# Requirements and Assumptions - Headscale
An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server.
Author: Headscale authors

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# Requirements

Headscale should just work as long as the following requirements are met:

- A server with a public IP address for headscale. A dual-stack setup with a public IPv4 and a public IPv6 address is recommended.
- Headscale is served via HTTPS on port 4431.
- A reasonably modern Linux or BSD based operating system.
- A dedicated user account to run headscale.
- A little bit of command line knowledge to configure and operate headscale.

## Assumptions

The headscale documentation and the provided examples are written with a few assumptions in mind:

- Headscale is running as system service via a dedicated user `headscale`.
- The configuration is loaded from `/etc/headscale/config.yaml`.
- SQLite is used as database.
- The data directory for headscale (used for private keys, ACLs, SQLite database, …) is located in `/var/lib/headscale`.
- URLs and values that need to be replaced by the user are either denoted as `<VALUE_TO_CHANGE>` or use placeholder values such as `headscale.example.com`.

Please adjust to your local environment accordingly.

1. The Tailscale client assumes HTTPS on port 443 in certain situations. Serving headscale either via HTTP or via HTTPS on a port other than 443 is possible but sticking with HTTPS on port 443 is strongly recommended for production setups. See issue 2164 for more information. ↩