Webmin for users: Usermin

It stands to reason that there would be call for a similar utility to Webmin available to users. Webmin’s extension Usermin answers the call. Webmin is an excellent way of providing systems administrators a way to manage their servers while abstracting away the underlying operating system. Usermin is an interface that offers …

[Anonymous Coward]

BREAKING NEWS!

Usermin has been around since 2002 - thanks for the hot-off-the-press topic!

[James Dunmore]

Just because it's 2002

Doesn't mean that people don't need a refresh.

*nix has been around for decades (ish), some people are just discovering it.

I like webmin - sometimes it doesn't quite configure everything the way you would expect, but it's a nice interface if you don't always want to go through the command prompt. I would assume the same for usermin

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with AC - BREAKING NEWS!

I have been using Usermin for years and quite extensively in 2006/7 so I don't quite know what to make of this report. However "beta" and version numbers beginning with "0" seems to stick in my mind - perhaps it is now finally released with a version number "1"?

[Alex Rose]

(untitled)

And being an acerbic twat has been around since the dawn of civilisation. How ironic that you'd accuse somebody else of being behind the times!

If you already know about Usermin that's great, don't read the article then, For those people that don't know about it this is a useful article.

Trevor is pretty up-front that this group of articles is aimed at people who aren't familiar with administering *nix systems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypocrite much?

I'm not writing an article on it - big difference.

How is that bile tasting now?

Funny - it doesn't say they're for noobs anywhere in the article. Guess I just add it to the list of authors to ignore then.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Hypocrite much?

Easy now boys.

[Alex Rose]

(untitled)

Funny - it doesn't claim that it's breaking news anywhere in the article either.

The bile tastes delicious thank you. What does your comment about "not writing an article on it" mean? What does that have to do with you being an arsey bugger about the article? How does it make any difference? To what does it make the aforementioned difference? In short, what are you talking about?

Oh, if you're going to reply at least have the courtesy/guts not to reply as an Anonymous Coward, it makes it hard to take you seriously knowing that you're too scared to post under your own name.

(FAO the moderator - I know, I know, very childish, but it's Friday for god's sake. If I can't have a little fun on a Friday when can I?)

[Sarah Bee]

Re: (untitled)

If you're going to fight then I must insist you do it naked in lime jelly, for my amusement. Why lime? Because you don't get to ask questions, that's why.

[Trevor_Pott]

@Sarah

I did not need that image, thank you. *shudder*

[Trevor_Pott]

Oi.

It's a blog. Not a news article. I talk about things that I find useful. Not all of them are new. It is a blog aimed at junior sysadmins, SME sysadmins, complete newbies and folk for whom systems administration is part of their duties, but not a full time requirement of their jobs.

[BristolBachelor]

Editor's note

"Editor's note: An anagram of "Trevor Pott sysadmin" is "Nerd vomit spat story". Just saying."

C L A S S ! ! !

It must be friday, and I need a new keyboard.

Note to editor: Do also check posts by Andrew "we don't need no stinkin comments" Orlowski?

Where are the editors notes on them then?

[Trevor_Pott]

@BristolBachelor

It is quite good. One thing you have to give the editors around here, they are creative!

Cheers to the El Reg editing team.

[John Butler]

Virtualmin

Leaving the lads to squabble...

VirtualMin is very cool too

[Trevor_Pott]

So is cloudmin

Enough with the spoilers though...

[KHobbits]

Virtualmin

Because the main version is pay to play most people gloss over the GPL version of virtualmin, but its a great tool. As mentioned above webmin has the ability to give selected powers to individual users, the virtualmin extension, expands this to include all the tools a user would need to handle web hosting, such as mail/mysql/apache details for a domain or subdomain, even the ability (if you allow it to create sub users and sub domains). It's a full blown alternative to cPanel. There is also an install script available which completely rolls out and configures everything a shared hosting server would need (although I recommend a little bit of time spent tightening the security).

[tuna 1]

Thanks, I Never Noticed Usermin

I've used webmin since I started playing with Dapper Server. Never noticed the Usermin link on their site. Thanks for the info.

[James Woods]

if I recall correctly

usermin sorta hit a snag when webmin started to commercialize other parts of their software.

I think webmin has something else too that helps you combine the power of your server daemons in one snazzy program but it requires or at least the last time I checked required alot of work from the admin to make it work where-as webmin typically works out of the box.

Webmin/Usermin at this point could be far beyond what they currently are but since there is no running competition for this type of thing im not quite sure how relevant usermin is now in 2010?

It's good for webmail and sending plan ahead emails?

Squirrelmail is good for webmail too and it doesn't require much to configure. And the only people I can imagine would be planning emails for future delivery would be spammers.

I know I never found myself wanting to send a delayed e-mail.

You can usually get cPanel for $20-30/month and for all the work you'll have to do to make webmin/usermin work as well it's worth it.

Love webmin though.

[Kurgan]

Webmin?

If you think webmin (or whatever web-something that pretends to turn every user in a sysadmin) is a great idea, then go on, but please don't bother the REAL sysadmin when your system crashes and burns. The REAL sysadmin will be there laughing at you while editing config files with VIM (or EMACS, if you like).

[cmaurand]

Its a resource hog, too

Its Perl, which is good, but Perl is a resource and memory hog.