Webmin For Ubuntu Linux - Complete Review and How To

Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. This application is very useful incase you run a linux headless server at home . You can remotely access all the important settings of your server remotely via a web interface . So here is more on webmin :

Webmin has a lot of features which help you get complete remote access to your linux server from a web interface . You could access this via LAN or even over the internet if the right ports are opened.Here are some of the features :

1)Homepage provides a summary of the status of the server including disk space , memory space , CPU load etc

2)Advanced Backup Management System

3)Access to configurations like IP access control,ports and addresses etc


4)Ability to Register a new server and link and manage multiple servers on the same network

5)Webmin accounts configuration

6)Ability to start/stop various active processes running on the server . Also ability to remotely shutdown/restart server

7)COmplete list of disk filesystems


8)Ability to backup a complete filesystem

9)FUll list of cron tasks . Ability to edit ,delete or add new cron jobs


10)Remotely install packages via web interface onto the server

11)Complete list of server accounts .Ability to add/remove/modify accounts

12)Complete access to apache web server settings including virtual server settings

13)Complete access to samba,FTP,SSH settings


14)File manager to upload/download files from the server


15)SSH access

16)Server Status


17) and a lot more....

There are a lot more features of webmin . I just covered a few of them . The best part of webmin is that all the important services running on the server like apache,DHCP,FTP,SSH etc are all accessible from 1 web interface making it easier to administrate all these services . Most of the services are used in home servers as well so this is not just an application for enterprise servers but can also be used for home servers.

Here is how you install webmin :

Step 1 : Go to THEIR WEBSITE
Step 2 : Click on the Debian Package Link

Step 3 : After you have downloaded the DEB file rename it to webmin.deb
Step 4 : If you have a GUI for your linux server then just double click on the DEB file and click on install package

Step 5 : If you only run the command line . Then keep the file at a certain location like say your desktop ( say /home/prash/Desktop) . and then type cd /home/prash/Desktop to change the directory to where the file is located and then type sudo dpkg -i webmin.deb to install
the package. NOTE : Replace /home/prash/Desktop with the appropriate link to the directory where webmin.deb is placed


Step 6 : Thats it , to access the webmin interface go to https://x.x.x.x:10000 where x.x.x.x is either the hostname or the ip address of the server ( you can find out the ip address of the server by typing ifconfig in the terminal)

NOTE : If you want to access your server remotely over the internet then you need to open port 10000 in your router ( guides available at portforward.com) . Then the x.x.x.x ip will not be the local ip you got in step 6 but a WAN IP which you can get by going go www.ip-adress.com . If you have a dynamic ip , then its better you setup a no-ip account . )