v16.0 Stable Release #2 - 10 more ISOs, Hub & Proxmox/LXC builds

Update 2020-05-20: Please see the third instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-05-25: Please see the forth instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-06-09: Please see the fifth instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-06-29: Please see the sixth instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-07-16: Please see the seventh instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-07-27: Please see the eighth instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-08-27: Please see the ninth instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-08-31: Please see the tenth instalment of updated appliances.
Update 2020-10-19: Please see the eleventh instalment of updated appliances.

As a follow up to the first 10 v16.0 apps, I'm pleased to announce, the next instalment of v16.0 TurnKey Linux appliances. Again they are available for download in ISO and Proxmox/LXC build formats, as well as published to the Hub.

As per usual, these updated appliances can all be found on our mirror network or they can be launched directly from the Hub (look for the 16.x text link - in the top right corner). They are also available for download direct from their relevant appliance pages (links provided below).

In this post, I'll highlight the 10 most recent releases. And for those in a rush, as of this post, I'll also start providing a list of all the v16.0 appliances released so far. I'll also provide some notes regarding some of the feedback that we've had so far. I'll also provide some more info about the plan moving forward with regard to the other builds.

Latest v16.0 appliances

As noted, this post notes the 10 latest updated appliances. As per the previous v16.0 appliances, they are all based on Debian 10/Buster so have updated packages. The ones that include software installed directly from third parties have all been refreshed too. Where available, we tend to prefer the latest stable LTS (long term support) version of third part software. Otherwise, we install the latest stable release as of the time of the build. Many also include bug fixes, improvements and/or inclusion of feature requests. Please see the specific appliance changelogs for full info (or ask in the comments).

In alphabetical order, here are the most recent 10 released apps:

b2evolution	CakePHP	CodeIgniter	Concrete5
EspoCRM	Ghost	Matomo	MediaWiki
Nginx PHP Fastcgi	PostgreSQL

v16.0 Feedback so far

Much of the feedback we've got so far has been pretty positive which is great. But we've also had some fantastic constructive criticism and bug reports. I'll provide a roundup of feedback so far, with any workarounds to know issues and/or links to more details.

Di-live on VMware products

It seems that there is an edge case bug in Di-live that only occurs when installing from ISO to a VMware product. For some reason, Di-live appears to be unable to correctly determine the primary drive to install grub to when installing within VMware. The work around is to select "Enter device manually" (DON'T select /dev/sda from the menu) and then type in "/dev/sda". Please see the issue on the tracker for screenshots and more detailed notes.

Confconsole

Much of the feedback we've had have been related to Confconsole. Some users are not so happy about the fact that you need to log into the terminal to access Confconsole's "Advanced" menu. Others (who had never noticed Confconsole before) have been extremely thankful that they now know it exists! :) We're still open to further discussion on this matter, so please post if you have thoughts and feedback on this.

We've also found a couple of bugs in Confconsole. One was reported by a user, when trying to set a static IP - unexpectedly instead of working, it crashed with a stacktrace! Unfortunately, as I've noted there, I've been unable to reproduce it. So if anyone else has hit these, please share your experience.

Finally, while trying to reproduce the static IP bug, I discovered another. I didn't bother opening a bug report, but I have created a bugfix patch and hope to emrge that and rebuild Confconsole early next week.

Proxmox/LXC builds

We've finally fixed the issue where TurnKey appliance would not run as unprivileged containers OOTB on Proxmox. And just in time too as Debian Buster based containers (including TurnKey v16.0) won't run as privileged containers OOTB on Proxmox now! There is a workaround detailed on the issue if you need a privileged container, but it does have some security implications and generally unpriveledged are recommended.

Apparently the issue has been patched in Debian Buster LXC hosts, so hopefully when we get to doing the v16.0 LXC host appliance, that issue won't apply there. Perhaps Proxmox might apply the same patches that Debian has and fix it on their end too? (Note that they package their own version of LXC).

Alternative builds

VM builds - OVA & VMDK

I built Core to OVA & VMDK, but a user reported that there were issues (on VMware ESXi/vSphere v6.0) with "Debian (64-bit)" not being a recognised OS id, and falling back to "Other (32-bit)" - which won't work! So I'll revert that back to being set to "Other (64-bit)" (as it has been in previous releases).

With that change in place, I'll rebuild and hope to have it ready for testing early next week. Hopefully it will be all good then. If you'd like to assist with testing, please feel free to get in touch.

Docker

I did actually start doing the Docker builds of the currently released v16.0 appliances However, I think I jumped the gun a bit. Testing revealed that they didn't really work the way that they should. So I'll need to dig in a little deeper and rebuild them ASAP. If you have any feedback re them, I'd love to hear.

In other news, I finally fixed the appliance page Docker links - so that's something!

AWS Marketplace

As previously noted (in the comments on the previous blog post) the AWS Marketplace builds are coming. I am awaiting some "behind-the-scenes" discussions with AWS. Once they're out of the way, we should have them up and available really soon. In the meantime, if you need v16.0 appliances on AWS, please use the Hub.

OpenStack and Xen

I haven't yet had much of a look at these yet, but hope to at least build Core sometime really soon. Although in other OpenStack related news, I finally worked out the website download link issue. So that's fixed now and once we have the v16.0 build released, they'll be able to be downloaded easily direct from the website!

All v16.0 apps to date

In alphabetical order, the appliances that have been released as v16.0 so far (including this release) are:

b2evolution	CakePHP	CodeIgniter	Concrete5
Core	Django	EspoCRM	Ghost
Gitea	Joomla3	LAMP	LAPP
Matomo	MediaWiki	nextcloud	Nginx PHP Fastcgi
OTRS	PostgreSQL	TKLDev	WordPress

Share your testing feedback

Regardless of whether you have a poor or a great experience, we'd love to hear how it goes for you. If you have general feedback, want to offer to help testing or request a specific appliance be prioritised, please post below, or open a new thread in the forums (new threads require being logged into a user account; they're free so feel free to sign up).

As usual, if you think that you've found a bug or would like to request a new feature, please feel free to skip straight on over to our issue tracker (requires free GitHub user account).

I hope you like them and if not, please tell us why. Looking forward to your feedback.