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Official releases

Official releases for headscale are available as binaries for various platforms and DEB packages for Debian and Ubuntu. Both are available on the GitHub releases page.

It is recommended to use our DEB packages to install headscale on a Debian based system as those packages configure a user to run headscale, provide a default configuration and ship with a systemd service file. Supported distributions are Ubuntu 20.04 or newer, Debian 11 or newer.

  1. Download the latest headscale package for your platform (.deb for Ubuntu and Debian).

    HEADSCALE_VERSION="" # See above URL for latest version, e.g. "X.Y.Z" (NOTE: do not add the "v" prefix!)
HEADSCALE_ARCH="" # Your system architecture, e.g. "amd64"
wget --output-document=headscale.deb \
 "https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/releases/download/v${HEADSCALE_VERSION}/headscale_${HEADSCALE_VERSION}_linux_${HEADSCALE_ARCH}.deb"

  2. Install headscale:

    sudo apt install ./headscale.deb

  3. Configure headscale by editing the configuration file:

    sudo nano /etc/headscale/config.yaml

  4. Enable and start the headscale service:

    sudo systemctl enable --now headscale

  5. Verify that headscale is running as intended:

    sudo systemctl status headscale

Using standalone binaries (advanced)

Advanced

This installation method is considered advanced as one needs to take care of the headscale user and the systemd service themselves. If possible, use the DEB packages or a community package instead.

This section describes the installation of headscale according to the Requirements and assumptions. Headscale is run by a dedicated user and the service itself is managed by systemd.

  1. Download the latest headscale binary from GitHub's release page:

    sudo wget --output-document=/usr/local/bin/headscale \
https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/releases/download/v<HEADSCALE VERSION>/headscale_<HEADSCALE VERSION>_linux_<ARCH>

  2. Make headscale executable:

    sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/headscale

  3. Add a dedicated user to run headscale:

    sudo useradd \
 --create-home \
 --home-dir /var/lib/headscale/ \
 --system \
 --user-group \
 --shell /usr/sbin/nologin \
 headscale

  4. Download the example configuration for your chosen version and save it as: /etc/headscale/config.yaml. Adjust the configuration to suit your local environment. See Configuration for details.

    sudo mkdir -p /etc/headscale
sudo nano /etc/headscale/config.yaml

  5. Copy headscale's systemd service file to /etc/systemd/system/headscale.service and adjust it to suit your local setup. The following parameters likely need to be modified: ExecStart, WorkingDirectory, ReadWritePaths.

  6. In /etc/headscale/config.yaml, override the default headscale unix socket with a path that is writable by the headscale user or group:

    unix_socket: /var/run/headscale/headscale.sock

  7. Reload systemd to load the new configuration file:

    systemctl daemon-reload

  8. Enable and start the new headscale service:

    systemctl enable --now headscale

  9. Verify that headscale is running as intended:

    systemctl status headscale