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Books Software Media The Internet Book Reviews Linux

Managing Linux Systems With Webmin 222

Posted by timothy from the good-with-the-bad dept.
honestpuck writes "Webmin is a pretty neat tool for administering a server using a GUI, particularly remotely. Managing Linux Systems with Webmin, written by Webmin's author, Jamie Cameron, is an extensive look at using and extending it, a good guide not without flaws." Read on for honestpuck's take on this book's good / bad ratio.
Managing Linux Systems With Webmin
author Jamie Cameron
pages 765
publisher Prentice Hall
rating 6 - Serious flaws in structure in an otherwise excellent book
reviewer Tony Williams
ISBN 0131408828
summary Good guide to using Webmin flawed by lack of structure

The book is structured as 60 chapters, without any division into sections and I have serious arguments with the order of chapters; why are the chapters about configuring Webmin at the end, for example. That said, the book has a fine index and the usual two-level contents make it a fraction easier to find what you want.

I do, however, have a little digression about the 'Bruce Peren's Open Source Series,' of which this book is a member. Frankly, I think they all need, and deserve, a much stronger hand in editing. With this volume it is the bad structure and order; with "Intrusion Detection Systems with Snort" I found myself engrossed by the information and furious at the appalling grammar and sentence construction, particularly in the introductory chapters. The others in the series look significantly better at first glance but could still use better editing.

Once again we have an author or publisher who throws Linux into the title to make sure that it gets found by the greatest mass of likely readers while the tool described is more (not that I criticise the practice, they want to sell books.) Any *nix system can be controlled using Webmin -- including a great deal of Mac OS X not available through 'System Preferences.' Indeed, I'd recommend the tool to all OS X users who want to gain better control and install better tools for the underlying BSD layer in OS X. I use it myself for just this reason. If you run any other *nix system don't be put off by the 'Linux' in the title: very little of this book is Linux specific.

This one is well written -- Cameron has a light, informative style that I look for in a tech book. The book is well laid out, he gives good examples, good explanations and screen shots.

Cameron starts out with three introductory chapters on Webmin, its installation and security before launching into forty three chapters on using various Webmin modules, but with no real pattern to the order of most of the chapters. Why, for example, is the NFS module at chapter 4 while the Samba module is discussed in 43? I could list another half dozen examples without raising a sweat.

There is then a chapter on Usermin, the Webmin system for ordinary users. This is followed by three chapters on the server clustering system, a few on Webmin configuration and logging before the volume ends with chapters on building modules and themes.

Some of the chapters on the modules within Webmin border on merely stating the obvious, others are extremely useful. Overall they constitute a good manual to using the system, Webmin users who have not spent a great deal of time administering servers will find them particularly useful. The chapters on clustering, using Webmin on multiple servers to perform the same task at the once on many machines, are a good guide to administering and using this useful facility. I found the chapters on writing your own module more than adequate, I'm well under way to writing my first one after only a short time with the system and book.

One final complaint. Where in this book does it tell you how to start Webmin? I didn't want Webmin running from boot, so I answered No to that question and Webmin then ran. Nowhere did it tell me how to restart Webmin after I rebooted my computer and having the script 'start' in the directory specified as the config directory is a little less than intuitive.

Prentice Hall have a page for the book that has an author bio, the Preface and a sample chapter. Though this book is supposedly 'open content,' I couldn't find an electronic version anywhere. It might have helped, as it would give me a way to search the book faster.

In conclusion, this is a good book. With a little work on the structure it would be an excellent book, rising from a rating of six to an eight or nine. the lack of structure makes it unduly hard to find what you are after. I would recommend Webmin, as a tool, to almost everyone running a supported server. If you have no need for the section on clustering and writing your own modules you could buy The Book of Webmin for a few dollars less or browse the same book (even download a PDF version free) at Swelltech, which is less comprehensive but much better structured (and tells you how to restart Webmin). If you want a guide to Webmin that includes notes on writing your own module then this will do until something better comes along, or they release a second edition with greater thought to structure and order.

