News and announcements
TKLBAM: a new kind of smart backup/restore system that just works
Written for TurnKey Linux by Alon Swartz on 2010-09-15
Officially unveiled - TKLBAM (AKA TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration): the easiest, most powerful system-level backup anyone has ever seen. Skeptical? I would be too. But if you read all the way through you'll see I'm not exaggerating and I have the screencast to prove it.
Launching TurnKey Hub into private beta: cloud deployment simplified
Written for TurnKey Linux by Alon Swartz on 2010-06-01
Towards the end of last year we decided it was time to start working on an idea we've been toying with for a while. Mapping out the feature set was fun, and a lot of the current and future features are based on feedback we received from you guys and gals, as well as many related questions and comments from around the net.
Today after a last round of internal testing we are pleased to announce that we've launched TurnKey Hub into private beta:
We've just sent out the first batch of invites. If you've already requested an invite, you should receive one as we roll them out. Please be patient. We initially have limited capacity so it's first come, first served.
== What is this TurnKey Hub?
The short version: TurnKey cloud deployment: simplified.
The slightly longer version: An easy way to launch and manage TurnKey Linux appliances in the Amazon EC2 cloud (more clouds and VPS providers on the way).
== A simple Amazon EC2 console optimized for TurnKey
- Launch TurnKey appliances in the click of a button.
- TurnKey optimized firewall templates.
- Configure custom passwords on launch.
- Authenticate with personal SSH key in addition to EC2 keypairs.
- Automatically setup EBS devices and Elastic IP's on launch.
- Easier management with descriptive labels for all assets.
- Unified interface for all regions and all your EC2 accounts.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's much more in development...
== Upcoming features
- More clouds: Support all clouds and VPS providers.
- Backup: Automatic encrypted appliance backups.
- Migration: Automatically restore backups anywhere.
- You decide: Suggest features and help us prioritize.
In other words this is just the first modest step in a much more ambitious plan to continue making TurnKey easier to use, as Liraz recently explained:
"Imagine being able to develop your site on a locally running appliance (e.g., running in VirtualBox or VMWare). Then, when you're ready you can automatically migrate your appliance, with all your customizations to a cloud hosting provider of your choice."
So once you receive your invite, take the Hub for a spin, let us know what you think. We'd like to know how to make this better. What new features you'd like to see implemented. That sort of thing.
Maintenance release: bugfixes, security updates, and better Amazon EC2 support
Written for TurnKey Linux by Alon Swartz on 2010-04-14
We've just pushed out a maintenance release for the 2009.10 appliance batch featuring:
- Bugfixes for all outstanding issues (we're out of beta baby!)
- Security updates
- Simplified free subscription to Amazon EC2 AMIs
- New and improved Amazon EC2 AMIs
With the new Ubuntu 10.04 LTS release (Lucid Lynx) coming out in a couple of weeks this is the last TurnKey release batch based on the Ubuntu 8.04 series.
Note that Ubuntu 8.04 is a Long Term Support release which will continue to be supported by Canonical with security updates for another 3 years (until April 2013).
Unfortunately, unlike Canonical we don't have the resources to support multiple versions of Ubuntu simultaneously. So with this maintenance release we bid 8.04 a fond farewell. We're cleaning house and sweeping all the bugs and outstanding issues out of the way before we begin rebuilding the appliance library from the ground up on top of a brand new distribution.
Fixing all the bugs from the previous release before rebuilding on a new distribution isn't just neat and tidy, it's good engineering!
== Bugfixed and out of beta
We've fixed all the major issues reported by the community and are proud to remove the beta label from nearly all the appliances in the library.
Many thanks to everyone who provided feedback and helped us track down bugs. Most of the issues were minor, but a couple (cough Zimbra cough) were nasty!
== Security updates
Pre-installed all security updates that have come out since our last release batch. Existing installations have already been auto-updated, so you don't need to do anything.
We now install security updates on first boot
Previously appliances were configured to install security updates daily but we've realized that isn't good enough! We need to install security updates on first boot to prevent a window of vulnerability from opening between the time a fresh appliance is deployed and until the cron job that installs the security updates runs.
On the other hand, installing security updates can take a few minutes and isn't critical in all usage scenarios (e.g., a local development VM) so when the appliance first boots the user is given a time-limited option to skip installation of the security updates.
== Subscription to Amazon EC2 AMIs now easy and free
Unified subscription (the easy part): we've created a single unified subscription that includes global access to all TurnKey appliance AMIs in all regions. Previously you had to subscribe to each appliance separately which was unnecessarily complicated.
Free (as in beer): we've decided to let users try out TurnKey on EC2 for free while we solicit more feedback from the community on pricing here [1].
In the future a reasonable mark-up on usage fees could be a great way to support development and allow users to each share a small part of the burden in keeping the project sustainable. But the devil is in the details, so we want your feedback on that!
== New and improved Amazon EC2 AMIs
The latest batch of Amazon EC2 images now features:
Support for the us-west-1 region: meaning TurnKey images are now available in all EC2 regions under a new bucket naming scheme:
- turnkeylinux-
- turnkeylinux-
- turnkeylinux-
Support for automating EC2 instance setup: via a new user-data scripts mechanism.
EBS auto-mounting support: replaces the old buggy ebsmount init script in previous images.
Want to know more? We'll be publishing a series of blog posts on these new features in the next few days. Stay tuned!
== One more thing...
In the next few weeks we'll be launching a private beta of the TurnKey Hub, a web service we're building to make it super simple for users to deploy and manage TurnKey appliances in the cloud. If you're interested in receiving an invitation, register here.
