Tutorial

How To Install Webmin on Ubuntu 18.04

Published on May 17, 2018
English
How To Install Webmin on Ubuntu 18.04
Not using Ubuntu 18.04?Choose a different version or distribution.
Ubuntu 18.04

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###Introduction

Webmin is a web-based control panel for any Linux machine which lets you manage your server through a modern web-based interface. With Webmin, you can change settings for common packages on the fly, including web servers and databases, as well as manage users, groups, and software packages.

In this tutorial, you’ll install and configure Webmin on your server and secure access to the interface with a valid certificate using Let’s Encrypt and Apache. You’ll then use Webmin to add new user accounts, and update all packages on your server from the dashboard.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you will need:

Step 1 — Installing Webmin

First, we need to add the Webmin repository so that we can easily install and update Webmin using our package manager. We do this by adding the repository to the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

Open the file in your editor:

  1. sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Then add this line to the bottom of the file to add the new repository:

/etc/apt/sources.list
. . . 
deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib

Save the file and exit the editor.

Next, add the Webmin PGP key so that your system will trust the new repository:

wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc
sudo apt-key add jcameron-key.asc

Next, update the list of packages to include the Webmin repository:

  1. sudo apt update

Then install Webmin:

  1. sudo apt install webmin

Once the installation finishes, you’ll be presented with the following output:

Output
Webmin install complete. You can now login to https://your_server_ip:10000 as root with your root password, or as any user who can use `sudo`.

Now, let’s secure access to Webmin by putting it behind the Apache web server and adding a valid TLS/SSL certificate.

Step 2 — Securing Webmin with Apache and Let’s Encrypt

To access Webmin, you have to specify port 10000 and ensure the port is open on your firewall. This is inconvenient, especially if you’re accessing Webmin using an FQDN like webmin.your_domain We are going to use an Apache virtual host to proxy requests to Webmin’s server running on port 10000. We’ll then secure the virtual host using a TLS/SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.

First, create a new Apache virtual host file in Apache’s configuration directory:

  1. sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain.conf

Add the following to the file, replacing the email address and domain with your own:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin your_email
        ServerName your_domain
        ProxyPass / http://localhost:10000/
        ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:10000/
</VirtualHost>

This configuration tells Apache to pass requests to http://localhost:10000, the Webmin server. It also ensures that internal links generated from Webmin will also pass through Apache.

Save the file and exit the editor.

Next, we need to tell Webmin to stop using TLS/SSL, as Apache will provide that for us going forward.

Open the file /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf in your editor:

  1. sudo nano /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf

Find the following line:

/etc/webmin/miniserv.conf
...
ssl=1
...

Change the 1 to a 0 This will tell Webmin to stop using SSL.

Next we’ll add our domain to the list of allowed domains, so that Webmin understands that when we access the panel from our domain, it’s not something malicious, like a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack.

Open the file /etc/webmin/config in your editor:

  1. sudo nano /etc/webmin/config

Add the following line to the bottom of the file, replacing your_domain with your fully-qualified domain name.

/etc/webmin/config
 . . . 
referers=your_domain

Save the file and exit the editor.

Next, restart Webmin to apply the configuration changes:

  1. sudo systemctl restart webmin

Then enable Apache’s proxy_http module:

  1. sudo a2enmod proxy_http

You’ll see the following output:

Output
Considering dependency proxy for proxy_http: Enabling module proxy. Enabling module proxy_http. To activate the new configuration, you need to run: systemctl restart apache2

The output suggests you restart Apache, but first, activate the new Apache virtual host you created:

  1. sudo a2ensite your_domain

You’ll see the following output indicating your site is enabled:

Output
Enabling site your_domain. To activate the new configuration, you need to run: systemctl reload apache2

Now restart Apache completely to activate the proxy_http module and the new virtual host:

  1. sudo systemctl restart apache2

Note: Ensure that you allow incoming traffic to your web server on port 80 and port 443 as shown in the prerequisite tutorial How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 18.04. You can do this with the command sudo ufw allow in "Apache Full".

Navigate to http://your_domain in your browser, and you will see the Webmin login page appear.

Warning: Do NOT log in to Webmin yet, as we haven’t enabled SSL. If you log in now, your credentials will be sent to the server in clear text.

Now let’s configure a certificate so that your connection is encrypted while using Webmin. In order to do this, we’re going to use Let’s Encrypt.

Tell Certbot to generate a TLS/SSL certificate for your domain and configure Apache to redirect traffic to the secure site:

  1. sudo certbot --apache --email your_email -d your_domain --agree-tos --redirect --noninteractive

You’ll see the following output:

Output
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log Plugins selected: Authenticator apache, Installer apache Obtaining a new certificate Performing the following challenges: http-01 challenge for your_domain Enabled Apache rewrite module Waiting for verification... Cleaning up challenges Created an SSL vhost at /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain-le-ssl.conf Enabled Apache socache_shmcb module Enabled Apache ssl module Deploying Certificate to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain-le-ssl.conf Enabling available site: /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain-le-ssl.conf Enabled Apache rewrite module Redirecting vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/your_domain.conf to ssl vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain-le-ssl.conf ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Congratulations! You have successfully enabled https://your_domain You should test your configuration at: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=your_domain -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The output indicates that the certificate was installed and Apache is configured to redirect requests from http://your_domain to https://your_domain.

You’ve now set up a secured, working instance of Webmin. Let’s look at how to use it.

