This edition of Techblog is about a awesome program for every user! Whether you are a geek (power user) or a normal user, you are going to love this – Webmin !

This amazing tool allows you to edit users, disk quotas, services and configuration files. It is written in Perl and has its own process . It also has a web server running. Essentially there are two modes of operations (just like WHM/Cpanel). You have a Usermin which allows you to perform the user-level tasks (say checking / configuring mail) and a Virtualmin which enables you to do domain hosting (complete website control panel).

Download

You can download it in different formarts depending on your needs:

RPM (for Redhat, Fedora, CentOS, SuSE or Mandrake Linux)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.480-1.noarch.rpm 15M

Debian (Debian or Ubuntu)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.480_all.deb 14M

RPM source (Redhat, SuSE, Fedora, CentOS or Mandrake Linux)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.480-1.src.rpm 14M

All Unix-like systems (tar/gzip format)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.480.tar.gz 14M

Solaris http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.480.pkg.gz 14M

ZIP (Windows)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.480.zip 18M

The interesting feature of this program is that it will allow you to edit configuration files like /etc/passwd.

Not only that you can even control you harware, using this. Here is a list that summurizes some of the tasks that you can do with this.

1. Manage CD Burner
2. Linux Bootup Configuration
3. Printer Administration
4. SMART Drive Status
5. Adjust System Time
6. Linux RAID management
7. Logical Volume Management
8. Configure GRUB Boot Loader
9. Perform Partitions on Local Disks
10. Configure Voicemail Server

The screenshot shown below shows the management of DHCP server.

Here is another illustration of tast #3

The package comes along with many preinstalled packages:

• ADSL Client
• Apache Webserver
• BIND 4 DNS Server
• BIND DNS Server
• Bootup and Shutdown
• CD Burner
• Change Language and Theme
• File Manager
• GRUB Boot Loader
• LDAP Server
• PHP Configuration
• Perl Modules
• SSL Tunnels

For performing advanced level tasks, you can download other packages from the website. If you still in Windows, here is a link that might help you

http://doxfer.com/Webmin/WindowsInstall

But you may need these softwares for the smooth running : ActiveState Perl, Process.exe, Cygwin and Win32::Daemon Perl module. You can also install few more softwares / solutions for better management – PHP for windows, Python for windows , OpenLDAP+OpenSSL for windows, BIND for windows, OpenSSH for windows, Apache (+ MySQL or PostgreSQL) for windows , PPM repositories ,

Inshort, it is difficult to install it in M$ than in Linux (in most cases – binaries – it is one-click-install)!