Webmin

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Webmin

If you are installing network services of any kind on your Mepis box, Webmin is an indispensable tool for administrating them through a common interface. Webmin has administration modules for dozens of servers, network settings, and system settings, as well as other remote administration tools. As the name implies, Webmin is entirely browser-based and allows you to administrate your system locally or remotely.

Webmin is not available through the APT repositories in MEPIS 7.0 (or in 6.x). However, deb or tarball files can be acquired from the Webmin website.

Method 1: install from .deb (recommended)

1. Go to the webmin download page and download the latest deb of webmin.

2. Once the file is downloaded, open a root Konsole session.

3. Attempt to install it with dpkg:

dpkg -i webmin-*.deb

4. It will fail most likely due to missing dependencies. Fix this by running:

apt-get -f install

5. This should get all your dependencies installed and webmin will be set up.

6. Open your favorite web browser and go to [1]. Log in as "root" with your root password.

Method 2: install from tarball (tar.gz)

1. Go to the webmin download page and download the latest tar.gz of webmin.

2. Once the file is downloaded, open a root Konsole session.

3. Install this package so you can use SSL (https://) encryption:

apt-get install libio-socket-ssl-perl

4. Now, copy the tar.gz to somewhere like /opt or /usr/local. I'll use /opt here

cp webmin*.tar.gz /opt

5. Go to the directory you copied it to and extract the tarball:

cd /opt
tar -xvzf webmin*.tar.gz

6. That will create a directory webmin-versionNumber. Enter that directory:

cd webmin-1.360

7. Now run the setup script, setup.sh

./setup.sh

8. Accept the defaults on all questions, though you may want to change the default administrative account to "root" and set a good password on it.

9. Webmin should be started and accessible at https://localhost:10000.

10. Unlike the deb install, if you install webmian via tarball from the webmin website it does not set up an init script. You can start it using the "webmin-init" script in the root of the webmin directory. You can also symlink this script to /etc/init.d/ and then use normal runlevel editing tools (ksysv, update-rc.d, or webmin itself) to make it start at boot.