Webmin is a web-based system administration tool for Unix-like systems. It provides an easy alternative to command line system administration and can be used to.

1. Installing The RPM

Installing the tar.gz file Before downloading Webmin, you must already have Perl 5 installed on your system. Perl is usually installed as /usr/local/bin/perl or /usr/bin/perl, and comes as part of most recent versions of Linux. If you don't have Perl, you can download the source from and compile it for your system. Most operating systems come with Perl these days, so check your operating system CD or website for a package as well. To download the Webmin tar.gz package, either follow the link on the, or run commands like: root@yourhost /# cd /tmp root@yourhost /tmp# wget When unpacked, the distribution creates a subdirectory called webmin-1.870 under the current directory.

Since recent versions of Webmin support installation into a directory of your choice, you can pick a destination directory such as /usr/local/webmin. Then run the following commands in the directory containing the webmin-1.870.tar.gz file: root@yourhost /tmp# gunzip webmin-1.870.tar.gz root@yourhost /tmp# tar xf webmin-1.870.tar root@yourhost /tmp# cd webmin-1.870 root@yourhost /tmp/webmin-1.870#./setup.sh /usr/local/webmin When the setup.sh script is run, it will ask the following questions:. The Webmin configuration directory The directory in which all Webmin configuration information is stored. This is now separate from the Webmin install directory, so that configurations are saved when you upgrade. If you have previously installed Webmin and use the same config directory, this will be the only question asked.

The Webmin log directory The location for pid and webserver log files. The full path to perl on your system This is usually /usr/bin/perl or /usr/local/bin/perl. Your Operating system type In Webmin versions 0.990 and above, this question is only asked if your operating system cannot be automatically determined. The setup script will display a list of supported systems.

If your OS is not on the list, you can try choosing the closest match. However this may not work properly, and may even cause serious problems!. Web server port The TCP port that the Webmin web server will listen on. Web server login and password The login name and password used to acess the Webmin web server. Web server hostname The hostname of the machine on which Webmin will run. Use SSL This question will only be asked if your system has the Perl SSL libraries installed. See below for more.

Start Webmin at boot time If your OS is supported, Webmin will ask if you want to have it automatically started at boot time. Assuming you answer all the above questions correctly, the Webmin web server will be started and the setup script will give you the URL to go to. Enter this URL into your browser, and you will be prompted for the login and password that you choose in setup.sh. Once you have logged in your browser should show the main Webmin page, on which is an icon for each module you have installed. Typically you can connect to Webmin.

Or if accessing it remotely, replace localhost with your system's IP address. If you installed Webmin by specifying an installation directory parameter to setup.sh as the instructions above show, the original webmin-1.870 directory can now be safely deleted. Supported Operating Systems The TAR package of Webmin can be installed on any one of the, such as HP/UX, AIX, FreeBSD, and all flavours of Linux. However, if your system supports one of the other package formats like RPM or Debian packages, it is recommended to install Webmin from that type of package.

This HOWTO describes how to set up a Slackware Linux based BIND9 virtual DNS server. The background on why this HOWTO came to be is that I recently received a renewal notice for my domain vanlab.net. I haven’t used this domain for anything in nearly a year. Not wanting to pay for DNS hosting or use someone else’s DNS servers, the domain has as a result sat idle. It occurred to me last night though hat anything this domain would ever be used for would run off my laptop. Since I’m the only one that would ever use it, it would be fine if it only was available when I was studying.

Therefore I decided that it would be feasible to host my own 'part time' DNS server. I opted not to use any flavor of Windows for three reasons: First, I wanted as small a footprint as possible as this is a VM that will be running on my laptop all the time. Second, Windows officially requires a license. (In my mind, this is a 'production' implementation so I wanted to find something legal).

Third, I’ve always wanted to see if I could make a useful Linux server and I finally came up with a use case. What follows is how I’ve managed to successfully get my laptop to run a virtual machine that can resolve external DNS queries for vanlab.net. Software. We will be using SMS or Superb Mini Server as our Linux distribution of choice. After much trial and error with multiple distros, I found this one the best as it includes a tool called Webmin that provides a graphical web based interface for configuring BIND. (There is a wiki page for configuring this server at ). Download the SMS64.Live.CD-2.0.5.iso file.

Note: We are downloading the live CD and will install to the HD rather than the full installation despite the recommendation by the distro. I tried to install the full version but couldn’t get it to boot. It also includes almost 3GB of packages, almost none of which I needed for this project anyway Domain Configuration. My domain is registered with dyndns.org. I first needed to configure the name servers for the domain.