You can purchase Managing Linux Systems With Webmin from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Managing Linux Systems With Webmin

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    • Re:$4.50 cheaper and free shipping (Score:4, Informative)

      by Wakkow ( 52585 ) * on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:59PM (#7145401) Homepage
      Shop around [addall.com]. Couple copies at half.com and cheaper than amazon at overstock.com. Addall is very helpful when buying my textbooks..
    • From my experience of Webmin, it causes more problems than it solves in all but the simplest of administration tasks. Certainly it's capable of completely screwing up a server with any previous customised scripts.

      I have installed in in cases where a server would be left to the charge of a novice, but I disable many of the worst modules. EG, Samba, Sendmail, MySQL, printer admin, named admin etc. The reason being it's far better to use the dedicated web interfaces for these, or in the case of Sendmail, leav
      • The named admin module is pretty well done (I use it all the time mostly because it remembers to update the serial number that I forget 1/2 of the time), and the MySQL module works very well (though I prefer phpMyAdmin). What problems have you encountered there? I can't comment on Sendmail (use postfix, sendmail sucks) or Samba (I always edit that one by hand), but have no reason to believe that they're problematic given the simplicity of their config files. The Apache module causes me problems sometimes
        • Well maybe I was a little harsh, I do have to administer linux boxes that are tightly integrated into Windows networks though.

          As an example, I just installed another machine into new a building to handle our company's latest subnet. This entails setting up Samba as a domain member, with the associated domain group/user security, CUPS printing ("point and print" driver downloads using the print$ share etc). It's also needed to handle the wins relaying to the main subnet. Things I don't believe are possible
          • CUPS has a pretty nice web interface already, and SWAT is supposedly good - but smb.conf is pretty easy to edit by hand so I don't use the web intercaces. I can't speak to those directly. I did have an lpd.conf messed up by webmin, but that was because I had the wrong print system selected in webmin's config. :)

            VNC to client workstations is pretty darned handy, though. I used ot have a script that would start the vnc server on the client machine and email a service request to our bug tracking system - t
    • Ref: Amazon has this book for $4.50 less than bn and with free shipping.

      Amazon.com is also attempting to patent the entire internet and will charge you 50 cents "per surf".

      Get the book at a tech friendly place for $24.95

      http://www.bookpool.com/.x/ia7nmm3ps8/ss/1?qs=webm in [bookpool.com]

      Sunny Dubey

  • Admin... by GUI?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:07PM (#7144909)
    Around these parts, we call that Windows mister! And we don't like it, no sir. Devil's work I say, DEVIL'S WORK. A real man just needs a command line, his boots and his brain. Nothing more, nothing less.

  • Lowest slashdot book review rating ever! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:09PM (#7144925) Homepage
    Normally, books get an 8 or a 9 (nobody's perfect, and with so many books there's no reason to review a mediocre one).

    Sounds like the editor may be headed for a one way trip in the candle truck, if you catch my drift.
    • Let's hope he forgot his speaker bracelet, or he'll be calling for help.
    • the editor may be headed for a one way trip in the candle truck

      Oh, God, here we go. Another "all your base", or "In Soviet Russia", etc., tag line for slashdot...

      Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of Speaker Bracelets, though?

    • Re:Lowest slashdot book review rating ever! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:42PM (#7145248) Homepage Journal
      No, no one-way trip for the editor. Jill is a salaried person at Prentice Hall who has a lot of good books to her name. Just as an aside, I think she was moving across the country during this one, and having a baby, etc.

      Also, given that the total revenue to the publisher on any technical title is only expected to be about $150K, the author pretty much gets their way these days.

      Note that the editor file for the book will be uploaded before long, and if you have problems you are welcome to fix them like any Open Source.

      Thanks

      Bruce

      • Jill is a salaried person at Prentice Hall who has a lot of good books to her name. Just as an aside, I think she was moving across the country during this one, and having a baby, etc.

        Bruce,

        The real fun comes from poking fun at people you don't know. Knowing the person kind of kills the joke.

        No offense intended. I'm sure Jill is a competent editor and a wonderful person, I wish her and the baby all the best, and I certainly have no right to judge the quality of her work.

        But I think you're losing sight
        • Right. Don't worry, I'm not offended. Whoever read the google post will get a giggle out of it.

