DockTail for Unraid

Run DockTail on Unraid: expose Docker containers as native Tailscale Services from docktail.* container labels — HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, TLS-terminated TCP and Funnel — without giving each app its own Tailscale device.

DockTail runs as a service on the Unraid host, next to the official Tailscale plugin's tailscaled, and is managed from Settings → Network Services → DockTail.

Credits

DockTail itself is written by marvinvr — marvinvr/docktail. This repository is only the Unraid packaging around it: it pins that project as a submodule, builds its binary unmodified, and adds the webGUI pages and service script Unraid needs. All credit for DockTail's design and implementation belongs upstream.

Requirements

• Unraid 7.0 or newer.

• The official Tailscale plugin, running.

• A tagged Unraid node. tailscaled refuses to host a Tailscale Service from an untagged node, and the Tailscale plugin has no setting for advertised tags:

  tailscale up --advertise-tags=tag:server --reset
  

  --reset briefly drops the Tailscale connection. The DockTail tab checks this for you.

• A Tailscale OAuth client (scope all) or an API key, so DockTail can create and tag Service definitions in the Control Plane.

Install

Community Apps → Apps → search for DockTail, or Plugins → Install Plugin:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vcolombo/docktail-unraid/main/plugin/docktail.plg

Use

1. Settings — enter the OAuth credentials, set Enable DockTail to Yes, Apply.
2. DockTail — confirm every preflight check passes.
3. Labels — build the label string for a container, then paste it into Docker → container → Advanced View → Extra Parameters → Apply. Unraid's container editor has no label field, so Extra Parameters is the only route.

Example: expose a container listening on port 80 as svc:unraid-test:

--label docktail.service.enable=true --label docktail.service.name=unraid-test --label docktail.service.port=80

docktail.funnel.* labels additionally require Allow Funnel in the Tailscale plugin's own settings. While that is off, the Tailscale plugin strips Funnel entries out of the serve config it shares with DockTail, silently removing the Funnels DockTail created. The DockTail tab checks this, but only once a container asks for a Funnel.

Tabs

Layout on disk

Every key in docktail.cfg and credentials.cfg maps 1:1 onto the DockTail environment variable of the same name, except ENABLE_DOCKTAIL, which is plugin-local and only gates the service script. Empty values are not exported, so DockTail's own defaults apply. Both files survive plugin removal, following the Unraid convention that plugin settings persist.

The service is bound to the Docker lifecycle through the docker_started and stopping_docker events, so DockTail withdraws its Services before Docker stops and re-advertises them once Docker is back.

Development

./bump.sh 1.7.9   # repin the DockTail submodule and the version stamp
./build.sh        # stage src/ (binary + VERSION)
./build.sh --package   # additionally build a local .txz (GNU tar required)

.github/workflows/upstream.yml watches marvinvr/docktail daily and opens a PR when a newer stable tag appears (pre-release lines such as 2.0.0-cloud.16 are ignored). It repins the submodule and docktailVersion together and proves the new pin cross-compiles, but merging is deliberately manual: the plugin models DockTail's label keys, its serve status --json shape and its shutdown budget by hand, so one release should mean one tested pairing. Run it on demand from the Actions tab.

Releases are cut by creating a GitHub Release whose tag and name are both YYYY.MM.DD. For a second release the same day, append a zero-padded counter: .01, .02, … .10. Mark it as a pre-release to publish only the -preview channel.

The padding is load-bearing. Unraid compares third-party plugin versions with strcmp, not version_compare — see strcmp($latest,$version) > 0 in dynamix.plugin.manager/include/ShowPlugins.php and the same in scripts/plugincheck. So 2026.09.03.10 is string-older than 2026.09.03.9 and the update is never offered, even though it is numerically newer. Unpadded counters work only up to .9. Letters are also out, because they break Slackware package versioning.

Documentation

• DockTail documentation — labels, protocols, Tailscale admin setup
• DockTail upstream source (marvinvr/docktail)

Unraid-specific setup is documented here, in this README and in the plugin's own help text: every field on all three tabs is clickable and explains itself. docktail.org covers DockTail itself and says nothing about this plugin.

License

AGPL-3.0, matching the DockTail binary this plugin ships — upstream is AGPL-3.0, so anything conveying its compiled form must be too. DockTail is copyright its upstream author, marvinvr; the Unraid packaging in this repository is copyright vcolombo.

The package installs LICENSE and SOURCE alongside the binary in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/docktail. SOURCE records the upstream repository, tag and exact commit the shipped binary was built from, which is what AGPL-3.0 section 6 asks for: a user holding the binary can always find the source it came from.