I logged into the management interface at and went to / My Zones Domains / Domain Registration / Edit Name Servers. I added two entries (as a minimum of two are required) for ns1.vanlab.net and ns2.vanlab.net. I then created two glue records by the same name and pointed both of those IPs at my Shaw public IP of 175.0.103.66. (An IP that hasn’t changed in 2 years so it’s nearly public anyway) Router Configuration I next logged into my Netgear Router running DD-WRT and clicked on the NAT / QOS tab.

I added a new port forwarding entry for DNS that forwards port 53 to the static IP I will assign my DNS server 192.168.21.10. As we are running VMWare workstation, we need to ensure that the port 53 packets can make through the host firewall. Go to Windows Firewall / Advanced Settings / Inbound Rules.

Create a New Rule and Make a Port rule. Make it TCP and specify port 53. Allow the connection, set to all profiles and give it the name Inbound DNS Virtual Machine Creation.

I am using VMWare Workstation 9. Follow the wizard as it’s pretty self explanatory. In my case I used: Hostname: vandns1 Domain: vanlab.net IP Type: Static IP IP Address: 192.168.21.10 Subnet: 255.255.255.0 Gateway: 192.168.21.1 Nameserver: 192.168.21.1 Accept. Ping an external IP DNS name (such as google.com) to verify you have network connectivity. Because we installed the system with all the services turned off, we have to enable apache so we can connect to the management interface.

Type pkgtool. Select Setup.

Installing The RPM

Select services by pressing space bar to select it. You’ll find that rc.httpd (The Apache web server) is unchecked. Check it and press OK. There is probably a way to reset the network and activate this service (something with init.d) but this is Slackware and I didn’t have the patience to figure it out. So just type reboot to apply the settings.

Open your webbrowser and go to. You should see the SMS login page. You’ll note the URL it wants to connect to is However, since I don’t have that in my DNS, it doesn’t resolve. In my case since this will only ever be accessed from my parent Windows 8 machine, I’ve added an entry to my hosts file that reads 192.168.21.10 vandns1. Once you have the host entry, in your web browser go to.

Congratulations, you now have a Linux box you can manage via a web browser!. However, before we go much further, we’ll want to change the default root and admin passwords. From the Webmin console, choose Webmin / Webmin Users. Select on the admin user.

Change the Password to Set To and type in the new password. Press Save, log out and verify the new password works. Next, from the local shell type passwd root to change the root password BIND DNS Configuration. From the Management Console, expand Servers and select BIND DNS Server. Select Create master zone.

Provide the name of the DNS zone you want to create. In my case it’s vanlab.net. Provide an email address as well as it is required. All other fields can be left at defaults.

Next we need to create an A record. Select Addresses. Type in your record and IP. For testing, my record is called awesome and points at my public IP. (Note: Also create an A record for www. I don’t know why but it doesn’t seem to want to work until this record is present. Could just be coincidence though).

Next we need to allow external servers to query our DNS server. From the main Bind Server configuration screen select the zone Vanlab.net. Select Edit Zone Options. In the Allow queries from section type any. The end result of all this?

I created another A record called itworks.vanlab.net and pointed it at my IP. I then setup my router to forward port 80 to an internal Windows 2012 IIS Server. I then connected to a remote site (in this case Avram’s home lab) and tried to connect Clean up Steps. Reduce the memory allocated to the box from 1GB to 128MB. Remove the Printer, USB, floppy and other unused hardware devices until it looks like this.

Remove the following modules:. ADSL Client. Bandwidth Monitoring.

CD Burner. Clam Antivirus (v.

0.9.1). DansGuardian Content Filter. Dovecot IMAP Pop3 Server. Fetchmail Mail Retreiver. HylaFax Server.

LDAP Client, LDAP Server, LDAP Users and Groups. MailScanner. NFS Exports. Netatalk Apple File Print Sharing.

Open SLP Server. Open VPN. Postfix Mailserver. ProFTPD Server. ProcMail Filter. Printer Administration. SMART Drive Status.

SAMBA Windows File Sharing. SPAM Assassian Mail Filter. Squid Proxy Server. Iscsi Target Mangament. Vsftpd.

DHCP Server. DHCP and DNS Hosts. MySQL database Server. SendMail Server. SSH Server.