Turnkey 16 fails to bring up static IP config menu

Yep, it's a bug. In v16.0 we ported Inithooks (along with Confconsole and other custom TurnKey components) from Python2 to Python3, plus deprecated quite a few old libraries that we were providing. We're now relying more on the Python standard library and Debian default packages (as we probably should have been doing ages ago...).

Since initial Core v16.0 release (Confconsole v2.0.1) we have tweaked Confconsole (the bit that allows configuration of the IP address) to better handle the case where a DHCP server isn't available. But we didn't rebuild the previous appliances. TBH, I had in my head that we did that earlier in the release cycle (and so it should have been included in Mattermost) but obviously not...

FWIW, I just double checked the Mattermost manifest and that has Confconsole v2.0.1+4+ga372f91 - so includes some improvements. But the latest from the apt repo is Confconsole v2.0.1+6+ga22afe3 - so not the latest.

Also, we probably still need to tidy it up a bit more...

Thinking about this a little more, because you can't get networking working easily, it's especially a pain...

Whilst it should be resolved in the latest build of Confconsole (although as I say, probably needs some more tweaking), we should probably document the workaround!

So to manually set a static IP, you need to edit /etc/network/interfaces. Vim users will find the pre-installed vim ('vim.tiny') adequate and ready to use. Those unfamiliar with vim are probably better served with 'nano'. I.e.:

nano /etc/network/interfaces

Then to use 192.168.1.200/24 address as an example, with Google Public DNS; set a static IP eth0 like this (auto eth0 line should already be there, replace everything under that):

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.1.200
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 192.168.1.1
    dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

Then:

ifup eth0

Restarting the networking service might also work too I think, but I haven't checked and I don't have one in front of me right now...

Thinking about this a little more, because you can't get networking working easily, it's especially a pain...

Whilst it should be resolved in the latest build of Confconsole (although as I say, probably needs some more tweaking), we should probably document the workaround!

So to manually set a static IP, you need to edit /etc/network/interfaces. Vim users will find the pre-installed vim ('vim.tiny') adequate and ready to use. Those unfamiliar with vim are probably better served with 'nano'. I.e.:

nano /etc/network/interfaces

Then to use 192.168.1.200/24 address as an example, with Google Public DNS; set a static IP eth0 like this (auto eth0 line should already be there, replace everything under that):

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.1.200
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 192.168.1.1
    dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

Then:

ifup eth0

Restarting the networking service might also work too I think, but I haven't checked and I don't have one in front of me right now...

Thanks, I've gotten it working. If I deploy another Turnkey appliance at this provider and it's still a problem, I'll update this thread.

I'm really sorry to hear that you had a poor first experience with TurnKey.

FWIW this thread isn't related to a "careless bug", it's just that not having a DHCP server on your network is not a common scenario and one we did not anticipate until the issue was highlighted (here; ~5 years ago). We do a fair bit of testing, but needless to say we can't test every possibility exhaustively. Often issues only occur under certain circumstance that are not expected.

Regardless, thanks for reporting your issue. I vaguely recall working on this a few years ago and I was under the impression that a network failure during TurnKey first boot was handled more gracefully now. But clearly that wasn't your experience.

It's a pity that you didn't provide a bit more info about the specifics of your problem and the environment where it occurred. Info like your network setup, the platform your Turnkey server was running on, etc helps us to recreate your issue. It's only if we can recreate the problem that we can do anything about it.

Regardless, I'll try to reproduce the issue locally and re-examine things.

I ran into the same issue on Turnkey Ansible. This is my first experience with Turnkey Linux and this seems like a pretty careless bug.. if basic stuff like network connectivity isn't being tested, what else is being overlooked with these builds?