TurnKey 13 out, TKLBAM 1.4 now backup/restores any Linux system

This is really two separate announcements rolled into one:

  1. TurnKey 13 - codenamed "satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!"

    The new release celebrates 5 years since TurnKey's launch. It's based on the latest version of Debian (7.2) and includes 1400 ready-to-use images: 330GB worth of 100% open source, guru integrated, Linux system goodness in 7 build types that are optimized and pre-tested for nearly any deployment scenario: bare metal, virtual machines and hypervisors of all kinds, "headless" private and public cloud deployments, etc.

    New apps in this release include OpenVPN, Observium and Tendenci.

    We hope this new release reinforces the explosion in active 24x7 production deployments (37,521 servers worldwide) we've seen since the previous 12.1 release, which added 64-bit support and the ability to rebuild any system from scratch using TKLDev, our new self-contained build appliance (AKA "the mothership").

    To visualize active deployments world wide, I ran the archive.turnkeylinux.org access logs through GeoIPCity and overlaid the GPS coordinates on this Google map (view full screen):

     

  2. TKLBAM 1.4 - codenamed "give me liberty or give me death!"

    Frees TKLBAM from its shackles so it can now backup files, databases and package management state without requiring TurnKey Linux, a TurnKey Hub account or even a network connection. Having those will improve the usage experience, but the new release does its best with what you give it.

    I've created a convenience script to help you install it in a few seconds on any Debian or Ubuntu derived system:

    URL=https://raw.github.com/turnkeylinux/tklbam/master/contrib/ez-apt-install.sh
    wget -O - -q $URL | PACKAGE=tklbam /bin/bash
    

    There's nothing preventing TKLBAM from working on non Debian/Ubuntu Linux systems as well, you just need to to install from source and disable APT integration with the --skip-packages option.

    Other highlights: support for PostgreSQL, MySQL views & triggers, and a major usability rehaul designed to make it easier to understand and control how everything works. Magic can be scary in a backup tool.

    Here's a TurnKey Hub screenshot I took testing TKLBAM on various versions of Ubuntu:

    Screenshot of TurnKey Hub backups

Announcing TurnKey Linux 12.0: 100+ ready-to-use solutions

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the 12.0 release is finally out after nearly 6 months of development and just in time to celebrate TurnKey's 4th anniversary. I'm proud to announce we've more than doubled the size of the TurnKey Linux library, from 45 appliances to over 100!

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How TKLBAM hooks work

Most TKLBAM users probably don't realize this, but TKLBAM has a nifty, general purpose hooks mechanism you can use to trigger useful actions on backup and restore.

Examples of hooks:

  • Cleaning up temporary files
  • Stopping/starting services to increase data consistency
  • Encoding/decoding data from non-supported databases
  • Using LVM to create/restore a snapshot of a fast changing volume

New Hub feature: Auto-Restore TKLBAM backup to a new cloud server

Since we announced the release of TurnKey Hub v1.0 two weeks ago, we followed up with the two top issues users reported, and continued to receive awesome feedback - you guys rock, keep it coming!

Announcing TurnKey Hub v1.0 - now officially out of private beta

Hub Front

When we first announced the TurnKey Hub private beta about 9 months ago, we had limited capacity (invitation only) and a modest feature set. Since then we tested, bugfixed, removed bottlenecks and added features, constantly improving the Hub with the help and feedback from our excellent beta users. Thank you so much!

A lazy yet surprisingly effective approach to regression testing

To regression test, or not to regression test

Building up a proper testing suite can involve a good amount of work, which I'd prefer to avoid because it's boring and I'm lazy.

On the other hand, if I'm not careful, taking shortcuts that save effort in the short run could lead to a massive productivity hit further down the road.

For example, let's say instead of building up a rigorous test suite I test my code manually, and give a lot of careful thought to its correctness.

Right now I think I'm OK. But how long will it stay that way?

New release candidates for TurnKey Linux 11.0 (part 1)

We've pushed out new RC (Release Candidates) builds for part 1 of the upcoming TurnKey Linux 11.0 release and we need your help testing them! See the appliance pages for download links.

The current crop of release candidates only include Ubuntu Lucid based ISO images for now. Debian Lenny based images will follow, as will builds specially optimized for the the full range of supported virtualization and hosting platforms (e.g., VM build, EC2 AMIs, ESX4, Xen, Eucalyptus, etc.).

Passphrase dictionary attack countermeasures in tklbam's keying mechanism

Background: how a backup key works

In TKLBAM the backup key is a secret encrypted with a passphrase which is uploaded to the Hub.  Decrypting the backup key yields the secret which is passed on to duplicity (and eventually to GnuPG) to be used as the symmetric key with which backup volumes are encrypted on backup and decrypted on restore.

TKLBAM: a new kind of smart backup/restore system that just works

Drum roll please...

Today, I'm proud to officially unveil TKLBAM (AKA TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration): the easiest, most powerful system-level backup anyone has ever seen. Skeptical? I would be too. But if you read all the way through you'll see I'm not exaggerating and I have the screencast to prove it. Aha!

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