[1] http://
[2] http://
2009.10 release: 40 new appliances + Amazon EC2
Written for TurnKey Linux by Alon Swartz on 2009-11-01
We're proud to announce the 2009.10 release batch featuring:
* 25 new additions to the TurnKey Linux virtual appliance library
* Added native virtual appliance packaging (OVF support included)
* Amazon EC2 support, with EBS persistence
* Core improvements: Ajax web shell, upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04.3
The project recently celebrated its one year birthday. Since our last major release in March the project picked up steam with weekly downloads increasing over 500% (we just flew past 60,000 downloads). Not bad for a new server oriented project. With all the goodies in this new release, and all the stuff we're working on for the next release, TurnKey Linux's second year should be even more interesting.
This release is a big one. Previously we tried "releasing early releasing often", but discovered we could get more done by batching certain phases of virtual appliance development and decided to give bigger release increments a try.
25 all new appliances
The last release worked out the basics in terms of virtual appliance engineering and usability, so the main focus of the current release was expanding our virtual appliance library with more of the best open source server applications.
The project has expanded it's virtual appliance library to include:
* Complex "killer app" integrations: Windows domain controller, torrent server, file server, and revision control.
* Commercially-backed enterprise software: Zimbra, OpenBravo, tWiki, MovableType and MindTouch Deki.
* Popular content management applications: Moodle, DokuWiki, MoinMoin, and Gallery.
* Popular issue tracking applications: BugZilla, Mantis, OTRS, Trac, RedMine and Project Pier.
* And many more.
In other words, we mostly we created new TurnKey appliances for applications that were already packaged by Debian / Ubuntu and supported with regular security updates:
Unfortunately there is still quite a bit of excellent open source software that is not yet officially supported by Debian / Ubuntu.
Packaging these applications into a virtual appliance is technically more difficult, and worse - not all components would receive automatic security updates. We decided not to let that limit us. Striving for perfection is great, but an imperfect appliance is better than no appliance. This opens TurnKey Linux up to including:
Project specials
Not all appliances are created equal. For this release we've put extra effort into creating a handful of project "specials": virtual appliances that include a more complex integration of components working together as a solution to a particular usage scenario:
Native virtual appliance support
In addition to the installable Live CD ISO format, all appliances are now packaged in a standard virtual appliance format that can run directly on a virtual machine with no installation necessary.
The virtual appliance package includes:
* A light version of VMWare tools
* Hard disk images in VMDK format
* OVF support
The package format is known to work on VMWare and VirtualBox.
Amazon EC2 support
It's now possible to launch TurnKey Linux appliances directly into Amazon's EC2 cloud. Amazon supports hourly billing which at $0.1/hour opens up a variety of interesting use cases.
For example, we've been using our own EC2SDK appliance to convert the virtual appliance library into EC2's AMI format. Thats a resource intensive process which would stress our current server infrastructure. EC2 is perfect for this because renting a beefy server from Amazon for a few hours is dirt cheap.
We've also been offloading much of our virtual appliance testing and development to the cloud and have launched a virtual army of virtual appliances. Total cost so far: $22.
If you run a virtual machine 24x7 things can get a bit more expensive. Ideally you could just turn off the virtual machine when you don't need it but unfortunately it's not that simple because when you terminate an instance you loose all the data on the instance.
To get around this we've developed support for Amazon EBS, which allows you to set up persistent storage volumes (with snapshotting support) which survive instance creation and termination. We've developed software that helps with the tricky part of getting the virtual appliance to save all its data to the EBS volume. It's not yet as easy to use as we would like but it works.
Pricing: $5/month per image and 15% on Amazon's EC2's fees.
Amazon takes care of the billing and charging a small fee helps us put more resources into sustaining development and make sure TurnKey Linux is here to stay.
TurnKey Core improvements
We've made a few improvements to TurnKey Core, which have been inherited by all appliances:
* upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04.3
* SSH client is now optional: including web based AJAX shell (shellinabox)
* bugfixes to custom components: configuration console, installer, etc.
Improvements to existing appliances
We didn't neglect our previous crop of virtual appliances either. We've taken the feedback you've all provided and used it to improve the existing appliances. For example:
* TurnKey Ruby on Rails now includes Phusion passenger.
* TurnKey Drupal bundled with an extended set of highly useful plugins.
* TurnKey WordPress now bundles some of the most popular WordPress plugins and includes the latest version of WordPress which features an integrated upgrade mechanism. This way you get WordPress updates straight from WordPress's creator Automattic.
Some of our best ideas for new features and appliances come from our users. Keep em coming!
Credits
Though we've put many months of effort into making this release possible, we don't deserve all the credit. We're just walking the last mile, sorting the best stuff out and polishing things up for end users. The real heros are further up the chain. Open source works thanks to the tens of thousands of people who have collaborated tirelessly for many years now to produce a fantastic variety of excellent free software.
In no particular order, credit goes out to:
* Everyone in the open source community who helped develop the software that makes up TurnKey Linux, especially the unsung Debian and Ubuntu developers who do most of the heavy lifting that makes this project possible.
* Everyone in TurnKey's small community that provided feedback and ideas, manned the forums (JedMeister I'm looking at you!), spread the word and donated funding.
* Our enlightened employer, which donated most of the project's development infrastructure and allows us to contribute to open source during office hours.
* Pink Floyd for the background music.
2009.02 release now official - 12 new appliance images
Written for TurnKey Linux by Alon Swartz on 2009-03-03
We just finished updating the site for our most exciting and ambitious batch of releases yet including 12 new virtual software appliance images.
This release features extensive improvements to usability, security and stability.
We've done a terrific amount of quality assurance on our end and blocked the release until we had resolved every single bug and issue we found.
http://
