Installation: server

To run Lantern on a server (like EC2 or another server you have access to), you will want to run it without the user interface.

The way to do that right now is to build from source and run with --disable-ui.

Since there is no GUI you need some other way to tell the client who you are. You do this by copying the following files to your EC2 machine:

https://github.com/getlantern/lantern/blob/master/src/main/resources/client_secrets_installed.json

(Which, contrary to its name, is not really a secret file), and

https://github.com/getlantern/lantern_aws/blob/master/salt/fallback_proxy/user_credentials.json

You need to edit the latter to substitute your email address for the {{ pillar['user'] }} string (that is, keep the double quotes, but replace everything inside them with your email). You need to replace the entry that reads {{ pillar['refresh_token'] }} too. The easiest way to obtain the "refresh token" you need to substitute there is to run the attached script (it needs Python 2 in your system). You need to pass it the path to a local copy of the client_secrets_installed.json mentioned above, then follow instructions.

Once you have that, you run Lantern like this:

<path to lantern> --disable-ui --force-give --oauth2-client-secrets-file <path to your client secrets> --oauth2-user-credentials-file <path to your user credentials>

(--force-give is so it will run in give access mode. That's the default as of this writing, but it can't hurt to pass it.)

Then you can use something like screen to leave Lantern running in the background.

As an alternative, if your EC2 instance runs Linux and you want to leave Lantern running as a service, and to be automatically launched on system startup, you may find this useful:

https://github.com/getlantern/lantern_aws/blob/master/salt/fallback_proxy/lantern.init

To use it,

• edit line 21 to point to your Lantern executable.
• edit line 22 to use only the arguments you set above.
• copy the file to /etc/init.d/lantern
• give it the right owner and permissions: sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/lantern sudo chmod 700 /etc/init.d/lantern
• start Lantern as a service. In many Linux distributions you do this like so: sudo /etc/init.d/lantern start although in Ubuntu and some others you may also say sudo service lantern start

The headless interface doesn't currently provide a way to add friends, but you can do that through the graphical user interface in your home machine.