          I'm just trying to be nice to people who I do know, and who generally get very little help from me (the $1000 or so I make from a book wouldn't even pay my consulting rate to write a foreword, so I am mostly off doing other things to pay the bills or working on Open Source).

          Bruce

      • "The author pretty much gets their way" is a very generous way of characterizing weak editing. Now, I haven't read the book, but I just don't know how else to interpret that comment.

        Note that the editor file for the book will be uploaded before long, and if you have problems you are welcome to fix them like any Open Source.

        It seems to me that the people who actually shell out for the book are probably quite uninterested in this, which is problematic since the freeloaders will end up with a better referen

    • I got this from the editor:

      It seems I had a miscommunication with the freelancers doing the production. This book grew from an estimated 400 pages to well over 700. In an attempt to conserve space, we opted to take out the physical pages dividing the book into Parts. I thought it was understood that we would still have Parts indicated in the TOC and at the start of appropriate chapters, but they were mistakenly taken out altogether. I'm going to work to get the parts re-added to the electronic version anyw

  • i don't think i'll buy this book. it looks pretty useless.

    still beats reading the usual press release review though :)

  • Poor Grammar (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:10PM (#7144943)
    I find it funny that the reviewer makes specific mention of the poor grammar in the book and then goes on to show that his is no better.
    • Maybe the book has perfect grammer and the reviewer is the one in error!
    • Could I not complain about the skills of a doctor that kills a patient by transplanting the wrong blood type organs even if I could not preform the transplant at all? A book you pay money for should show better editing and grammar than a post on the internet shouldn't it?

      I have not read the book at all so it may or not be good. I have used webmin and I do think that it is a pretty good tool.

  • Duh (Score:5, Informative)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:11PM (#7144951) Journal
    Why, for example, is the NFS module at chapter 4 while the Samba module is discussed in 43?

    Because NFS is a unix feature, samba is a kludgy addon to play nice with windows.

    Makes perfect sense to me, though I do agree with the criticism of Perens editorial skills as a whole.

    • Re:Duh (Score:2, Insightful)

      by pyr3 ( 678354 )
      The reviewer is trying to say that it would make more sense to more readers to have 'remote filesystems' grouped together. Whether or not Samba is a kludgy add-on, it is in the same general category as NFS.
      • Depends on your point of view, I suppose. They're in the same general category because they can both share directories?

        Most samba boxes I see in the wild are print servers. So maybe samba belongs in the same category as lpr or CUPS? I use it as for centralized authentication, so maybe it belongs somewhere with PAM or LDAP?

        No, keep the unix stuff together, stick samba back in an appendix with appletalk and palmpilot syncing software. It's an interoperability tool, IMO.

    • NFS is no more a "unix feature" than samba is. (If I don't have NFS on my box is it no longer "unix"? If I do have NFS (as my Windows XP box does) does that make it more unix-y?)) It was a "Sun feature" and other OSes added support as "a kludgy addon to play nice with SunOS". Samba is just an implementation of CIFS that attempts to interoperate with the largest CIFS provider...just as early NFS implementations concerned themselves with playing nicely with Sun's NFS.

    • Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:54PM (#7145347) Homepage Journal
      I'm not the copy editor. The way the series works is that I do some acquisition and the overall direction of the series. There is an executive editor at Prentice Hall PTR, Mark Taub, who is in charge of the series and assigns editors to books. Then, there is an editor for the book, in this case Jill Harry, who helps the author publish. But note that technical books are such a marginal business - with 5000 copies being considered "good" sales, that these days publishers pretty much let the author write their book.

      Bruce

      • Should I/we ask Jamie directly if he needs help editing for next release...or contact the publisher, etc. (I'm a tech writer by trade & use Webmin on Linux and OS X.) Jamie's work has helped me, perhaps I can return the favor.

  • I've used it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:14PM (#7144990)
    I work at an Application Web Host Provider which has been providing web services to Fortune 500 companies for the last eight or so years. We have purchased an Enterpise WebMin license (which wasn't that expensive) but overall I'm not too impressed.

    Since we run Windows 2003 on all of our administrative servers it was challenge to get the underlying PHP framework properly. We also found that it would allow us to kill processes on on our Red Hat 7.2 MySQL server clusters. There was also some minor latency effect on a couple of the Sun boxes we host although it sometimes subsides after all.

