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Remote administration of Linux

Linux installation comes with Perl pre-loaded, but in case you did not

install Perl, I would suggest that you download the latest compiled

binaries from its homepage located at http://www.perl.com.

Having downloaded the Webmin rpm, login into your system as root.

Now change into the directory where you have downloaded the Webmin

RPM and issue the following command.

rpm -ivh webmin-0.82.rpm

Using Webmin

Now that Webmin is installed, administering your Linux box is going to be

a piece of cake. Load your browser and point it to http://localhost:10000

Localhost represents the hostname you have assigned your machine and 10000

is the port on which Webmin listens to requests. For security reasons I

would suggest changing this port, keeping in mind that you can only use

ports between 1024 - 65,535. I'll cover this next.

Securing your Webmin setup

O.K, so you GUI lovers ultimately have something to really cheer about. On

an operating system whose administration could be simply performed via the

command line, GUI options are not very popular. But as I mentioned

earlier, novices will find them a welcome feature.

Beware of the default settings of Webmin, it's open for the world to

connect to, but of course it does have passwords, supports SSL and et al.

The first thing that you need to do after installation is to change those

default settings to make your setup more secure.

There are three main settings that need to be modified in Webmin, one is

the PORT on which Webmin listens, the interfaces on which Webmin will

receive connections and the other is a list of the remote IP addresses

which can connect to Webmin.

Lets change the port on which Webmin listens as well as the IP address on

which it will accept requests. After having logged into Webmin click on

the icon mentioned below.

Webmin Configuration

On the page that is displayed click on the following icon.

Port and Addresses

The first option is the IP addresses on which Webmin will accept

connections. The whole point here is that, the local machine on which

Webmin is running may have several static and dynamic interfaces. You may

be connected to the Internet in more ways then one, and you surely don't

want Webmin to be accessible to everyone. That's the reason why you have