This week we’ll be going over how to install Webmin, a web-interface for system administration. We’ll be using it to configure our DNS, as it is much easier than creating the configuration files manually.

Start out by downloading the latest version of the .tar.gz of Webmin, over on the downloads page. Then decompress and unpack the file.

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.450.tar.gz
gunzip webmin-1.450.tar.gz
tar xf webmin-1.450.tar

Replace 1.450 with the Webmin version you downloaded. We can now change our working directory to the directory we just extracted:

cd webmin-1.450

Now, we can run the Webmin setup script. It is a shell script, so it will prompt us for some configuration options in our SSH window.

./setup.sh /usr/local/webmin

It will ask you a couple of questions, most of which you can just hit “enter” to, to use the default. You’ll need to choose a username and password for accessing the Webmin panel. You can answer “y” when it asks if you want Webmin to load of boot.

Once you have finished installing Webmin, you can access the Webmin panel at http://SERVER_IP:10000/ in your browser. Login using the username and password you choose during the Webmin setup.

Next week

Next week we’ll be going over setting up our DNS to begin accepting domains on our server. Stay tuned.