Ready-to-use server

Canvas

Learning Management System

Canvas screenshots

Canvas is a learning management system that helps busy teachers and administrators save hours in their classes and institutions. It helps create amazing course content with a rich content editor, speed up grading, track learning outcomes, and can send notifications via email, facebook and text notifications.

This appliance includes all the standard features in TurnKey Core, and on top of that:

  • Canvas configurations:

    • Installed from the official Canvas prod channel in /var/www/canvas at a verified source commit, with a pinned and hashed official upstream fix for that release's asset-build dependency error.

      Security note: Updates to Canvas may require supervision so they ARE NOT configured to install automatically. See Canvas documentation for upgrade instructions.

      turnkey-canvas-update --check reports the installed and eligible production commits. --apply --dry-run shows the supervised update target without changing the appliance.

    • Includes Redis Server from Debian Trixie.

    • Pre-configured to use PostgreSQL (recommended for production).

    • Includes Canvas automated jobs daemon initscript.

    • Includes Apache pre-configured with Passenger support, with SSL support out of the box (performance, security).

    • Includes Debian Node.js 20 and NPM, plus Yarn Classic from the signed official Yarn package channel, as required for compiling assets.

    • Includes the official Canvas Rich Content Editor API at a verified source commit.

  • SSL support out of the box.

  • Postfix MTA (bound to localhost) to allow sending of email (e.g., password recovery).

  • Webmin modules for configuring Apache2, PostgreSQL and Postfix.

Credentials (passwords set at first boot)

  • Webmin, SSH: username root

  • Canvas: default username is email set at first boot

Usage details & Logging in for Administration

  • Canvas: default username is email set at first boot

No default passwords: For security reasons there are no default passwords. All passwords are set at system initialization time.

Ignore SSL browser warning: browsers don't like self-signed SSL certificates, but this is the only kind that can be generated automatically. If you have a domain configured, then via Confconsole Advanced menu, you can generate free Let's Encypt SSL/TLS certificates.

Web - point your browser at either:

  1. http://12.34.56.789/ - not encrypted so no browser warning
  2. https://12.34.56.789/ - encrypted with self-signed SSL certificate

Note: some appliances auto direct http to https.

Username for OS system administration:

Login as root except on AWS marketplace which uses username admin.

  1. Point your browser to:
  2. Login with SSH client:
    ssh root@12.34.56.789
    

    Special case for AWS marketplace:

    ssh admin@12.34.56.789
    

* Replace 12.34.56.789 with a valid IP or hostname.