v14.2 Release Update #1 - 27 more appliances

Wow, has it really been almost a month since I announced v14.2 Core?! Looks like it has! Time flies when you're having fun I guess... :)

I'm pleased to announce 27 new updated appliances that have are now on the mirror. As per usual, these appliances are all available for download in a range of builds. Get them now via the appropriate links on the relevant appliance pages (specific appliance page links provided below). All the new appliances will launch by default from the Hub.

Also there are some other news to share; including a newer version of Adminer, as well as a (somewhat minor) confconsole bug fix. Unfortunately, OpenStack builds are still a work in progress and the Marketplace images are still coming, but hopefully we'll get there soon.

Without further ado, let's round up the first batch of new v14.2 appliances.

27 Updated Appliances

All new v14.2 appliances have version 1.0.0 of Confconsole (which has a somewhat minor bug), as mentioned in the Core announcement. As well as the usual Debian package updates. All appliances also include the other v14.2 components, such as updated Webmin and TKLBAM. All appliances that include Adminer, now have a newer version included. Hopefully the newer version has better support for PostgreSQL users (a number of you have noted that the previous version was a little limited). Read more about that below.

All appliances that install components from upstream source code (i.e. code direct from the original developers) have also been updated. Where ever possible we give LTS versions precedence over "the latest", but generally they should all now include a very recent, up to date stable release.

Newer Version of Adminer

Ninja Debian Developer, TurnKey friend and all round nice guy; Chris Lamb has kindly updated the version of Adminer in the Debian repositories. And TurnKey Community Legend; Ken Robinson (aka DocCyblade) stepped in and tweaked the code to add it to all the v14.2 LAMP/LAPP based appliances as well as for Lighty and Nginx (and a few others).

As many of you may know, the specific version of any software in Debian stable is usually locked for the duration of the release. They do get security patches and bug fixes. But those are backported to the version of the software already included in stable.

However, Debian also has what is called a "backports" repository. The Debian backports repository provides a pathway to have newer software included in a stable release. It isn't perfect, as backported packages don't have the same level of testing, support and attention as packages in the "main" repo. But we've been keeping our eye on Adminer for a while. It seems pretty well constructed and Chris has done a stellar job backporting it. So we think that any potential risks are outweighed by the gains.

Adminer Background Story

For those of you that are interested, I'd like to share a little of the background of this update.

Late last year, it looked like Adminer was close to dropping out of the Debian repositories altogether. The previous maintainer was MIA and the package was already really old (v3.3.3). In a passing conversation, I mentioned my concerns to Chris (whom I'd only just met - via email). I didn't really think much more about it, but next thing I know, Chris had stepped in and taken over the maintenance of the Debian Adminer package. He'd packaged and uploaded the latest version (v4.2.5 at the time) to 'unstable' (where all Debian packages start out). After the obligatory wait, it migrated to testing and Chris developed a Jessie backport.

Soon after the newer Adminer hit backports, TurnKey Community Power Dev; Ken Robinson jumped into gear and tweaked the TurnKey buildcode to include the newer Adminer version. Thanks tons to both of you guys! You rock!

Congrats to Chris (a complete aside)

As a complete aside, we'd also love to congratulate Chris on his recent success in being elected as the new Debian Project Leader. I must say that I found his platform appealing and if I were a Debian Developer, I wouldn't have hesitated to vote for him too! Nice work Chris!

The Fresh Appliances

To get back on track, the freshly updated appliances (in alphabetical order) are:

Please spin one (or 2 or 3 or more) up and let us know what you think. We always love feedback, but particularly constructive criticism.

Confconsole Bug Fix

Soon after release, a bug in the new Confconsole Hostname plugin came to light. As noted on GitHub, this issue relates to the Postfix config not being updated with the new hostname. As such it will only effect users who have Confconsole version 1.0.0+4+g18aa7e6, use it to update their hostname and wish to send email. The fixed version of Confconsole is v1.0.1. Unfortunately, it only became apparent after we had already built this latest round of updated appliances.

For a moment, we contemplated rebuilding them all. But seeing as we have a ton more appliances to get through, not to mention starting work on v15.0 (rebase on Debian Stretch), we thought better of it. So instead of spending precious time rebuilding affected appliances, we decided to just push on.

It's far from ideal, but it seems to us to be the best bad option. Hopefully you'll agree. As hinted above, we have released a fixed package and users can update to it via apt.

To check your version of Confconsole:

apt-get update && apt-cache policy confconsole

Users potentially affected by this bug will see:

confconsole:
  Installed: 1.0.0+4+g18aa7e6
  Candidate: 1.0.1
  Version table:
    1.0.1 0
       999 http://archive.turnkeylinux.org/debian/ jessie/main amd64 Packages apt-cache
*** 1.0.0+4+g18aa7e6 0
       100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

From this, we can see that the installed version is '1.0.0+4+g18aa7e6' but the "candidate" (version that will be installed with 'apt-get install') is v1.0.1. v14.0/14.1 users would expect to see '0.9.4+153+g10511f8' installed. If you see 0.9.4..., then this bug does not affect you (but perhaps you'll want to update).

For users affected by this (i.e. anyone who has manually updated confconsole or anyone using Core v14.2 or any of these 27 new appliances), the fix is as simple as updating. Do that like this:

apt-get update && apt-get install confconsole

If you are using v14.0 or v14.1 and wish to update, please see the docs.

More to Come

With a library of around 100 appliances, that means we're close to a third of the way through. I'm hoping to have another batch of 10-20 ready by next week and get them all updated (bar perhaps a couple of the extra tricky ones) by the end of the month. We'll see how that goes... Regardless, I will keep plugging away until they're all up to date!

So please try them out and let us know what you think. We're especially interested in bug reports, suggested improvements (big and small) and any other constructive criticism you have for us. Please post in the comments below, or start a new thread in the forums