GoKawiilIf you managed to put Tailscale on a jailbroken Kindle before it updated too far ahead, you got something pretty great, even if it wasn't the full Tailscale experience. But good things come to those who wait (or dig around on GitHub).
Open-source developers have improved the Tailscale experience on one of the weakest computers you own. If your Kindle is jailbroken, an updated version of Mitanshu Sukhwani's Tailscale implementation offers a few new things:
Tailscale SSH enabled by default, so you don't have to enable USBnetworking SSH and its very obvious default user/password
A proxy mode that lets apps like KOReader to reach other nodes on your tailnet, like a Calibre/OPDS or Wallabag server
A full TUN mode that, on some Kindles, can make Tailscale networking work at the device level
Let’s dig into each one and how to set them up. As before, this is community code working on a very unofficial device state; bring your patience along.
The last time we wrote about Tailscale on a Kindle, the client was basic, but it worked. The Kindle showed up on your tailnet, complete with a green dot in the web admin console. You could reach the Kindle by its Tailscale IP address. You could even SSH into the Kindle over Tailscale, which was handy for further tinkering.
But “reachable via Tailscale” is not the same as “routing all incoming and outgoing traffic across your tailnet,” it turns out. Tailscale on a jailbroken Kindle is typically forced to run in userspace mode, which means it cannot use the device's own network routing layer, known as TUN mode. You could start Tailscale, and then start an app like KOReader, but when you tried to connect to another Tailscale device, like your Calibre server at 100.x.y.z , it would go like this:
KOReader (or any app) asks the Kindle’s root OS how to reach 100.x.y.z
The Kindle, lacking Tailscale routing, cannot reach that Tailscale IP address
... continue reading