The Turnkey Linux is an amazing project of various ready-to-use web applications, 45+ virtual appliances are packaged in multiple build formats, from VMDK disk image with OVF support and an installable Live CD which can be installed on bare metal and virtual machines. The most common appliances provided by Turnkey are LAMP server, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MySQL, MediaWiki, Domain controller, File server, Ruby on Rails, phpBB. Non official Turnkey Linux appliances are available on the web, such Sahana-Eden, LimeSurvey, Ampache along with the two intrusion detection solutions Insta-snorby and Smooth-Sec. In this how to, I’m going to show how to install from scratch  the Redmine Turnkey Linux appliance on a Virtualbox headless Server within minutes. If wondering how to install a Headless Virtualbox server, please check my related blog post on “phpvirtualbox, manage your virtual machines from anywhere.“

1) New Virtual Machine (choose a name)

2) Allocate the VM memory (512 MB will be fine)

3) New virtual hard disk (Create a new disk)

4) Type of the virtual disk (select the VDI, virtualbox default)

5) Virtual disk allocation (dynamically will be fine in most of the cases)

6) Virtual disk size . (This is up to you)

7) Last chance to edit the disk settings.

8) Attach the Turnkey Iso appliance.

9)  Start the VM and begin with the installation.

10) Disk partitioning.

11) Commit the disk changes.

12) Installation complete – Reboot the system.

13) Enter the new root password.

14) Enter the Mysql root password.

15) Enter the redmine admin password.

16) Enter the redmine admin email address.

17) Once arrived at the confconsolle you can manage your appliance.

18) Point the web browser to the appliance ip address and login with the credentials
previously inserted.

If want to experiment and try other appliances, please visit the turnkeylinux.org and get your appliance and don’t forget to give a shout-out to to Alon Swartz and Liraz Siri.

Phpvirtualbox is web-based AJAX administration interface that allow more easily to manage and control VirtualBox virtual machines from any web browser. Some features present on Phpvirtualbox are: (Start / Stop VMs, Snapshots: Take Snapshot, Delete Snapshot Restore Snapshot. Import / Export Virtual Machines ). This guide explains how to successfully install Phpvirtualbox and run your VirtualBox instances.

Requirements

Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS 32bit
A physical server with at least 2gb ram installed, if you have more please
install the PAE kernel with:

#apt-get install linux-generic-pae linux-headers-generic-pae

1) Apache installation and configuration

#apt-get install  apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 build-essential htop unzip

#/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

2) Virtual box installation and setup

add the virtualbox repository to /etc/apt/sources.list

#echo 'deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lucid contrib non-free' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
#wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
#apt-get update
#apt-get install --no-install-recommends virtualbox-4.0

Download the virtual box extension pack

#wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.0.8/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.8-71778.vbox-extpack

Install the box extension pack

#VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.8-71778.vbox-extpack

Create the user that will run Virtualbox.

#adduser vbox

Add the vbox user to the vboxusers group in the /etc/group file.

vboxusers:x:113:vbox

3) Php interface

#cd /tmp/
#wget http://phpvirtualbox.googlecode.com/files/phpvirtualbox-4.0-6.zip
#unzip phpvirtualbox-4.0-5.zip
#cp -a phpvirtualbox-4.0-6 /var/www/phpvirtualbox
#cd /var/www/phpvirtualbox/
#mv config.php-example config.php
#vim config.php

In the password field please use the vbox user passowrd.

/* Username / Password for system user that runs VirtualBox */
var $username = ‘vbox’;
var $password = ‘vboxpassword’;

4) Automatic start virtualbox at boot time

#cd /etc/init.d

create a file named /etc/init.d/vbox.start and copy the folowinf string

/usr/bin/vboxwebsrv -b

This mean that virtualbox webserver will start at boot time in background mode.

Enable virtualbox to start at boot time:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/vbox.start
update-rc.d vbox.start defaults

Reboot the server and poing the browser to http://serveripaddress/phpvirtualbox/

Log into the phpvirtualbox using admin/admin as credentials, after the first login
plese change the admin password using: File > Change password, on the top left.

Enjoy !!!

If you want to save time you can download the Turnkey preconfigured VirtualBox appliance from http://9while9.com