Tailscale won't install - keeps restarting

Posted by gudlad

Trying to install tailscale. Gone through the how to doc but can't get past the install. Any ideas? Tried to install several times over the last few day and ended up removing it. Install process completes with the done button when finished. See extract from the logs below with what seems to be the only things the install is complaining about.. Setup is pretty bog standard. Qbittorrent still has default creds (mentioned in the log) - only thing to note is the media is on volume 2 but the rest of the apps have access and all works. [qbit-seed-limits] couldn't sign in to qBittorrent — skipping for now (retries on the next 'sparkbox up'; 'sudo sparkbox reset-password qbit' if it persists). [qbit-seed-limits] couldn't sign in to qBittorrent — skipping for now (retries on the next 'sparkbox up'; 'sudo sparkbox reset-password qbit' if it persists). [1;33m[WARN][0m Media check skipped: MEDIAROOT '/volume2/sparkbox-data/media' doesn't exist right now (unmounted share, or MEDIAROOT points somewhere wrong). [1;33m[WARN][0m Media check skipped: MEDIAROOT '/volume2/sparkbox-data/media' doesn't exist right now (unmounted share, or MEDIAROOT points somewhere wrong).

3 replies

Chris wrote:

Hey! Those qBittorrent and media-root warnings are unrelated — different module (media, not tailscale), so they're not the cause of the restart loop. To see what's actually failing, run sudo sparkbox logs tailscale (or sudo docker logs sb-tailscale --tail 100) right after an install attempt — it'll show the real error. The most common cause is an expired or invalid Tailscale auth key: generate a fresh one and paste it in Settings → Server Config → Advanced → Tailscale Auth Key. Also worth running sudo sparkbox update first, since a couple of restart-loop bugs were fixed in past releases. If the logs point to something else, paste that output here and we'll dig in!

gudlad wrote:

Thanks for the reply Chris. Feel like a bit of a prat now - I’d assumed (wrongly) to exclude tskey-auth- from what I was pasting in as I assumed that was just the name of the key. 🤦‍♂️ Looked at the logs and it suggested Auth key issue. Out of interest whist I’m on, are the errors above anything to worry about?

Chris wrote:

No worries at all, that trips a lot of people up! Both warnings are benign in your case. The qbit-seed-limits one just means that one-time script couldn't log in yet (because qBittorrent still had its default password when it ran) — it's harmless and will quietly succeed on your next sudo sparkbox up, or you can force it now with sudo sparkbox reset-password qbit. The MEDIAROOT one just means /volume2 wasn't mounted yet at that exact moment during install — it's a timing check, never fails the install, and since your apps can all see the media now, there's nothing to fix there. Glad the auth key sorted the restart loop!