    I do know that the programmer is planning on extending the application to allow support to SharePoint and other server suites.

    Which is nice.

  • What about security? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I run some apache servers, and I have a friend that runs dns on one of the boxes for me. I use his dns server, and he uses mine, so we have two each. But he's far more competent using foss software than I am, and he teaches linux 1 & 2, unix 1 & 2, and other related classes. So I lean on him for advice and knowledge.

    He's helped to keep my apache and dns servers running for several years now without incident. For him to run dns for me, I've had to give him root access, and there haven't been any

    • Re:What about security? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by adamy ( 78406 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:33PM (#7145151) Homepage Journal
      My take on it is that Webmin is a single program, so it runs as a specific user, but in order to admin multiple services, it needs root permissions. I like webmin, but I don't trust it.

      For example, most Apache setups run apache as nobody (or some other non-login account) and save the config files as root. THis way, if someone hacks apache, they can't rewrite their own config files and get more privs. If someone hacks webmin, they have privs for everything that webmin administers.

      You can make webmin run under a non standard port (actually I think it does by default), routable only locally, and accessable only via ssh. That is fine if you want it for Root only. Ideally, the user space stuff would run as the user specified, and I don't think that is the case.

      Webmin is a step in the right direction. I think it needs some work on the security model to really be usable.

  • A useful tool in many circumstances (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UncleRage ( 515550 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:23PM (#7145071)
    Okay, no surprise that we've already got the obligatory: "CLI or DIE" posts. This is /. afterall. But, if we can put away the over zealous uberlinux advocacy for a minute, I'd like to offer some a positive defense for Webmin.

    As a cat who occasionally works with at risk youth and adult computer literacy -- I personally find Webmin very useful for a simple reason... uhm, it's kind of simple. Especially when your target group is accustomed to working within Windows (and often nothing else).

    Taking a kid (with a short attention span) and expecting him/her to gain immediate appreciation for a command line is like asking a republican to join you at a Pro Hemp rally -- it rarely happens, and almost never for the reasons you hope.

    The same can be said for many small to mid-size business owners. They understand what they know and what they know is graphical representations of the underlying system that they use on a daily basis. Many would like to delve deeper, but simply don't have the immediate understanding of how to.

    Trust me, it's far easier to take someone who thinks of linux as: that really hard to get OS, to take a shot when you can present many of the deeper OS configurations in a safe, understandable environment -- and what could be more understandable for the MTV generation than a browser?

    I find it ironic that a user base as dedicated to expanding desktop acceptance and market share growth for their preferred OS would want to exclude and deride a product that provides growth potential.

    ----

    • I agree... it's a useful tool for any newcomer to Linux. I switched to Linux about a year and a half ago, and it saved me a lot of hassle...

      Even if you're an enthusiastic programmer type, like I was, you still need to get results at some point. Webmin helped me get things working when I wanted them to just work... figuring out config files and command line interfaces might be educational, but new users shouldn't have to do it all at once...

      These days I'm learning how to do without, because when it comes

    • I'd like to express my disagreement with your defense. Making Unix-like systems and the services that run on them look easier to people with a short attention span, or those that have better things to do, is not a good idea. Unix is not simple. Nor is Windows, for that matter, or Mac OS, or BeOS, Eros, VMS, or any other system that uses general-purpose computers for complex tasks.

      Computers, and especially computer networks, are f*cking complex beasts, and handling them properly is difficult. It you mishan

  • remote web server administration uh ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:33PM (#7145163)
    Guess what buttons you should never be clicked on in this webmin page:

    [Stop SSHD] [Stop LPD]
    [Stop FTPD] [Stop LDAP]
    [Stop SMBD] [Stop NFSD]
    [Stop HTTPD] [Stop ETH0]
    Did you find the answer?

  • Electronic content will be made available (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:35PM (#7145178) Homepage Journal
    Electronic content (both open PDF and the editor file) will be made available for this book at phptr.com/perens [phptr.com] . We upload content after a delay so that the retail pipeline is full before another publisher could print the book and kill our market.

