Managing Debian Etch using Webmin

Last Updated on Monday, 22 November 2010 13:53 Written by Joe Aldeguer Monday, 20 October 2008 23:37

Managing a Linux server does not always have to be done through vi or other text editors but could also be done using a web interface. Using an open source tool called Webmin I am now able to manage my favorite operating system using a web interface! Webmin offers an incredible amount of tasks which can be done using any of the popular web browsers. These are my steps installing webmin on my Debian Etch server.

The very first thing would be to install a software package which allows me to connect to Webmin using a web browser over SSL.

At the command prompt I'll type the following commands as root.

apt-get install libnet-ssleay-perl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime

Downloading the latest version of Webmin into /usr/local/src.

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.450.tar.gz

cd /usr/local/src

tar xzvf webmin-version

cd /webmin-1.430

I'll ran the install script.

./setup.sh

Using the default answers except for port and admin name. I prefer to change the port number to something else. The Webmin account has the same superuser access as root. I could just use the same password the root account has or I could create a new one.

Changing Webmin's default port can also be done by editing /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf

vi miniserv.conf

Change the port value.

Restart Webmin afterwards.

/etc/init.d/webmin restart

When the installation script is done Webmin could now be access using a web browser by pointing it to http://mysite.com:44444

A security message pops up informing me unable to verify the identity of the trusted site. I'll click OK. Later on I can purchase an SSL certificate from godaddy.com for my server to use.