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Webmin Administrator's Cookbook

By : Michal Karzynski
Book Image

Webmin Administrator's Cookbook

By: Michal Karzynski

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Webmin Administrator's Cookbook
Michal Karzynski
Mar, 2014 | 376 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Webmin Administrator's Cookbook
Webmin Administrator's Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Setting Up Your System
Setting Up Your System
Introduction
Installing Webmin on a Debian-based system
Installing Webmin on an RPM-based system
Installing Webmin on another system
Connecting to Webmin
Installing additional Webmin modules
Monitoring what Webmin is doing
Controlling which system services are started at boot
Inspecting the installed software packages
Installing software packages
Updating the installed packages to the latest versions
Enabling Webmin to send an e-mail
Getting an e-mail when new versions of packages become available
Reading the documentation of the installed software
2
User Management
User Management
Introduction
Creating a Webmin user
Creating a Webmin group with access to specific modules and options
Allowing users to log in to Webmin with the system credentials
Creating Webmin users based on system accounts
Controlling who is currently using Webmin
Creating a system user account
Modifying a user's UID and other information
Temporarily disabling a user account
Creating and editing a system group
Changing a user's password
Exporting users and importing them into another system
Installing Usermin
3
Securing Your System
Securing Your System
Introduction
Setting up a Linux firewall
Allowing access to a service through the firewall
Verifying your firewall by port scanning
Turning off unnecessary services
Verifying the strength of passwords
Disabling root login over SSH
Restricting Webmin access to a specific IP
Connecting to Webmin securely over an SSH tunnel
Closing inactive Webmin sessions automatically
4
Controlling Your System
Controlling Your System
Introduction
Executing a command on the server
Executing a command as another user
Setting a command to be executed in the future
Scheduling a command to run regularly with cron
Creating a panel for the commands that you execute often
Creating a panel with the database commands that you execute often
Running a terminal emulator in the browser
5
Monitoring Your System
Monitoring Your System
Introduction
Viewing and searching through system logfiles
Saving Syslog messages to a file
Adding other logfiles to Webmin
Configuring logfile rotation
Listing recent logins
Receiving an e-mail when a service stops running
Automatically restarting a service that goes down
Monitoring a remote server
6
Managing Files on Your System
Managing Files on Your System
Introduction
Downloading files from the server
Uploading files to the server
Managing files and directories on the server
Changing file ownership and permissions
Setting up network-shared folders for Windows
Mounting a Windows-shared folder
Setting up an NFS-shared volume
Mounting a remote NFS volume
Giving users access to your server via SFTP
Giving users access to your server via FTP
7
Backing Up Your System
Backing Up Your System
Introduction
Backing up configuration files
Restoring configuration files from backup
Automatically backing up configuration files
Creating a backup of a selected directory
Creating a backup of an entire mount point
Backing up to a remote host
Setting up automatic backups
Backing up databases
8
Running an Apache Web Server
Running an Apache Web Server
Introduction
Installing Apache on your system
Restarting Apache
Enabling Apache modules
Creating a static HTML site
Creating a virtual host
Setting options for directories, files, and locations
Creating a password-protected website
Displaying a listing of files in a directory
Redirecting incoming requests
Setting up encrypted websites with SSL
Logging incoming requests and errors
Analyzing logfiles using Webalizer
9
Running a MySQL Database Server
Running a MySQL Database Server
Introduction
Installing the MySQL database server
Allowing access to MySQL over the network
Accessing your MySQL server over an SSH tunnel
Creating a new database
Creating users and granting permissions to databases
Creating a backup of your database
Executing custom SQL commands
Restoring database from the backup
Editing the structure of your database
Editing records in a database
Checking who is using your database server
Installing phpMyAdmin
10
Running a PostgreSQL Database Server
Running a PostgreSQL Database Server
Introduction
Installing the PostgreSQL database server
Locating the PostgreSQL server configuration files
Allowing access to PostgreSQL over the network
Accessing the PostgreSQL server over an SSH tunnel
Creating a new database
Creating users and granting permissions
Creating a backup of your database
Executing custom SQL commands
Restoring a database from backup
Editing the structure of your database
Editing records in a database
Installing phpPgAdmin
11
Running Web Applications
Running Web Applications
Introduction
Generating dynamic pages using CGI
Installing PHP
Changing PHP configuration settings
Displaying PHP errors while debugging
Logging in PHP
Installing WordPress on your server
Installing Drupal on your server
Installing a Django-based application using mod_wsgi
12
Setting Up an E-mail Server
Setting Up an E-mail Server
Introduction
Setting up your server to send and receive e-mails
Setting up secure IMAP access to mailboxes
Setting up a secure SMTP relay for users
Controlling the mail queue
Reading and writing e-mails on the server
Configuring e-mail aliases
Filtering incoming mail using Procmail and SpamAssassin
Debugging e-mail-related problems
Index
Index

Disabling root login over SSH

Allowing the root user to log in over SSH is a potential security vulnerability. An attacker may try to break into your system by trying every password for the root user. It's recommended to disallow the root user's access over SSH and to log in as another user with the sudo privileges to perform administrative tasks.

How to do it...

Perform the following steps to disable root login:

  1. Navigate to Servers | SSH Server | Authentication.

  2. Answer No to the Allow login by root? question.

  3. Click Save.

  4. Back on the SSH Server module screen, click Apply Changes.

How it works...

Webmin updates the SSH configuration file (/etc/ssh/sshd_config) by setting PermitRootLogin to no. From now on, SSH will treat every password entered for the root user as incorrect.

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