Webmin The Swiss Knife Of Administration

ally_uk

Hello to you all and a belated happy new year, I am looking at the Linux side of things, mainly looking at tinkering with server deployment and administration via use of webmin. I have been doing some digging around on the internet on the hunt for training guides or manuals and it appears that the only sources of information I have come across are outdated. Can anyone point me in the direction of some updated books or manauals as this seems like a real interesting tool to get to grips with.

Many Thanks

Forsaken_GA

There's so few ways to say this without seeming like an arrogant and elitist prick, so I'll apologize in advance, as it's not my intention.

Webmin is a great tool.... for those who don't know much about what they're doing. I think you'll find most *x sysads use ssh with their favorite shell for system administration tasks, as this gives the most flexibility.

If you are going to deploy webmin, especially in a production environment, make absolutely certain it's locked down. The idea of someone having full access to your manage your system via the web should give me a moment of pause, if not outright terror, so make sure to protect it.

The only advice I can give you regarding webmin is don't. Pretty GUI's come and go, but in the unix world, the CLI is forever

ally_uk

I understand that the CLI will always be the main way of setting up stuff on Linux, But I am not a Linux guru and deciphering config files and trawling my way through man pages isn't my idea of fun, I am not looking at deploying servers into production environments I just want to get to grips with webmin to further develop my understanding off administration quickly.

I was reccommended Webmin by a Linux Vet who runs his own consultancy company, Webmin is growing strength to strength it's not like it's going to disapeer over night and not everyone has the mindset of CLI is better then anything, I think using both is the best approach.

So to anwser my original posting does anyone have any decent updated guides?

NightShade03

I would agree with Forsaken. Webmin is also known for having alot of vulnerabilities over the years. Depending on what you are looking to do you can also look into eBox (eBox Platform - Open source small business network server) which personally I think is more secure, and will most likely still do what you want.

You also didn't say what distribution you are running.

msteinhilber

ally_uk wrote: »

I understand that the CLI will always be the main way of setting up stuff on Linux, But I am not a Linux guru and deciphering config files and trawling my way through man pages isn't my idea of fun, I am not looking at deploying servers into production environments I just want to get to grips with webmin to further develop my understanding off administration quickly.

I was reccommended Webmin by a Linux Vet who runs his own consultancy company, Webmin is growing strength to strength it's not like it's going to disapeer over night and not everyone has the mindset of CLI is better then anything, I think using both is the best approach.

So to anwser my original posting does anyone have any decent updated guides?

Just a random thought here, but you mention you are not looking to deploy servers into production environments. You just want to get a grips with webmin to further develop your understanding of administration quickly. If you are doing this to advance your skillset, do keep in mind that growing your understanding of administration through the use of webmin is essentially going to grow only your ability to administer a machine using webmin. You will pickup some extra knowledge since a lot of what is shown for you in various areas of webmin are various parameters you can also configure via command line, but ultimately you will probably be left somewhat high and dry if you were to learn to administer a system using webmin and were then given a situation in an environment where webmin did not exist.

Sorry, my post clearly isn't what you looking for but I think it's important to point out that if you are doing this to learn more about *nix administration then I think you're going about it the wrong way. As far as manuals and configuration guides, the man pages are still a good bet to look into. It doesn't matter if you are configuring say Samba for example via command line or webmin - either way you are still going to need to know much of the same information about Samba regardless of if you are editing a config file by hand or using webmin.

120nm4n

msteinhilber wrote: »

Just a random thought here, but you mention you are not looking to deploy servers into production environments. You just want to get a grips with webmin to further develop your understanding of administration quickly. If you are doing this to advance your skillset, do keep in mind that growing your understanding of administration through the use of webmin is essentially going to grow only your ability to administer a machine using webmin. You will pickup some extra knowledge since a lot of what is shown for you in various areas of webmin are various parameters you can also configure via command line, but ultimately you will probably be left somewhat high and dry if you were to learn to administer a system using webmin and were then given a situation in an environment where webmin did not exist.

Sorry, my post clearly isn't what you looking for but I think it's important to point out that if you are doing this to learn more about *nix administration then I think you're going about it the wrong way. As far as manuals and configuration guides, the man pages are still a good bet to look into. It doesn't matter if you are configuring say Samba for example via command line or webmin - either way you are still going to need to know much of the same information about Samba regardless of if you are editing a config file by hand or using webmin.

Exactly what I was going to say. If you are truly interested in learning about administration, browse through tutorial sites and walk through as many as you can find. Learning one tool will only help so much. I recommend looking at howtoforge.org. There are a ton of great tutorials on that site, and it is what helped me to learn about *nix administration.

Forsaken_GA

ally_uk wrote: »

I understand that the CLI will always be the main way of setting up stuff on Linux, But I am not a Linux guru and deciphering config files and trawling my way through man pages isn't my idea of fun, I am not looking at deploying servers into production environments I just want to get to grips with webmin to further develop my understanding off administration quickly.

The quickest way to learn it is total immersion. Decide what you want to do, then figure out how to do it, google is your friend. Yeah, sometimes it sucks, and I agree, staring at config files and man pages isn't fun, but I also think that it's the best way to learn. If your goal is education, then limiting yourself to a GUI interface isn't the best way to go about it, because you lose so much flexibility. If you're just wanting the quickie way of doing stuff so you can say you know how to use Linux on your resume, well, ok, that works too and I guess you can skip the CLI.

I was reccommended Webmin by a Linux Vet who runs his own consultancy company, Webmin is growing strength to strength it's not like it's going to disapeer over night and not everyone has the mindset of CLI is better then anything, I think using both is the best approach.

Well, I'm a linux vet who has more than a few years of administrating linux servers in a high availability enterprise operation whose customers measure their downtime in very large numbers of $/second. I recommend you skip webmin and make friends with bash! It is my opinion that a GUI management script is an unnecessary security risk if you have staff who are appropriately trained in the use of the CLI.

If you learn nothing else about open source projects, know this: Every unix geek has their opinion on what's 'best' (suck it emacs users!). That's what makes it fun there's no One True Path, it just is what you make of it.

If you can't find any up to date guides on using Webmin, I will tender one other suggestion - Write one yourself! Trying to credibly communicate subject matter to an audience is a great way to force you to learn the subject yourself, and is actually a technique I use myself for material I'm having trouble grasping (even though my audience is usually just a room full of dogs)