TurnKey Core 12.0 RC based on Debian Squeeze

Squeeze is very similar to Lucid. I routinely use packages from one in the other usually without any problems. If I'm not mistaken I think this is because Lucid was branched from a version of Debian testing that eventually became Squeeze.

Regarding the choice between Ubuntu and Debian I agree that this could be an issue. We need to think some more about it.

In my experience, Debian generally contains less bloat (138MB Debian-TKL-Core vs 180MB Ubuntu-TKL-Core) and seems to use less resources and thus run a little quicker/smoother. Many long term Debian users claim that it is more stable than Ubuntu. I have little experience with Debian servers, but a Debian desktop feels much more responsive that Ubuntu with similar packages (i compared Debian Squeeze to Ubuntu Lucid which contains many of the same packages due to Lucid being taken from Debian testing while it was frozen - just prior to Squeeze release).

As Debian and Ubuntu are so close (most Ubuntu packages originate from Debian with little or no modification) I don't think development/maintenance will be an issue. Also this has been on the cards for a long time so I think that if the devs release a stable/final release then they will maintain it regardless.

Here are the fundamentla differences as I see them (my opinion only):

As for TKLBAM, generally this shouldn't be an issue between official appliances that include minimal custom tweaks. As Ubuntu is more-or-less a fork of Debian they are very similar. However once customised and additional packages are included it could become problematic (often package names differ between Ubuntu and Debian). This will be a case of trial and error I imagine.

Installing to a .raw vHDD (which is static size of 32GB). I haven't played at all, just installed with defaults (yes, yes ,ok, etc) and got very similar result to Shantanu:

Unable to install GRUB in /dev/disk/by-id/ata/QEMU_HARDDISK_QM0001
Executing 'grub-install /dev/disk/by-id/ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_QM0001'

This is a fatal error.

I persevered and tried to make it finalise anyway but it hangs after reboot on "Booting from harddrive..." using 100% CPU (like it's still in virtual BIOS).

I haven't had a chance to look any deeper but I assume I'll need to mount the .raw image to check the logs? I'm not sure how to launch di-live in debug mode as I can't exit it (anyway that I can see)...

However I just tried again, but this time I said no to installing grub to the first harddrive, then manually told it to install grub to /dev/sda1 (in the di-live dialog) and it worked fine.

BTW it doesn't shutdown cleanly when the 'Shutdown' button is clicked in the PVE WebUI (like the Ubuntu based appliances do IIRC). I had to click 'Stop'.

It leaves much to be desired in my opinion as well. The whole "it ships when the date hits" idea sounded great when Debian was stuck in a glacial release cycle, but these days I'm thinking it was an overreaction. There's much to be said for releasing a product when it's actually done as opposed to an arbitrary schedule.

I've come across mind-boggingly stupid bugs in LTS versions of Ubuntu that would never have made it into a Debian release.

I posted briefly about this not that long ago...

Xen is open source hypervisor tech as opposed to XenServer which is a proprietry hypervisor OS (built on top of Xen technology). These are Xen images - not XenServer ones...

According to this post the Xen images are not directly compatible with XenServer (although there is mention of how they can be converted).

Me too. Working on it.

I came across something similar on one of my home servers. USB device that was detected too late in the boot process or something. Workaround: edit /etc/rc.local and put that manual mount command in there. Not pretty but it might work.

I'm pretty sure that Debian has less 'required' packages in base install.

TKL appliances have security updates automatically applied so there is no need to 'apt-get upgrade' (unless you want to).

As for TKLPatch, perhaps that is an oversight of the devs. If you add the Lucid repo to your sources.list (as detailed in the wiki) that may work. Although it may not as the Debian packages TKLPatch relies on, may have different names in Debian. After adding the repo rerun your commands above and see what happens.

Regardless it should hopefully install from source though I would think (but not sure).

The issues between ESXi and Ubuntu aren't all Ubuntu's fault IMO. The kernel panic issues (which I'm guessing may have been an issue for you) only occurred from ESXi v4.0.1 IIRC. IMO the problems with using a proprietry product...

Having said that I don't think Debian can be beaten for rock solid stability and extensive testing.

So none of us will know when it is ready until they release it. Having said that, I know that the guys have been chipping away at the new release and I imagine that it can't be too far away.

As for migration, v12.x will assumedly support TKLBAM (something wrong if it doesn't) and that will provide a migration path, although it may require some additional tweaking by end users. TKLBAM will migrate the data, but some updating/upgrading of database scemes and other data may be required. This will be dependant on specific software and changes between the relevant versions. Many software devs/communities have documented upgrade proceedures for their software, some even provide upgrade scripts.

Hopefully TKL community members will be able to help each other out in this regard. But we'll have to just wait and see...

Here are some handy documents

You don't really install the turnkey core from the command line. Turnkey produces a number of products that are really meant to be used as 'appliances'. That is, the Turnkey images contain the oeprating system (based upon Debian) as well as the applications that you're looking for... all packaged up in a easy to consume way.

Taking the core appliance as an example, there are a few ways you can deploy it:

- Install it onto your bare metal system. This will replace any operating system on your computer so only do this if you are really sure you know what you are doing/want.

- Get some kind of virtualization engine (like VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation, Virtualbox, Microsoft Hyper-V, LXC, Docker, etc). You can then create a Virtual Machine (VM) or Container that allows you to install TKL without replacing your physical systems). This is what I do, primarily with VMware Workstation and VMware ESXi.

- Utilize the Turnkey Hub and deploy an instance onto Amazon Web Services. I have chosen to not do this but many people do and can help if you need it.

Now, github.com hosts the sources for the appliances but if you're looking for prebuilt images (iso, vmdk, ovf, whatever your need is), they can be found on the page for the individual applaince. As an example, the core appliance information/downloads can be found here.

If I didn't answer your question, let me know. It may be good to start a new thread here on the forums if there are specifics you need assistance with.

As far as I know, there's no way to turn a generic debian installation into a tunkey image. Maybe someone else knows some tricks.

You might be able to take a look at the manifest file for the appliance you want (for example, the 13.0 core manifest is at http://releases.turnkeylinux.org/turnkey-core/13.0-wheezy-amd64/turnkey-...) and install the missing packages if you can determine the right repos to install from... but I'm not sure what success you will have.

You could also look for a different provider that alowed you to provide your own image to install from. We all know that amazon offers the TKL images but I believe you can install from your own with linode. I'm sure others exist as well, if that's an option.

Sorry I'm a bit late here but hopefully better late than never...

Firstly, there was a guy a few years ago who successfully got TKL running on RackSpace (which doesn't offer TKL) by installing a standard barebones base OS (for TKL v13 that'd be Debian Wheezy) and rsyncing the TKL appliance over the top. I would assume that there'd be directories that you won't want to sync (like /dev and /proc for starters) but he seemed pretty happy with the result...

Secondly out of interest, which was the host you were hoping for? Maybe TKL can reach out to them and ask if they would be willing to host TKL images for their VPS customers (such as yourself)...?!