Webmin

Webmin ( portmanteau of web administration ) is a free software package for remote management of a computer with a Unix-like operating system. It listens in the background on requests from the Internet or the local network. Using a Web browser, the different server processes or daemons could be administered, running on a Unix computer. For this, the user must administer no admin rights, but only rights for the package, which he intended to administer. These rights are controlled by the Webmin administrator. For example, it is possible to allow a Webmin user only the administration of DNS, for which he would need on the shell level root privileges. ( For this, however, there is also a special module called Usermin, which is specifically geared to the needs of users, and independently on port 20000 ( default) running - and system-critical components already innately leaves out. ) Another module called Virtualmin allows easy configuration of various server services such as mail servers and MySQL. Meanwhile Webmin is not part of the Debian Linux distribution and therefore no longer part of its derivatives such as Ubuntu. However, packages for the Debian installer are still available on the project website.

Programming and server environment

Webmin is written in Perl and modularized. It can thus be easily adapted to the respective needs, which is also allowed because it is released under the BSD license. In contrast to management tools that have been developed for certain Linux distributions (eg SUSE Linux YaST ), Webmin is for all Unix-like systems such as Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, AIX, HP- UX or Mac OS X suitable.

Windows support

Meanwhile Webmin - related parts for the administration of the Windows versions was begun to rewrite example, Apache or MySQL for Windows versions from Windows 2000. However, the support is rudimentary, but must be done in this way advance no Cygwin installation more. It is sufficient to install a port of Perl on Windows ( ActivePerl ).

Operation

Technically Webmin offers only a graphical interface for changing the configuration files used in Linux / Unix, the respective services. This native approach allows to continue next Webmin also manually adjust the configuration and also to keep correspondingly clear.

As a web interface Webmin set on a small web server ( miniserv.pl ), which operates independently of any such existing Apache. This leaves Webmin accessible even in the event of misconfiguration Apache.