Chapter 4 . Learning (Shared web hosting) Basic Administration 127 Webmin
Chapter 4 . Learning Basic Administration 127 Webmin Administration Tool The Webmin facility (www.webmin.com) offers more complete Web-based Linux and UNIX administration features. Although Webmin isn t delivered with some Linux systems that offer their own graphical administration tools (such as Red Hat s Fedora and RHEL), the Webmin project has ported Webmin to run in many different Linux distributions. Those distributions include SUSE, Red Hat (Fedora and RHEL), Debian, Slackware, Caldera OpenLinux, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, and others (see www.webmin. com/support.html for a complete list). For Red Hat Fedora Linux 3, for example, I was able to download a Webmin RPM from Webmin.com. To start the Webmin interface, I just needed the root password after typing the following in my Web browser s location box: http://localhost:10000 After you log in as root user, the main Webmin page displays, as shown in Figure 4-1. Figure 4-1: Webmin offers a Web browser interface for administering Linux. Graphical Administration with Different Distributions Some people fear that once they ve left the familiar confines of their Microsoft Windows system for Linux, they ll be stuck doing everything from a command line. To gain a wider audience, commercial Linux distributions such as Red Hat Linux and SUSE created their own sets of graphical tools to provide an easy entry point for new Linux users. The following sections describe Red Hat s system-config and SUSE s YaST graphical administration tools.