Disabling Tailscale Logs on Linux
I really like Tailscale for easily connecting disparate systems together via encrypted Wireguard tunnels, but one of the few complaints I have is that it logs a lot of information by default. I would classify the logs as debug-level info. It's not something I really feel I need to share with Tailscale Inc or its employees. Furthermore they appear to be shipped off to AWS. I have no idea if they're encrypted at rest.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to disable the logs on Debian/Ubuntu style Linux. This probably works on any system that uses systemd.
The solution is to edit the tailscaled systemd unit, adding an override of StandardOutput=null.
Try:
sudo systemctl edit tailscaled.service
The file should look like this; I've added the two lines in the middle:
## Editing /etc/systemd/system/tailscaled.service.d/override.conf
## Anything between here and the comment below will become the new contents of the file
[Service]
StandardOutput=null
## Lines below this comment will be discarded
Now reload the config and restart tailscaled:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart tailscaled.service
That's it. Now if you examine your logs, you'll see there's very little information there -- only service starts and stops.