Me.B's picture

Hi,

Would be great to see Zpanel www.zpanelcp.com a sleek free/open source hosting solution with clean LAMP stack based on Apache 2/ MySQL/ Postfix/ Dovecot and supporting Centos/Ubuntu.

Any idea if this could be in turnkey?


M B

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Jeremy Davis's picture

At a glance it looks great! However I'm not sure if/when the Core Devs would get to it...

There is already a massive list of desirable appliance candidates (many of which have been on that list for years...) so unless you (or someone else) wants to push forward development then it possibly won't happen...

Me.B's picture

Agree I saw a lot of request and it's easy to say Do for me and give me.

So If I would to see one day zpanel on turnkey how to do? How build the appliance? Do you accept third parties submission?

Jeremy Davis's picture

Just discovered this post (which I had previously missed...) - Doh!

Ok so to answer your questions in a random order:

Do you accept third parties submission? - Yes, certainly do... There is no promise that they will make it into the 'official' TKL library but a couple have already. Have a look at the ones available here. Once you are done you can list yours there too regardless of whether/when it gets picked up for 'official' release.

How to do? - The details will depend on the software but generally most open source software will provide instructions for at least Ubuntu or Debian (although not always) and even if there are Ubuntu instructions that doesn't mean they will work flawlessly on Debian (the basis of TKL - v13 is built on Debian Wheezy). Personally my preferred first step is to install the software on TKL Core, or TKL LAMP or whatever TKL appliance makes the most sense as a base for the software (this step is optional if you are an experienced tinkerer - works best for me though and can avoid some headaches later if the docs miss something or a vague on any points). Carefully document everything as you go, especially any gotchas you come across...

How to build the appliance? - Once you have installed the software and got it working as you'd expect (assuming you did that) then transfer your install documentation to a TKLDev-ised GitHub repo. My advice would be to do this in a couple of stages:

  1. Git/GitHub - If you're not already familiar with Git I suggest you have a bit of a play with that - although you don't need to be an expert - the basic commands will be enough... GitHub have some good 'getting started with git/GitHub' type docs.
  2. Learn about TKLDev - read through the docs (and the TKLDev development docs too) and have a play with it and get familiar. Explore how the current TKL appliances are built. If you are struggling a little, I suggest modifying something that already exists to get a feel for it (that's what worked for me...)
  3. Building - Once you feel ready then create your repo and start building. The TKLDev docs provide a walkthough on what goes where. This page does a full start to finish on building a new appliance that IMO will be invaluable to giving you the best shot of building something that will get picked up as an 'official' TKL appliance.

Good luck and happy developing! :) Any questions please feel free to ask. I can't offer any guarantee that I will have THE answer, but I will do my best to share what I know! :)

Jeremy Davis's picture

And as it appears to be more focussed around managing a 'shared hosting' type server (as cPanel is) I'm not sure that it would be relevant even to necessarily install alongside Webmin for most appliances.

However, having said that I could see the value of a 'shared hosting style appliance' with something like zPanel (or Sentora, etc) installed alongside Webmin on top of LAMP (with a few extras pre-integrated too).

An appliance like that would be a great transition for those with shared hosting environment experience, to comfortably move to a VPS (as often TurnKey is used as).

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