    Sorry about the editing stuff, I'll point your review out to Mark, the executive editor. My role is acquisition and overall series direction - I don't get involved in production.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Webmin is cool... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TheDarkener ( 198348 )
    We use Webmin primarily to administer our Bind servers... Like every other GUI, it has it's ups and downs. The ups would be that it (obviously!) makes it easier to administrate those horribly syntaxed named.conf files (Umm, did I put a } in front of the ; or after? Was there a space there? DAMN IT!).. The downs are, obviously, once you know the config files well enough, you have much more control over everything. Webmin, for example, by default puts it's zone files in /var/cache/bind. I was used to putti

  • webmin (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rwven ( 663186 )
    I've used webmin for something like 8 months now. i never had a need for a book but i must say that i LOVE webmin. the program is just about the best thing ever :-P
  • -I use webmin so that I don't have to remember all the man pages and switches for some CLI commands.

    -Webmin shows some switches and configuration possiblities that you may not run across during your normal CLI sessions.

    -It can help tweak your installations without trying a command 5 or 10 times until I get all the switches right.

    -Sometimes just being able to hit the high port # (10000) when all the lower ports are closed can be a life saver too.

    This sig has moved on

  • Webmin to the rescue (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fswsysop ( 645135 )
    While I use a command line for just about everything I do, I have a business partner who can't seem to grasp the concept of the Vi editor, and I have forbidden him from using that atrocity of an editor, Pico. I've had simply no choice but to put webmin on our boxes we distribute only because it's the only way he can manage them. It also helps when you're installing one at a site that doesn't want a maintenance plan, but wants to be able to manage it all easily. Unfortunately, the computing world has chan
    • Why will you forbid your business partner from using pico if that is what he is familiar with? I know vi very well, but I will not like to be your business partner, If my business partner feels quite comfortable with pico, notepad.exe, or kwrite, they can use it. vi doesn't guarantte any secure protection against wrong editting, i am a hardcore unix geek, but i have matured in a while and i believe in allowing anyone to use the most comfortable tool for the job.
  • I've played around with webmin, but I installed it on a new server, and it saved my butt from a two hour drive. I was well away from home when a problem hit, and Kinkos does not have ssh. I wound up using webmin seriously for the first time and fixed the problem. (And four hours later, every password on every server was changed by yours truely because I don't trust those systems. :) ).

    Does the book cover virtualmin, the virtual domain manager in webmin? That's a real time saver right there, and unlike

  • bad no-no (Score:2, Informative)

    by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
    "I found myself engrossed by the information and furious at the appalling grammar and sentence construction, particularly in the introductory chapters"

    Rarely is it good for one to complain about grammar when one does not have a great grasp of it themselves. Any review is suspect in quality when it mentions (esp without examples) problems with "grammar and sentence contruction," and then proceeds to do be riddled with such itself.

    So that I'm not a hypocrit, here is an incomplete list types of errors fou

    • I thought I was a grammar Nazi. Jeez. We're talking about a free public forum posting environment, not a senior thesis composition at Cornell.

      If a reader is able to get the gist of what's being conveyed, that IMHO is the important part. Every now and again I poke a little fun at some of the more illiterate posts, but if you're serious about yours I think it's time you got down off of your high horse.

  • The Book of Webmin (Score:3, Informative)

    by porkrind ( 314254 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @02:07PM (#7145495) Homepage Journal
    It's from No Starch Press. As the reviewer mentions, it is not as comprehensive, but it is well-written and is a great introduction to Webmin for newbies and *gasp* Windows sysadmins coming over to the good side.

    Book of Webmin page at nostarch.com [nostarch.com]

    Full disclusure: I am the acquisitions editor for No Starch Press

  • used webmin for years (Score:2, Informative)

    by kaoshin ( 110328 )
    When you are stuck at a place who's firewall rules don't allow you to shell to your box without using wierd connection methods like http tunnelling, webmin thru SSL is about the best alternative. I set up an email trigger with procmail to turn on the service so it isn't running all the time, and set limits on retries, after I found some logs of some dialup accounts trying to log into it. Anyway, I use it to read my spam proofed email, run apt-get for security updates, and write lyrics (saves me from havin
  • CFengine [cfengine.org] is an excellent tool for configuration management and automation - and it is just celebrating its 10th birthday.

