Proxmox: OpenVZ (OVZ) and Turnkey Appliances root password

This is a bizarre one. Either I wasn’t able to search for the right pages and posts or it’s simply poorly documented.

Particularly under Proxmox (I will need to bump up my opennode to check on that one).

One of the best features there, are the turnkey templates. Seriously, a few clicks and you have loads of great appliances up and running powered by turnkey templates. Sadly they are all Debian based but thats another story.

But deploying and get it running such a template kind of was not straight forward.

This applies to a “new” turnkey 13.1 template (I tried the nginx)

You download the templates through the gui -> create a new CT -> give it your root password -> select the template -> install -> boot ->ssh to it (or maybe even try the Proxmox console) -> fail.

At least in 3 cases on my systems I wasn’t able to login as root, cause it didn’t like my root password.

There are 2 links getting close and describing a bit about the why and a how-to.

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/end-to-default-passwords
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/forum/support/20130327/problem-login-orangehrm

So to wrap this up and maybe make use of a better SEO to be in the search engines.

Once the OpenVZ Template is installed under Proxmox, you need to start the container and login to it from the proxmox shell.

ssh to the proxmox server where the container is running (in case its on a clustered proxmox)

vzctl start  #skip this if already running
vzctl enter 
turnkey-init #follow prompts
exit

example

:~# vzlist
 CTID NPROC STATUS IP_ADDR HOSTNAME
 110 47 running 192.168.1.110 nginx

:~# vzctl start 110 #skip this if already running

:~# vzctl enter 110

When you enter the container it most likely will start with the init process to give your mysql and whatever apps ay be there a password.

This can also be triggered by using

turnkey-init

Else you may see something like this

root@nginx /#

in that case you change the root password by using

# passwd root

In order to rerun or reconfigure things you can run inside the container:

# confconsole

which allows you to:

– Configure appliance networking
– Reboot the appliance
– Shutdown the appliance