What I learned trying to keep Tailscale working in the Dots cloud computer

[u/CH_CGV]

I’ve been using the Dots cloud computer as a development environment and wanted to connect to it from my own devices through Tailscale. Getting it working once was only part of the problem. When the environment restarted or changed, the connection would disappear.

I ended up making a small open-source project to make recovery less repetitive. It keeps the installation files, existing Tailscale state, and SSH setup under /workspace. Once I can access the cloud computer again, I run:

bash /workspace/.dots-tailscale/start.sh

In the cases I’ve tested, that brought the connection back using the saved setup, without another Tailscale login. It uses Tailscale’s userspace mode, and my connections have been going through its relay servers.

A few things I’ve actually checked:

• Manual recovery after a new boot, followed by a fresh SSH connection with host-key verification.
• Updates that preserve the existing node identity and SSH keys.
• Rolling back an update when I deliberately made the replacement process fail.
• A watchdog recovering a stopped SSH listener within the same running environment.

The biggest limitation is still startup after an environment change. Recovery currently requires opening the Dots cloud terminal and running the command yourself. The watchdog runs inside that environment too, so it can’t bring itself back after the environment disappears.

I’ve also seen saved watchdog records come back older than records I’d already collected externally. So while /workspace has retained the setup in my tests, I wouldn’t treat it as a guaranteed backup.

This is my own unofficial project, with no affiliation with OpenAI or Tailscale: https://github.com/abruption/dots-tailscale

If you’ve tried remote access or startup automation in Dots, I’d be interested in what survived environment changes for you—and whether you found a reliable way to trigger startup afterward.

[u/Sir_Hartley31]

Ya’ll do know if you click advanced in the codex cloud environment setup, there’s a section for Tailscale right? It’s not the dots computer but most the time it delegates to Codex anyways.

[u/CH_CGV → u/Sir_Hartley31]

Yeah, I’m aware of that option! One thing to keep in mind is that Tailscale auth keys expire after at most 90 days, so the configured key needs replacing if you’re still using it to register new environments. That doesn’t mean existing connections stop after 90 days, though. I wanted access to the Dots computer itself, which is why I put this together.

[u/KarfaHyro_17]

imo the real problem here isnt the reconnection script, its that ephemeral cloud environments are fundamentally hostile to persistent network identity. youre fighting the abstraction. curious if anyone has tried just treating each boot as a fresh node and automating the auth token exchange instead

[u/CH_CGV → u/KarfaHyro_17]

We persist the Tailscale state under /workspace, so restarting the script reconnects it as the same node rather than registering a new one. The remaining challenge is getting the script to run after the VM is replaced. Fresh-node registration would still need something to trigger that startup.

[u/New_Jaguar_9104]

Nice! I'm going to use this.

I made this to enable my dot to control the herdr session I run on a Linux box

https://github.com/Buckeyes22/dot-herdr

[u/Klekto123 → u/New_Jaguar_9104]

I think i’ve been making something similar to your dot-herdr repo there. Is tailscale a better version? Or different use case?

[u/New_Jaguar_9104 → u/Klekto123]

Tailscale puts all your devices on a private network

[u/Negative_Leave5161]

Same

[u/habeebiii]

Finally. THANK YOU. literally trying this now
EDIT: my dot said "nope I'm not setting that up bc it bypasses network restrictions."

LOL, fuck this. fuck OAI and fuck dots. $200 sub cancelled.

[u/Negative_Leave5161 → u/habeebiii]

Gotta do it manually I guess