Step 3 – Using Webmin

Webmin has modules that can control everything from the BIND DNS Server to something as simple as adding users to the system. Let’s look at how to create a new user, and then explore how to update software packages using Webmin.

In order to log in to Webmin, navigate to http://your_domain and sign in with either the root user or a user with sudo privileges.

Managing Users and Groups

Let’s manage the users and groups on the server.

First, click the System tab, and then click the Users and Groups button. From here you can either add a user, manage a user, or add or manage a group.

Let’s create a new user called deploy which could be used for hosting web applications. To add a user, click Create a new user, which is located at the top of the users table. This displays the Create User screen, where you can supply the username, password, groups and other options. Follow these instructions to create the user:

  1. Fill in Username with deploy.
  2. Select Automatic for User ID.
  3. Fill in Real Name with a descriptive name like Deployment user.
  4. For Home Directory, select Automatic.
  5. For Shell, select /bin/bash from the dropdown list.
  6. For Password, select Normal Password and type in a password of your choice.
  7. For Primary Group, select New group with same name as user.
  8. For Secondary Group, select sudo from the All groups list, and press the -> button to add the group to the in groups list.
  9. Press Create to create this new user.

When creating a user, you can set options for password expiry, the user’s shell, or whether they are allowed a home directory.

Next, let’s look at how to install updates to our system.

Updating Packages

Webmin lets you update all of your packages through its user interface. To update all of your packages, click the Dashboard link, and then locate the Package updates field. If there are updates available, you’ll see a link that states the number of available updates, as shown in the following figure:

Webmin shows the number of package updates available

Click this link, and then press Update selected packages to start the update. You may be asked to reboot the server, which you can also do through the Webmin interface.

Conclusion

You now have a secured, working instance of Webmin and you’ve used the interface to create a user and update packages. Webmin gives you access to many things you’d normally need to access through the console, and it organizes them in an intuitive way. For example, if you have Apache installed, you would find the configuration tab for it under Servers, and then Apache.

Explore the interface further, or check out the Official Webmin wiki to learn more about managing your system with Webmin.

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Theo B

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Full disclaimer: this is the Linux server I’ve configured from scratch.

Now, every DigitalOcean tutorial to this point has been remarkably easy. This tutorial is a direct contradiction to the LAMP tutorial for editing the /etc/apache2/sites-available/mydomain.com.conf file. Using the edits shown in this tutorial completely breaks Webmin functionality. Reverting to its original state, from the LAMP tutorial, fixes the security errors.

Ultimately, this worked:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
	ServerName mydomain.com
	ServerAlias www.mydomain.com
	DocumentRoot /var/www/mydomain.com
	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =mydomain.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =www.mydomain.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
</VirtualHost>

You’ll also need to open TCP 10000.

sudo ufw allow 10000/tcp

This allows you to connect via mydomain.com:10000

Is this the proper way? Probably not. But this article hasn’t been updated since 2018 and it’s clearly inaccurate.

Hi, do you have a tutorial for Webmin installation in LEMP stack with SSL configured on Ubuntu 18.04 as well?

In addition to the steps above, I highly recommend to white list ip access to webmin.

Goto Webmin, Webmin Configuration, IP Access Control, put in white list of IP Addresses: e.g. 123.45.0.0/16 1.2.3.4

IMPORTANT:   In "Trust remote IP address provided by proxies":  change to YES.  The default is NO and IP Access Control won't work because Apache is setup as the proxy server in this tutorial).

Hope it helps.

The use of your_domain is confusing. If I have a FQDN as fred.com I wish to create a subdomain webmin.fred.com then in each of the examples / instructions given above I suspect the definition of your_domain could be either webmin or fred.com etc It would be nice to get this clarified.

after add ssl website redirect to Apache2 Ubuntu Default Page! please, help me.

I got to this point:

sudo a2ensite your_domain

Then realized I couldn’t continue with the instructions because I only have an IP address for now (it’s a test server/site).

So I removed Webmin, a2dismod’d proxy_http, and removed the ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse lines from my_domain.conf file.

I ran sudo systemctl restart apache2, reloaded the front page of my site and got:

Error establishing a database connection

Any idea what I did wrong?

Thank you

The instructions worked exactly for my ubuntu 18.04 LTS, except to add

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo add-apt-repository multiverse

before webmin installation as suggested by a user.

I was also able to setup a subdomain by replacing yourdomain in the instructions with subdomain.yourdomain and putting a A record for the subdomain in the DNS zone.

Thank you!

Hello, I am tying to install webmin on my droplet. and i am following this tutorial. and i was able to successfully install webmin on my droplet. but i can not access the webmi with https://mydomain.com:10000 can you please help me to solve this problem. thank you

I followed these steps and was able to log into Webmin at my custom subdomain, but I’m getting the security warning:

Warning! Webmin has detected that the program http://localhost:10000/sysinfo.cgi was linked to from the URL https://webmin.mydomain.com/, which appears to be outside the Webmin server. […]

I added

referrers=webmin.mydomain.com

to the conf file as was instructed. The security warning suggested adding ‘localhost’ to that referrers line as well, but that didn’t work either.

Now it’s:

referrers=webmin.mydomain.com localhost

Is that correct?

I restarted webmin, but the problem remains.

I got so many errors it’s embarrassing to post them here. many of "failed to downloaded from the mirror.digital… " it’s like it cannot reach to download the packages through the ipv6. anyone with similar issue?

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