(or How to set up a fully working Joomla, Drupal, LAMP, LAPP, Zimbra, Torrent server etc., in a couple of minutes)

Turnkey Linux comprises a set of free, Ubuntu-based software appliances that are primarily available for server-type usage scenarios, such as setting up database, web, forum, wiki and photo gallery servers. Each appliance is preconfigured to work out of the box, with ease of use being the primary goal behind the Turnkey Linux project.

This is extremely useful in itself, but if you wanted to experiment with these appliances, potentially to evaluate or otherwise test them, it would be great if you could perform installations with the absolute minimum of effort.

A number of hosting providers out there provide Linux VPS services, which usually enable users to have their own virtual server with automatic provisioning of major Linux distributions, such as Debian, Ubuntu or CentOS. GigaTux has been working with the Turnkey Linux team and have managed to take the automatic installation concept one step further to enable this to work with all Turnkey Linux appliances. This is made possible by using frameworks provided by the excellent server open source control panel DTC.

Turnkey Linux appliances enable users to easily deploy primarily web-based applications within an entire Linux kernel and Ubuntu-based package set. Once a distribution is chosen within the control panel, the install is fully completed within a few minutes and ready to be customised. This enables a rapid deployment of a tested setup, with full update and security support provided by the Turnkey Linux and Ubuntu package maintainers.

Our efforts are available to all using the DTC control panel, with Debian packages for Lenny being provided. Additionally, scripts have been written such that when new or updated appliances are released, new deployable packages for the DTC control panel are created and made available in our repository automatically.

It is not actually too difficult to configure images to work for automatic deployment, but performing this manually for every appliance is a time consuming process. The scripts we have written will automatically perform the following steps for each appliance:

It’s as simple as that. If you are interested, you can download the raw scripts. They will need some customisation for your setup as there are hard coded directories in there.

If you are happy playing with just one appliance, you can of course just download it from the Turnkey Linux website and install it on your PC (or use a Virtualisation solution like Xen or VMWare).

However, if you want to rapidly try out a variety of appliances using the setup we have made, the quickest way would be to rent a VPS. Alternately, you can install the DTC control panel yourself and add our Debian repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list. This setup requires you to run a fully featured Xen setup and requires significant configuration.

Feel free to get in contact with us at info@gigatux.com with any questions.