[ale] webmin or not?

[Brian Schenken]

I'll toss in my +1 for Webmin.  It's very handy for setting up cron jobs,
firewall rules, etc. when you can't be arsed to memorize syntax you don't
often use.  The service configuration tools will generally give you easy
access to most options, and can usually read and preserve any custom
settings you have in place.

It's definitely not a tool to give to untrusted end users, but it's great
for admins.  I've used it for many years on many servers and it's been good
to me - and I've watched it getting better as it's been polished over the
years.


On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 3:10 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

> On 08/12/2014 12:43 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> > :-). +1
> >
> > Gotta start somewhere. Hopefully not on something important.
> > On Aug 12, 2014 11:08 AM, "Boris Borisov" <bugyatl at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> No offense to anybody but if you cannot install rpm deb or whatever is
> on
> >> your system don't name yourself admin ...
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Beddingfield, Allen <allen at ua.edu>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> If you are in the SUSE world, check out webyast as an alternative.
> >>> --
>
> So I vaguely remember trying to install/configure/setup something like
> webmin on
> my slackware box around 1995-ish and being stumped. Asked our UNIX admin
> (NASA
> Lab) what he thought about that plan and he replied with the same thoughts
> that
> I've retained all these years. If you can't install it, you don't have any
> business using it (for administration web-apps). I got the impression that
> being
> able to install it really wouldn't be his only criteria ... and having just
> looked over the installation steps today - I wouldn't consider that enough
> of a
> test before allowing anyone root access.  There needs to be a higher bar,
> IMHO.
>
> OTOH - working on a home computer, we are all admins and struggle through
> all
> sorts of stuff that we don't have the background or skills to accomplish.
>  Lots
> of us used DMZ mode because we didn't understand networking or firewalls -
> we
> just knew that our trivial website worked in the DMZ, but not if that was
> disabled. After all, nobody knew we had a web server running there, right?
>
> BTW, the person who prompted this question didn't get webmin running last I
> checked - it isn't connected to the internet (excellent) and he wants to
> do php
> programming with the system. Seems like a reasonable reason NOT to learn
> system
> administration to me. ;)
>
> So - anyone gotten Perl 5.20.0 installed successfully?  I've got 2 failing
> tests
> for locale issues that don't make sense to me.  Perhaps I have no business
> installing it?
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