We aim to keep this documentation up to date, but the Confconsole documentation source (on GitHub) should always be up to date.

TurnKey GNU/Linux Configuration Console

Overview

The objective of the Configuration Console (AKA confconsole) is to provide the user with basic network configuration information and the ability to perform basic tasks, so as not to force the user to the command line.

It is licensed under GPLv3. We aim to keep this documentation up to date, but the Confconsole documentation source should always be up to date.

Main screen and basic functionality

The main screen of Confconsole provides the following information:

• The currently bound IP address
• The listening services the user may connect to over the network

The Configuration Console will be invoked automatically on a new vt (by its init script) unless the boot paramater 'noconfconsole' is present on /proc/cmdline.

The Configuration Console (confconsole) may be executed manually as well:

confconsole

Advanced

For version v1.0.0 (default in TurnKey v14.2+), Confconsole has been significantly refactored and includes some long overdue additional functionality. The additional functionality is provided by way of a "Plugin system. To navigate to the new plugins, please enter the "advanced" menu.

The advanced menu:

As of v1.0.0 the Advanced menu provides the following functionality (some items have additional docs avaialble via clickable headings):

• Networking:
  • Setting a static IP address (don't do this on cloud servers!!)
  • Requesting DHCP
• Let's Encrypt:
  • Enable/disable auto SSL cert update
  • Get SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt
• Mail relaying:
  • configure and enable remote SMTP email relay
• Proxy settings:
  • configure apt proxy
• Region config:
  • Keyboard layout
  • Locales and language
  • Tzdata (timezone)
• System settings:
  • install security updates
  • update hostname
• Install the system to the hard disk (only when running live)
• Reboot the appliance
• Shut down the appliance
• Quit (return to commandline)

Installation

Confconsole is installed by default in all TurnKey Linux Appliances so no installation should be required for TurnKey users.

For users of TurnKey Linux v14.0 & v14.1, please see below for how to upgrade to the latest version.

In theory it should be compatible with vanilla Debian Jessie (and possibly vanilla Ubuntu of a similar age version too). However, currently it depends on a legacy version of python-dialog (which is packaged in the TurnKey apt repo).

At some point we hope to rewrite it to rely on the default python-dialog.

Upgrade to v1.0.0+

Confconsole v1.0.0 is installed by default in TurnKey Linux v14.2+. However it is also possible to upgrade to the current version on other v14.x releases.

To upgrade your instance of Confsole on v14.0 & v14.1, including support for Let's Encrypt, please do the following:

cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list <<EOF
# Jessie Backports
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main
EOF

service confconsole stop

apt-get update
apt-get install confconsole python-bottle authbind
apt-get install -t jessie-backports dehydrated

confconsole

Plugins

The plugins system allows support for additional functionality via simply dropping a(n appropriately coded) python plugin file within the Confconsole file hierarchy. We aim to include more new functionality via this in coming releases.

Developers may be interested in reading further about the Plugin system.