Webmin Installation and Configuration in Ubuntu Linux

Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any browser that supports tables and forms (and Java for the File Manager module), you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and so on.

Webmin consists of a simple web server, and a number of CGI programs which directly update system files like /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/passwd. The web server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and use no non-standard Perl modules.

Installing Webmin in Ubuntu



You can use the above procedure but if you want to install latest version you can download from webmin site download section

Prerequisites

Perl 5 interpreter and libnet-ssleay-perl

sudo apt-get install perl5 libnet-ssleay-perl

Now you need to download the latest webmin from the above downloadlink

Download ‘webmin-1.310.tar.gz’ (at the time of writing) to some location in your machine ex:- /usr/local/src

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.310.tar.gz

cd /usr/local/src

sudo tar xzvf webmin-1.310.tar.gz

cd webmin-1.310

sudo sh setup.sh

This will start the installation and now it will prompt for several questions answer them as follows

Config file directory [/etc/webmin]:
Leave as default, or change as you wish

Log file directory [/var/webmin]:
Leave as default, or change as you wish

Full path to perl (default /usr/bin/perl):
Leave as default, or change as you wish

Operating system:
Enter ‘6′

Version:
Enter ‘6′

Web server port (default 10000):

This is where you can start to make webmin more secure then the standard install you get with apt-get, Synaptic, or RPM. Leave as default or change it to what ever port you want.

Login name (default admin):

It is ‘admin’, so you can leave it as that, or put in any name that you like.

Login password:

By creating the user above and giving it a password, you have now made it so you will not need to log into webmin with root.

Password again:

enter your password again

If you did not install ‘libnet-ssleay-perl’ you will get the following message:

‘The Perl SSLeay library is not installed. SSL not available.’ You can continue with the install, but it would be more secure if you install sslrelay.

Use SSL (y/n):y

Choose yes here

Start Webmin at boot time (y/n):y

select here y

At this point it is going to configure things, install things, and create things…

It will then tell you that you can log in to https://hostipaddress:10000 and to accept the certificate.

Webmin User Password Change

If you want to change root password in webmin use this included Perl script:

sudo /usr/share/webmin/changepass.pl /etc/webmin root