    It can run under *nix as well as Windoze, and has a 'self healing' capability (so that if you removed the sshd from the system, for example, and were not able to login after a reboot - it would detect this [provided you set it up to look for this] and restore it)

    I like to wind things up, then let them go about their merry way...
    • Ummm...You still have to configure the software to start with.

      CFengine also requires configuration, and Webmin provides a nice module for it.

  • Webmin is a dog. Slower than any other web-based administration tool I've ever seen. I have two more servers to remove it from before its completely out of my environment...finally.

  • Webmin makes my job easier! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LodCrappo ( 705968 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @02:29PM (#7145705)
    One thing you might be missing if, like me, you prefer to do everything in a shell: Webmin makes it easy for you to provide limited admin access to the other IT guys in your department who don't know Unix. If you're anything like me, you are probably getting used to being stuck doing boring adminstrative crap on the Unix boxes because noone else is willing to invest the time to learn how to do it. Webmin will set you free! Between the built in modules and the ability to add "custom commands" (really a simple interface that allows CLI challenged folks to pass some arguments to a command and see the results) you can enable any moron to do basic unix system administration tasks. No more phone calls to reset a password, change an MX record, or restart the web server! Create user accounts that limit the modules available, pass out some logins, and all the Windoze guys see is a web interface with buttons, no more scary unix shell.

  • does it clear up port 10000? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jbeamon ( 208826 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:10PM (#7146699)
    Port 10000, Webmin's default port, is reserved by IANA for NDMP usage, a network data management service utilized by some backup softwares. I know this is a Webmin developer issue and not a book author issue, but it deserves to be mentioned in any comprehensive book on Webmin. Webmin installed from its native scripts or from RPM on a box that has backup software will barf at startup. Backup softwares installed after Webmin will barf at their startup. Not a good thing, something Webmin should have accomodated for by now.

    BTW, I use Webmin all the time. Great product. I have wished out loud and in print that Red Hat had spent their "NT Admin migration" energy in a cooperative work on Webmin instead of on their distro's own python tools. redhat-config-print is a fine tool, but CUPS comes with a web interface and Webmin has modules for both CUPS and LPR. Focus, people! Focus!
  • for administering linux. As a quick solution for managing Sendmail, DNS, MySQL and Postgresql, it does the trick.

    For more complex Postgresql and MySQL functions you still need to use other tools.

    Sendmail and Bind are the big things I use Webmin for. Sendmail's configuration files are so convoluted that screwing it up is easy. Webmin eases configuring Sendmail.

    Also, I like using Webmin to add multiple IP addresses (virtual) to a single server. It's alot quicker and cleaner than hand editing the netwo

  • FYI a Couple of Webmin HOWTOs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rimu guy ( 665008 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:54PM (#7147225) Homepage

    I pre-install Webmin on our Linux Virtual Private Servers [rimuhosting.com]. I think its a great tool.

    It is a great help for setting up programs that require a fair bit of configuration. After you're done, you can look at the config changes that Webmin made. Next time around you are a bit more empowered to make the changes via the command-line.

    Unlike some control panel software, it doesn't 'take over' your server. It doesn't overwrite RPMS with its own custom versions. It doesn't make config files 'Webmin only'

    The help from within Webmin itself is not so great. Often you have to have a very good understanding of the service you're configuring before Webmin will make much sense. There is little contextual help in the program.

    I've found The Book of Webmin [swelltech.com] to be quite useful. Plus I've created a few of my own HOWTOs for common tasks:

  • Explanation for the ordering of chapters (Score:3, Informative)

    by jcam2 ( 248062 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @06:51PM (#7148363) Homepage
    I'm the author of this book, so I thought I'd add a comment explaining why the chapters are ordered the way they are. Basically, they follow the categories that modules are grouped under in Webmin itself, so all the system, networking and hardware related topics are covered first (such as users and groups and managing printers), followed by chapters on servers like apache, sendmail and squid.

    Because it wasn't really written to be read all the way through from start to finish like a novel, the ordering shouldn't matter too much to readers anyway :-) Rather, you can just read the first few chapters that explain how to set things up, and then skip to the chapters covering the specific servers that you are interested in.

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