Webmin installation and configuration on OpenSuSe

Webmin, developed by Jamie Cameron, acts as a comprehensive interface to the underlying applications on servers, including support for configuring applications like ftp, ssh, mail, Web, databases and more. Differing from other control panels, the core Webmin interface is intended for system administrators with root access to their servers, and includes a user-based package to enable your users (or clients) to access their own domains, email, and more, within a limited scope. Webmin supports running under SSL.

The application runs on its own mini-Web server so as to be available even when your primary Web server software is not running (i.e. Apache, etc.), and is powered by a number of Perl-based applications that directly interface with your system configuration files. According to Webmin, the entire solution is built on Perl 5 and uses no non-standard Perl modules.

Installing the RPM

You need to use RPM version of Webmin, first download the file and then run the command :

# rpm -ivh webmin-1.441-1.noarch.rpm

The rest of the install will be done automatically to the directory /usr/libexec/webmin, the administration username set to root and the password to your current root password. You should now be able to login to Webmin at the URL http://localhost:10000/

Configuring Your Firewall For Webmin

Many operating systems block access to port 10000 by default, as they have a firewall activated as part of the installation process. This may prevent you from logging into http://yourserver:10000/ from another system on your network or over the Internet.

The simplest way to open up port 10000 is to use one of the Webmin firewall management modules, such as Linux Firewall, BSD Firewall or IPFilter Firewall. However, to access this you'll need to run a brower on the same system as Webmin, and access it via the URL http://localhost:10000/.

The alternative is to login as root via SSH, and manually edit the firewall configuration file. On Redhat and derived systems, this is /etc/sysconfig/iptables, while on Debian it is /var/lib/iptables. The line you need to add is :

-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 10000 -j ACCEPT

It should be added in the file just after similar lines which grant access to ports 80, 22 and so on.

Once this line has been added, you will need to apply the firewall configuration. This is typically done with the command /etc/init.d/iptables restart .