Webmin is a web-based server management control panel for

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

systems. Webmin allows the user to configure operating system internals, such as users, disk quotas, services and configuration files, as well as modify and control open-source apps, such as

BIND BIND () is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named (pronounced ''name-dee'': , short for ''name Daemon (computing), daemon''), performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting ...

Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source cross-platform web server, released under the terms of Apache License, Apache License 2.0. It is developed and maintained by a community of developers under the ...

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

, and

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

History

Webmin, developed by Jamie Cameron, was first released as version 0.1 in October 1997. It was initially created while Cameron was administering a DNS server and needed a user-friendly interface that would allow users to modify DNS records without granting them root access to the server. Over time, various themes, a dashboard that displays CPU, RAM, and disk space usage with visual gauges, and a sidebar with a search function were also added. Financial support for the Webmin project came from the Linux distribution companies Caldera and MSC Linux, as well as many user contributions of code patches, hundreds of modules, language translations, and user suggestions. In 2019, a backdoor was discovered which would allow a remote attacker to execute malicious commands with root privileges on the machine running Webmin. This backdoor exploit was present on versions 1.882-1.921, when a network admin would enable the password expiration policy. Developers of Webmin believed that the backdoor being introduced was the result of a malicious injection to the code via the online source code repository

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

. Since its release, the Webmin user interface, its appearance, and its many features have changed dramatically using code that has been completely rewritten over the subsequent versions.This includes the overhaul brought by Webmin 2.0, which enforced strict

HTTP Strict Transport Security HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is a policy mechanism that helps to protect websites against man-in-the-middle attacks such as protocol downgrade attacks and cookie hijacking. It allows web servers to declare that web browsers (or other c ...

policy for SSL, and gave options to users upgrading from older versions.

General description

Webmin is largely based on

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

, running as its own process and

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

. It defaults to TCP port 10000 for communicating, and can be configured to use SSL if

OpenSSL OpenSSL is a software library for applications that provide secure communications over computer networks against eavesdropping, and identify the party at the other end. It is widely used by Internet servers, including the majority of HTTPS web ...

is installed with additional required

modules. Webmin is built around over 110 standard modules, which have an interface to the

configuration file A configuration file, a.k.a. config file, is a computer file, file that stores computer data, data used to configure a software system such as an application software, application, a server (computing), server or an operating system. Some applic ...

s and the Webmin server, which makes it simple to add new functionality. Due to Webmin's modular design, it is possible for anyone who is interested to write plugins for

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

configuration. Webmin allows for controlling many machines through a single interface, or seamless login on other Webmin hosts on the same subnet or LAN. Webmin is released under the

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...

. If a plugin for certain tasks is not available, it is possible to open a terminal and perform various task through a

command line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternati ...

(CLI). This is especially useful if using SSH (or similar) is not an option.

Inclusion in distributions

While Webmin was included in the official repositories of some

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s (

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

and

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

), it was removed from those because Webmin was not compatible with the way that the distributions' packages handled configuration files and caused unexpected issues with systems.Ubuntu documentation
Webmin

Related software

Webmin can be expanded by installing modules, which can be custom made. Aside from this, there are two other major projects that extend the functionality of Webmin: # Usermin presents and controls a subset of the features available in Webmin, such as webmail and other user-level tasks, rather than administrator-level tasks. # Virtualmin, which is a web hosting control panel. Virtualmin enables users to host websites under domains, and gives the server admin and the end user a simple interface for managing their websites. Webmin released

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by the Swedish video game developer Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus Persson, Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java (programming language), Java programming language, the ...

Server Module 1.0 in January 2013, and version 1.1 in March 2013. The module presents a very basic GUI for server administration. The Webmin Minecraft server is free and open source with no limitations on simultaneous players.

References

External links