Appliance category: 

TurnKey Core

Debian GNU/Linux with Batteries Included

TurnKey Core is the base operating system which all TurnKey GNU/Linux solutions share in common. It is commonly deployed standalone as a convenient starting point for custom system integrations. Benefits include automatic daily security updates, 1-click backup and restore, a web control panel, and preconfigured system monitoring with optional email alerts.

Features:

  • Base Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 'stable'.
  • Build formats: Deploys on bare metal, virtual machines (e.g., OpenStack, VMWare, VirtualBox, LXC, KVM, Xen) and in the cloud.
    • ISO images: Generic installable Live CD. Installs anywhere.
    • Virtual Machine images: Optimized for virtualized hardware, pre-installed and ready to run.
    • Amazon Machine Image (AMI): Best launched via the TurnKey Hub.
  • Free as in speech: free software with full source code and a powerful build system. Free of hidden backdoors, free from restrictive licensing and free to learn from, modify and distribute.
  • Secure and easy to maintain: Auto-updated daily with latest Debian security patches. Optional monitoring and email notification of system alerts.
  • 1-click backup and restore (TKLBAM): smart backup and data migration software saves changes to files, databases and package management to encrypted storage which a system can be automatically restored from.
  • Dynamic DNS (HubDNS): Associates your IP with a custom domain or the free *.tklapp.com domain.
  • Logical Volume Management (LVM): Instead of installing to a fixed size partition, a Logical Volume is first created by default, and this may later be expanded, even across multiple physical devices.
  • Web management interface (WebUI) with built-in shell (Webmin):
    • Listens on port 12321 (uses SSL).
    • Modern responsive theme: 'Authentic'.
    • Network modules:
      • Firewall configuration (with example configuration).
      • Network configuration.
    • System modules:
      • Backup and migration (TKLBAM).
      • Configure time, date and timezone.
      • Configure users and groups.
      • Manage software packages.
      • Change passwords.
      • Journal/System logs.
    • Tool modules:
      • Text editor.
      • Shell commands.
      • Simple file upload/download.
      • File manager (HTML5).
      • Custom commands.
    • Hardware modules:
      • Partitions on local disks.
      • Logical volume management.
  • Simple configuration console (cli) (confconsole):
    • Displays basic usage information.
    • Configure networking.
    • Let's Encrypt SSL/TLS certificates.
    • Mail SMTP relay setup.
    • Proxy settings.
    • Region and timezone.
    • Other global system settings.
  • First boot initialization (inithooks):
    • Prompt user for passwords.
    • Regenerates SSL and SSH cryptographic keys.
    • Installs latest security updates, unless user chooses to defer this for later.
  • Command line power tools
    • Smart, programmable bash shell completion: helps you get more done with fewer keystrokes.
    • Support for $HOME/.bashrc.d shell hooks
    • Persistent environment variables (see $HOME/.bashrc.d/penv):
      penv-set pydoc /usr/share/doc/python2.7/html
      exit
      # later...
      cd $pydoc
      
  • Automatic time synchronization with NTP
  • Take a look at some screenshots.

Usage details & Logging in for Administration

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.

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.