Installing webmin on Ubuntu 7.10

Recently, I've discovered a very neat tool for administering some of my linux servers. It is called webmin, and it may be one of the more complete web based system administration tools I have seen for linux.

Admittedly, I was a bit apprehensive at first trusting a web interface to do administration. After all, I am not one to shy away from the command line. But the more I used the webmin console, the more I could really see the benefit of using such a tool. In particular, I found the custom commands, and scheduled monitoring two particularly useful features.

I had been configuring small single-application virtual machines lately with Ubuntu, and found webmin to be a very robust tool in which to write custom commands to administer the various function of that server. With webmin, it made each VM more like a virtual appliance -- something we just turn on and off -- rather than something we had to learn oodles of commands to maintain.

Now installatin of webmin on Ubuntu isn't quite as straight forward as just saying "apt-get install webmin", so I've written a small HOWTO guide on how to install on Ubuntu. If you find this useful, please do leave a comment. It's nice to know what people find useful, and what things people don't.

Step 1: Get the latest webmin debian package from webmin's site. Since the bare bones Ubuntu Server won't have a graphical browser, the easiest way to do this is to find the download link via another machine, then use wget to download it onto your server. For me, this was a close sourceforge mirror from which to obtain it. Therefore, I issued a command like this:

wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/webadmin/webmin_1.410_all.deb

This was the response:

--12:57:12-- http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/webadmin/webmin_1.410_all.deb
=> `webmin_1.410_all.deb'
Resolving internap.dl.sourceforge.net... 74.201.26.4
Connecting to internap.dl.sourceforge.net|74.201.26.4|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 13,140,062 (13M) [text/plain]

100%[====================================================================================================>] 13,140,062 417.00K/s ETA 00:00

12:57:44 (416.17 KB/s) - `webmin_1.410_all.deb' saved [13140062/13140062]

Step 2: Next, install the appropriate libraries (as a sudo user) to get webmin to run:

sudo apt-get install libnet-ssleay-perl libauthen-pam-perl libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl openssl

This was the response:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
ca-certificates
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libauthen-pam-perl libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 39 not upgraded.
Need to get 1138kB of archives.
After unpacking 3555kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/universe libauthen-pam-perl 0.16-1 [32.2kB]
Get:2 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/universe libio-pty-perl 1:1.07-1 [42.3kB]
Get:3 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/universe libmd5-perl 2.03-1 [5680B]
Get:4 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/main libnet-ssleay-perl 1.30-1 [186kB]
Get:5 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-updates/main openssl 0.9.8e-5ubuntu3.1 [872kB]
Fetched 1138kB in 9s (117kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package libauthen-pam-perl.
(Reading database ... 33264 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libauthen-pam-perl (from .../libauthen-pam-perl_0.16-1_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libio-pty-perl.
Unpacking libio-pty-perl (from .../libio-pty-perl_1%3a1.07-1_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libmd5-perl.
Unpacking libmd5-perl (from .../libmd5-perl_2.03-1_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libnet-ssleay-perl.
Unpacking libnet-ssleay-perl (from .../libnet-ssleay-perl_1.30-1_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package openssl.
Unpacking openssl (from .../openssl_0.9.8e-5ubuntu3.1_i386.deb) ...
Creating directory /etc/ssl
Setting up libauthen-pam-perl (0.16-1) ...
Setting up libio-pty-perl (1:1.07-1) ...
Setting up libmd5-perl (2.03-1) ...
Setting up libnet-ssleay-perl (1.30-1) ...
Setting up openssl (0.9.8e-5ubuntu3.1) ...

Step 3: Install the webmin package as root using dpkg.

sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.410_all.deb

This was the response:

Selecting previously deselected package webmin.
(Reading database ... 33791 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking webmin (from webmin_1.410_all.deb) ...
Setting up webmin (1.410) ...
Webmin install complete. You can now login to https://myserver:10000/
as root with your root password, or as any user who can use sudo
to run commands as root.

Step 4: You're done! Login to the server using your web browser and point it to the address it indicates.