Introduction
Webmin is a modern web control panel that allows you to administer your Linux server through a browser-based interface. With Webmin, you can manage user accounts, configure DNS settings, and change settings for common packages on the fly.
In this tutorial, you’ll install and configure Webmin on your server and secure access to the interface with a valid certificate from Let’s Encrypt. You’ll then use Webmin to add new user accounts, and update all packages on your server from the dashboard.
Prerequisites
To complete this tutorial, you will need:
- One Ubuntu 18.04 server. This server should have a non-root user with sudo privileges and a UFW firewall configured. Set this up by following our Ubuntu 20.04 initial server setup guide.
- Apache installed by following our tutorial on How To Install the Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 18.04. As you follow this prerequisite guide, be sure to configure a virtual host.
- A Fully-Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), with a DNS A record pointing to the IP address of your server.
Step 1 — Installing Webmin
First, update your server’s package index if you’ve not done so recently:
sudo apt update
Then we need to add the Webmin repository so that we can install and update Webmin using our package manager. We do this by adding the repository to the /etc/apt/sources.list file.
Open the file in your preferred editor. Here, we’ll use nano:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Then add this line to the bottom of the file to add the new repository:
. . .
deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib
Save the file and exit the editor. If you used nano, do so by pressing CTRL+X, Y, then ENTER.
Next, you’ll add the Webmin PGP key so that your system will trust the new repository. In order to do that, though, you must install the gnupg1 package, which is GNU’s tool for secure communication and data storage.
Following that, download the Webmin PGP key with wget and add it to your system’s list of keys:
wget -q -O- http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc | sudo apt-key add
Next, update the list of packages again in order to include the now-trusted Webmin repository:
sudo apt update
Then install Webmin:
sudo apt install webmin
Once the installation finishes, you’ll be presented with the following output:
Output
. . .
Webmin install complete. You can now login to
https://your_server:10000 as root with your
root password, or as any user who can use sudo.
Note: If you installed and enabled ufw during the prerequisite step, you will need to run the following command in order to allow Webmin through the firewall:
sudo ufw allow 10000