Using collie with 3 devs sharing the same VPS

[vitorbaptista]

I'm unsure if this is the best place to ask this. Let me know if not.

Hi,

I have a Linux VPS shared amongst 2 other devs (3 in total). Each has their own user to ssh in and each runs herdr. Is it possible to somehow set up collie for each of us individually? So there are different URLs each can access? Ideally we can't access each others' herdrs, but it's OK if that's not possible.

Thanks for the great project!

[AltanS]

This shipped in v0.34.0: COLLIE_SERVE_PORT lets each Collie on a shared machine publish its https front door on its own tailnet port, so your setup works out of the box now.

Recipe for your case (full walkthrough: DEPLOYMENT.md → Several Collies on one host):

Each dev installs Collie under their own Unix user (next to their own herdr), then puts this in their .env:

COLLIE_PORT=8801                        # loopback port — unique per user
COLLIE_SERVE_PORT=8443                  # tailnet https listener — unique per user
COLLIE_TRUSTED_USER=dev-a@example.com   # only this tailnet identity may reach this Collie

The next dev takes 8802/8444, and so on. Each gets their own URL: https://<host>.<tailnet>.ts.net:8443 etc.

Two things to know:

• COLLIE_TRUSTED_USER is what keeps you out of each other's herds. You're all on one tailnet, so without it any of you could open the others' Collies. tailscale serve injects the caller's tailnet login and Collie rejects every other identity. (The herdr sockets themselves are already isolated by Unix permissions.)
• tailscale serve needs root or the machine's single Tailscale operator user. So whoever admins the box runs the serve step once per dev (or grants sudo for that one command). It's a --bg mapping — published once, persists across reboots. Everything else (start, restart, update) each dev runs as themselves.

If you already have Collie installed, update with:

herdr plugin action invoke update --plugin herdr.collie

Thanks for the kind words — closing as shipped; reopen if the multi-user setup gives you any trouble.