How to get Tails Linux on GCP(Google Cloud Platform)

This section describes how to launch and connect to Tails Linux in a Google Compute environment using the available Cloud Launcher offering.

1. Open Tails Linux listing on GCP Marketplace
2. Click Launch.

• It will take you to the agreement page. On this page, you can change the project from the project selector on top navigator bar as shown in the below screenshot.

• Accept the Terms and agreements by ticking the checkbox and clicking on the AGREE button.

• It will show you the successfully agreed popup page. Click on Deploy.

• On deployment page, give a name to your deployment.

• In Deployment Service Account section, click on Existing radio button and Choose a service account from the Select a Service Account dropdown.

• If you don't see any service account in dropdown, then change the radio button to New Account and create the new service account here.
• If after selecting New Account option, you get below permission error message then please reach out to your GCP admin to create service account by following Step by step guide to create GCP Service Account and then refresh this deployment page once the service account is created, it should be available in the dropdown.

You are missing resourcemanager.projects.setIamPolicy permission, which is needed to set the required roles on the created Service Account

• Select a zone where you want to launch the VM(such as us-east1-)
• Optionally change the number of cores and amount of memory. ( This defaults to 2 vCPUs and 7.5 GB ram. Please select machine from N1 series only as highlighted below)
• Optionally change the boot disk type and size. (This defaults to ‘Standard Persistent Disk’ and 30 GB respectively)
• Optionally change the network name and subnetwork names. Be sure that whichever network you specify has ports 22 (for ssh) and 3389 (for RDP) exposed.
• Click Deploy when you are done.
• Tails Linux will begin deploying.

3. A summary page displays when the compute engine is successfully deployed. Click on the Instance link to go to the instance page .

4. On the instance page, click on the “SSH” button, select “Open in browser window”.

5. This will open SSH window in a browser.
6. Run below command to set the password for “ubuntu” user

sudo passwd ubuntu

7. Now the password for ubuntu user is set, you can connect to the VM’s desktop environment from any local windows machine using RDP or linux machine using Remmina.

8. To connect using RDP via Windows machine, first note the external IP of the VM from VM details page as highlighted below

9. Then From your local windows machine, goto “start” menu, in the search box type and select “Remote desktop connection”

10. In the “Remote Desktop connection” wizard, paste the external ip and click connect

11. This will connect you to the VM’s desktop environment. Provide “ubuntu” as the userid and the password set in step 6 to authenticate. Click OK

12. Now you are connected to out of box Tails Linux environment via Windows machines.

13. To connect using RDP via Linux machine, first note the external IP of the VM from VM details page,then from your local Linux machine, goto menu, in the search box type and select “Remmina”.

Note: If you don’t have Remmina installed on your Linux machine, firstInstall Remmina as per your linux distribution.

14. In the “Remmina Remote Desktop Client” wizard, select the RDP option from dropdown and paste the external ip and click enter.

15. This will connect you to the VM’s desktop environment. Provide “ubuntu” as the userid and the password set in step 6 to authenticate. Click OK

16. Now you are connected to out of box Tails Linux environment via Linux machine.

17. Once you are connected to GUI, click on the tails-linux VM icon on the desktop, this will start the tails vm inside ubuntu vm. Wait for 4-5 minutes for tails startup. In case you encountered a blank screen on clicking the VM, please check the Troubleshooting Guide to fix the issue and the continue with below steps:

18. Setting up root password :
    After 4-5 minutes, below welcome screen will come, click on the "+" sign in the bottom which will open additional settings menu. Select Administration Password and enter the password for admin user and click on Add button on top right.

19. Now the password for Admin user is set, click on Start Tails on top right.

20. Setting screen resouliton:
    Once tails vm start, reset the screen resolution . For that, click on the arrow on the top right, click the setting icon, the setting page will come, search for “display” in the top right search box . Select display setting and change the resolution to “1280x768 (16:10)” option, click on Apply. It will ask you to keep the changes or revert it. Click keep the new settings. This will expand the window to fit the screen . You can change resolution to other settings as per your preference.

21. Connecting to tor:
    The tor connection wizard will be displayed by default. select Connect to Tor automatically option and press Connect to Tor button.

Now you are connected to Tor Browser. Explore the internet freely and securely.

22. Tails Application:
    You can use different applications from the application menu of Tails.Tails comes with lots of open-source tools and software to operate and communicate securely. You can use The Tor Browser with uBlock ad blocker built in, Thunderbird which is an email client that encrypts emails, KeePassXC which is a password manager and OnionShare to share files over Tor among others.

23. The default tails vm will come with 4GB RAM. If you are experiencing latency or performance issue with VM, please follow How to increase VM performance guide.