at midday, storing files in a silo sub-folder.

Usage

Search for current stable release. Install if newer than an installed version

.\Tailscale-Updater-Windows.ps1

Search for current unstable release. Install if newer

.\Tailscale-Updater-Windows.ps1 -Track unstable

Search for current unstable release. Download, then exit without installing

.\Tailscale-Updater-Windows.ps1 -Track unstable -DownloadOnly

Search for current unstable release. Download to .\releases then exit without installing

.\Tailscale-Updater-Windows.ps1 -SiloPath .\releases -Track unstable -DownloadOnly

When run from PowerShell manually you can use -Verbose to monitor the progress

.\Tailscale-Updater-Windows.ps1 -Track stable -DownloadOnly -Verbose

To-Do

• Automatic release pruning - 3 previous versions perhaps done
• Auto-elevate and install as a scheduled task when run interactively done with installer script
• Logging to a file or windows application log
• Self-auto-update
• Auto-repair if node falls out of tailnet (store tskey in a secure keystore)
• Take a tskey as an interactive run switch to setup the node if needed
• Determine alternative means of detecting new releases
• Notification service support