Monday 27 February 2012

How to install WebMin on LINUX

How to install WebMin on LINUX

If you are from a Windows background and used to graphical interfaces then moving to a LINUX system can be quite a challenge due to the fact that most techies like to use commands from the console to carry out their work.

Whilst it is a good opportunity to learn some of the commands when you first rent a virtual server from Rackspace or buy your own box then you want to get your sites up and running quickly without having to read a lot of information first.

Therefore if you don't have the time to learn all the LINUX commands installing WebMin on your system is a quick way of providing you with a graphical interface to allow you to edit files and stop and start services like the Apache webserver or MySQL database server, as well as managing these services and configuring settings through a visual interface. You will need to have Java installed to use parts of WebMin.

If you want to learn how to use the console for carrying out your work then a good list of Linux applications and commands can be found here: Linux Commands and you should read some of the following articles I have written specifically about performance turning and managing a system such as Wordpress on a LINUX based system.

The Wordpress Survival Guide Part 1
The Wordpress Survival Guide Part 2
Performance Tuning Tools for MySQL
Using Host Headers to setup a test site on LINUX
Problems with LINUX Apache and PHP
Debugging Memory Issues on Wordpress

A quick cheat sheet of the most popular commands I find myself constantly using from the command line through a tool like PUTTY are below. Make a copy and save them to your desktop for quick and easy access.


CommandDetails
dateShow the current date and time on the server
cdchange drive e.g cd /var (go to the var directory)
cd ../go back up one directory
cd ../../go back up two directories
lslist out the contents of a directory
whoamisee who you are logged in as
su - [username]Assume the permissions of the specified user
sudo [command]Run a command as root but stay as the user you are logged in as
topShow the current running processes and server load
top -d .2Show the current running processes with .2 second refresh
tail -f access_logView the most current entries in the sites access log
grep "61.252.14.247" access_log | tailView the most current entries in the sites access log for a certain IP address
netstat -taShow all current connections to the server
grep "27/Feb/2012:" access_log | sed 's/ - -.*//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | lessView the IP's that appear in your access log the most for a certain date ordered by the most frequent first.
/etc/init.d/apache2 restartRestart Apache
apache2ctl configtestTest the Apache configuration for configuration errors
/etc/init.d/mysql restartRestart MySQL
wget [URL]Remotely access, load and save a file to the current directory
chmod 777 [filepath]Grant full read/write/delete permission to everyone to a file or folder
chmod +x [filepath]Grant execute permission to a script
rebootReboot the server


How to install WebMin on a LINUX

Back to WebMin, to install WebMin on a LINUX based server you should do the following.

1. Install PUTTY if you haven't already.
2. Connect to your server through SSH using PUTTY.
3. Download the WebMin file with the following command:
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.580_all.deb
4. Run the following command: dpkg --install webmin_1.580_all.deb

You should have now installed WebMin to /usr/share/webmin.

The administration username will be set to root and the password will be set to your current root password.

You should now be able to login to Webmin by accessing your hostname/IP on the port 10000.

For example e.g if your hostname is myhost.some-site.com then use http://myhost.some-site.com:10000/.

If you server is running in SSL mode (which it should) then it will initially give you a "Bad Request" error and ask you to try a secure URL instead e.g https://myhost.some-site.com:10000/

The WebMin options will appear as a tab to the right of the VirtualMin tab in the top left of the screen.

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