Introduction

NB: See WebMin for the reasons why Webmin was dropped from Ubuntu, is unsupported and has been known to cause configuration problems.

As at 22/5/2007 using Ubuntu 7.04.

Version 1.340 of webmin and possibly older are available directly as a .deb file via www.webmin.com and can be installed by double clicking the .deb package from Nautilus file manager. When installed, pointing a browser to https://localhost:10000 will load the webmin interface. You can now login as your normal username and password. Any user that can use Sudo permissions can log straigh in.

Older versions of Webmin and Ubuntu

If you install Webmin, and still have Ubuntu root password disabled, you won't be able to log in to the Webmin webpage, as the Webmin root login will be disabled too. To fix this, you need to manually change the Webmin root password.

You can do this in one of two ways:

Procedure 1

After you perform # apt-get install webmin, you have to do the following: Find your webmin binary install directory and webmin configuration directory.

If you don't know where it is, you can find it by running:

$ locate changepass.pl or $ sudo find / -name changepass.pl
$ #and
$ locate miniserv.conf

.

Then follow these instructions to change the password. Change your working path to the webmin binary install directory and then run changepass.pl:

$ cd <webmin-install-dir>
$ sudo ./changepass.pl <webmin-config-dir> root <newpassword>

Note this ONLY changes the webmin root login password and does not change the your 'real' root password.

Procedure 2

To install through synaptic/apt, add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list through a text editor (or software sources in Synaptic):

deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib

• After you perform apt-get install webmin, you have to do the following:

• get your encrypted password from /etc/shadow.

• For example, the following command will output the password to the screen:

    sudo grep your_username /etc/shadow |cut -f2 -d:

• next we edit this file:

    gksudo gedit /etc/webmin/miniserv.users

you will need superuser rights to save it

• replace the asterisk in the first line with the password you aquired from /etc/shadow, so that the line looks something like this:

    root:$1$e/9mjoasd$asdasljjwynSD42

  Save the file and exit the editor after that.

• restart webmin with this command:

    sudo /etc/init.d/webmin restart

  After that, you can go to https://localhost:10000/ in your web browser and login using root as the username and the password of your non-root user.