Chapter 1: Obtaining and Installing Webmin

Obtaining Webmin is easy. In fact, it may be installed on your system already. Several Linux distributions now include Webmin as either its primary system administration interface or as an optional package. Also, a large number of Linux hardware vendors use Webmin or a modified version of Webmin as their graphical administration interface. Best of all, because Webmin is free software, even if you don’t have Webmin already, it is only a download away.

Where to Download Webmin

It is often best to obtain Webmin from your OS vendor if it provides a package for it. In this way, you can be sure it is automatically configured suitably for your particular OS and version. Executable and configuration file locations vary somewhat from OS version to version and from vendor to vendor, so getting Webmin from your vendor ensures consistency.

Caution 

It is necessary to temper the advice to get Webmin from your vendor with the warning that some vendors lag behind the release schedule of the official Webmin by a month or more. In recent months at least two exploitable conditions have been found in older versions of Webmin. If you are obtaining Webmin from your vendor, it is imperative that you check to be sure it is a recent version, which does not have exploitable bugs. Good vendors will of course update their packages immediately with a secured version, but being cautious is wise when the security of your server is at stake.

If your OS or system vendor does not provide a package of Webmin, then you can go to the Webmin home page at [http://www.webmin.com/]. Here you will find the latest version of Webmin in a tarball package, a Solaris pkg, and an RPM package. The tarball will work on nearly any UNIX version that has Perl, while the RPM package is known to work directly on at least Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, MSC, and Caldera versions of Linux.