Summary

Remote administrative tools aren't a necessity on a Linux system even if you want or need to administer the system remotely. They can be a great convenience, though, particularly when you need to administer a subsystem with which you're less than perfectly familiar. You can use these tools locally or from remote systems. Two particularly common and complete tools are Linuxconf and Webmin, both of which can theoretically handle any Linux subsystem, although in practice neither has a fully complete set of administrative modules. SWAT is another administrative tool, and is perhaps the most common specialized tool ”one that administers a single server. Each of these tools can be very useful, but care must be taken in configuring and using them to minimize the security risks that they pose.