How to Configure Eturnal TURN Server with TLS 1.3 and Static Credentials on Debian 12

Eturnal is a modern, lightweight STUN/TURN server written in Erlang that serves as an efficient alternative to Coturn with built-in TLS 1.3 support. While Eturnal natively uses time-limited ephemeral credentials (REST API authentication), many WebRTC clients require static usernames and passwords. Here is how to configure Eturnal on Debian 12 and generate static credentials using an HMAC-SHA1 Python helper.

Stack: Eturnal 1.12+ • Debian 12 Bookworm • TLS 1.3 • HMAC-SHA1 Password Generator

1. Installing Eturnal on Debian 12

# Add Eturnal package repository and install
curl -fsSL https://eturnal.net/gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/eturnal.gpg
echo "deb https://eturnal.net/debian bookworm main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/eturnal.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install eturnal -y

2. Generating Static TURN Credentials via Python

To produce valid credentials matching your configured shared secret (secret: "YOUR_SHARED_SECRET" in /etc/eturnal.yml):

import time
import hmac
import hashlib
import base64

SHARED_SECRET = "YOUR_SHARED_SECRET"
# Set expiration timestamp (e.g. 1 year in the future)
expiry = int(time.time()) + (365 * 24 * 3600)
username = f"{expiry}:user1"

# Compute HMAC-SHA1 hash
key = SHARED_SECRET.encode('utf-8')
msg = username.encode('utf-8')
password = base64.b64encode(hmac.new(key, msg, hashlib.sha1).digest()).decode('utf-8')

print(f"TURN Username: {username}")
print(f"TURN Password: {password}")

How to Compile and Install Coturn 4.6.2 with TLS 1.3 Support on Debian 12 (Bookworm)

Coturn is the standard open-source STUN/TURN server enabling WebRTC audio/video connections across symmetric NATs and firewalls. Full support for modern TLS 1.3 encrypted TURN connections (TURNS) was added in Coturn 4.6.2. Because Debian 12 (Bookworm) originally packaged Coturn 4.6.1, compiling version 4.6.2 from source with OpenSSL 3.x is necessary for enterprise TLS 1.3 compliance.

Features: TURNS over TLS 1.3 • WebRTC relay performance • Debian 12 Bookworm

Compilation & Installation Commands

# 1. Install build tools and OpenSSL 3 development libraries
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y pkg-config build-essential libssl-dev libevent-dev git

# 2. Download Coturn 4.6.2 release
cd /usr/src
git clone https://github.com/coturn/coturn.git
cd coturn
git checkout 4.6.2

# 3. Configure and compile with OpenSSL
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

# Verify binary and TLS support
turnserver -v