madozzy's picture

Hi all, This is my first visit and I was wanting some basic advise on Turnkey. I have tried other o/s ( nas ) but they have proved to be so unreliable, and I have read good things about Turnkey that I thought I would give it a whurl. So to my questions :- At present I just want to have the ability to have my media files and document files available on my home network.I have a pc (dual core 1.6GHz + 4GB ram +80GB ssd and 2x 3TB hdd,s) to run Turnkey on and was wondering which would be the best way to do this ?.To download the core app and then add the file server and the media server, or to just download the fileserver and the media server ?. The 2 X 3 TB hdd,s at present have some data on them as they were set up as a raid 1 (mirror), I am guessing that it would be advisable to wipe these and reformat( ext4 linux) before installing Turnkey, using one drive for my data and the other drive as a back-up and using the ssd for the operating system, (and any other further apps that may be required in the future). I look forward to any and all answers and suggestions, cheers all.

Forum: 
Jeremy Davis's picture

TurnKey appliances are complete self-contained OS, so if you wish to install multiple TurnKey appliances to a single hardware PC then you will need to use some sort of virtualisation.

If your hardware supports virtual CPU extensions (Intel VT-x or AMD-v) then you could install a hypervisor such as ProxmoxVE. You can then install each individual appliance as a Linux container (LXC - note TurnKey apps are available for download within the PVE UI) or as a full VM (install from TurnKey ISO).

Alternatively, you could install our LXC appliance and then install each appliance as a container (again LXC) within that.

Regardless of which way you go, you'll need to configure things so your hardware storage devices are available to the relevant container(s). If you keep in mind that TurnKey (and Proxmox) are Debian based (TKL v14.x = Debian Jessie; PVE 4.x = Debian Jessie), then you should be able to find plenty of relevant info and tutorials via google.

kaktux's picture

hi there,

 

i have to misuse this old thread for another newbie problem.

For some reason i can't figure out how to create a new post in the forum. I can't see any option (New thread or similar) to do this.

What i can do is reply to existing once - so at least thats a start.

 

Would be great if you could hint me to whatever i am doing wrong.

kaktux's picture

nevermind - the minute i posted my question the realoaded screen showed an option. Once i was blind but now can see.

 

solved.

kaktux's picture

since i currently can't post new threads (solution already on its way in another thread) i am gonna hijack this one to ask another newbie question:

System monitoring and security alerts are not working for me.

i was just digging a little through the documentation of what turnkey features are.

And found out about what the system monitoring and security alerts feature can do.

I get the emails from "Security and News Alerts" but none so far when my machine installs some security updates.

So point 4 of the list you find in the docs is working - the others are not. No mails for security update etc.

What could be causing the probme?

Is there a way to test this?

 

I am using turnkey in a qnap nas (as virtual machine).

Jeremy Davis's picture

The emails that you are referring to, are sent from your server itself (the "newsletter" is sent by us). Unfortunately, sending emails directly from a server is a bit hit and miss (mostly miss if you have a dynamic IP or your server is running from a hosting provider).

The way that we recommend you work around that, is to configure an SMTP relay. It can be configured pretty easily via Confconsole's Mail replay plugin. It's super easy if you use SendInBlue, or alternatively, you can use the "Custom" option to configure any of the myriad of other SMTP relay services (it should be compatible with many; if not all other possibilities).

Once you have that setup, then you should start receiving any relevant emails.

If you don't want to use a 3rd party service, then you may still be able to resolve it, but it will take a ton of work on your behalf and is beyond my expertise (among other things no doubt, it involves setting up specific DNS records, and you'll want to ensure that you monitor blacklists to ensure that your emails keep getting sent)

kaktux's picture

hi there,

i am not quite sure what an email relay server actually is - so i asked my webhoster who told me i could simply use a normal email of mine.

Meaning: lets say i own turnkeylinux.org. I create the mail: mail-relay@turnkeylinux.org from my webhosters panel choosing a password.

I add

smtp.turnkeylinux.org

port 587

Username

password.

 

This is what my webhoster told me to do - simply create a new one (or use an existing) email on the webpanel - and use it. Also i added that a copy for every incoming mail to that new email adress is sent to the actual adress i want to receive the security update information (as turnkey said password is stored in plain text i didn't want to use my normal adress for that)

So my question now is - does this work or is a mail-relay server something completly different?

Is there a way to trigger sending a test mail?

 

I would prefer a local (or even more my provider if possible) relay to sendinblue - thats why. On the other hand - fiddling on that for to long would also be overkill and i'd use sendinblue as 3rd choice.

Jeremy Davis's picture

TurnKey includes a MTA (mail transfer agent) called Postfix. An MTA is essentially a mailserver (although by default it's only configured to send mail, not receive it). What that means in practice is that your server will send emails directly to whoever they are addressed to. You can read more about MTAs on Wikipedia if you wish. Please note that page also discusses mail relays and if you read it, you'll note that some of my simplified explanation is not technically complete; but I'm just trying to give you an easy to understand overview.

Anyway, unfortunately, because of abuse by spammers (often via malware), many mail servers will refuse to accept emails sent from random mail servers. Even if they will accept the mail, it's often tagged as spam by default (e.g. that's what google generally does).

It is possible to configure your server to increase the chances of your mails being received (and not tagged as spam), but it's a PITA and personally I wouldn't suggest you go that path Although if you want to, you could do some googling - FWIW the first thing to do is to set up some DNS records - so you'll need a registered domain. Note that I'm not talking about using your server as a relay (although that's an option too). What I'm noting, is configuring your server to send mail directly, but be more reliable in terms of deliverability.

So that brings us to use of a "mail relay" - also known as a "SMTP relay". It is essentially just a (usually remote - although could be local) mail server that is configured "properly" (as per my hints above). You can configure Postfix to send mail via the relay, rather than sending emails directly (as TurnKey is configured to by default). The mail relay then sends the email to the intended recipient (or to another mail relay as the case may be) so emails will be received (and not tagged as spam).

We recommend SendinBlue because they provide a good service, both in quality and value. Actually for many TurnKey users, their free accounts should be adequate. But you should be able to use any mail server (assuming you have the credentials) as a relay (e.g. I have personally used smtp.gmail.com i.e. gmail in the past).

I know nothing about your hosting provider, so I can't really comment there, but it would not surprise me if they provide mail relay capabilities. Chances are that they are running their own mail server already anyway, so allowing their customers to also use it (and providing that as a "value add" service) makes sense. Although it's probably worth noting, that you can't just use a "normal" email account as a SMTP relay. Some might allow that, but not all. And you will need to have the login details of the SMTP mail server you plan to use as a relay.

TBH, I'm not completely clear on what your hosting provider is suggesting. Although I assume that they are suggesting to create a new separate email user account, which you can then use as credentials for connecting to the remote mail server. Assuming that your hoster does provide SMTP relay service, you could technically just use your current account (although using a separate one is certainly good practice).

So bottom line is that, so long as you have username and password access to an SMTP relay, you should be able to configure your TurnKey server to send via that.

Please also note that someone else has recently reported that there is a missing dependency, you can fix it by following the step I noted towards the bottom of my reply.

Re testing, you can test via either the 'mail' or 'sendmail' commands. The examples below should be fairly straight forward. Either will send a test email (subject "Test email") to 'user@example.com':

echo "Body of test message" | mail -s "Test email" user@example.com

Or

cat >  /tmp/test-email.txt 

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