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I wouldn't even really agree that screen resolution is a system administration task; it is really more of a software configuration task. The best system admin tool for Linux/Unix or MacOSX bar none, IMHO, is Webmin. It has more modules and is easier to use for more administration tasks than anything else I've run across.

That's true, the speed is relative to the track being burned. On my 16x burner, if I burn an iso using webmin I notice it starts out at 12x and eventually, about halfway through the burn, it'll jump up to 16x or a little faster. I think this is due to the location on the disc it's burning (distance from the center).

Then there's redhat's apacheconf , which is a GTK based GUI for apache, or also linuxconf which uses Xwindows, curses or a web interface, or you could use webmin via a web interface, all open source tools. Personally I like to do it by hand as I haven't come across anything that lets me specify php settings per virtual host, but that's just me.

but I use webmin

And also "over the web" configuration managers ( configure Apache, using Apache :-) )- eg WebMin (screen shot of apache module).

And also "over the web" configuration managers ( configure Apache, using Apache :-) )- eg WebMin (screen shot of apache module).

Step 2: Redirect traffic from your family domain to the dynamic one.

Step 3: Install Linux on a nice 486 with ~32 MB RAM and at least a 1 GB HD

Step 4: Install apache , sendmail, perl, and maybe webmin if you are completely unfamiliar with Linux.

Step 5: If you want a web front end for your email system, try out NeoMail

Step 6: That's about it, you'll have to mess with the configration files before it runs, but it's worth it. The fact that all your email is automagically downloaded to your local machine is just an added bonus.

There are also third party modules for things like netsaint, firewalls, etc.; the API is out there if you want to do your own as well.

1. Get Webmin. Setup Webmin. Use Webmin. Show Webmin to all other administrators. Teach them Webmin. Eventually, when the time is right, show Webmin to management. Drive home the idea that Webmin is a one-stop-shopping, simplified, and robust server management web app that anyone can grasp (if not master). Point out that Webmin supports Unix (including OSX) but not Windows servers (except for Windows with Cygwin). Over time, point out that on the server side, the few remaining Windows servers take much longer to manage and are less reliable then the multitude managed under Webmin.
2. www.webmin.com/webmin

The complaints about Webmin is that it isn't perfect. It doesn't solve the desire for a universal config mechanism or encourage the editing of files directly. OK. It doesn't. Yet, it exists now and is a lifesaver when using multiple UNIXs. Anyone who wants to know what any Webmin module is doing probably also knows how to use find -cmin, ls -lart, or read the module itself since they tend to be in Perl.

When a universal config comes along, I'll use it and guess what -- it'll work with WebMin.

Webmin might not be the right thing, but it is good enough for a vast number of uses.

Have a look. webmin

Try webmin.
Even if you are quite adept at editing conf files by hand, webmin can be a real convenience.
It is a GUI administration tool for a lot more than just Apache. (mounts, samba, sendmail, packages, perl modules, firewalls, whatever...)
It reads from and writes to the same files that you would normally edit by hand, plus it does a better job than I normally do with vi.
It's web-based, has its own server and is written in perl. (Minimal resource usage and very good security.)
I can install it to all of my machines and administer them from anywhere, or just on my own network, if I like. (SSL is an option, too.)
It's sort of ugly to look at, but it works really well - It's one of the first things I install on any Linux box I set up.

The samba thing that got me confused at first was the user/share settings (so simple with hindsight)... if you are on a non-authenticated network, try just changing security = user to security = share in /etc/samba/smb.conf. I eventually figured out the error after meddling with samba more and googling my way through it. I personally love webmin as well for easy set up for trivial system things (changing the clock, etc.) Just install the rpm and then go to http://addressofyourlinuxbox:10000 and you can tweak all manner of things in a nice user friendly web environment.

Disclaimer: I'm the author and v1.1 needs to be released soon :)

A non-techie will never figure out the mess that is /etc. Until there are applets and/or wizards for every single file in /etc, Linux will not be ready for prime time.

I, on the other hand, dread the day that there is a wizard for every /etc file.

There are a couple trends I hate about GUI config, and certainly not all config programs are guilty of this, but I have noticed all of these "in the wild" at certain times:

• When the GUI config tool is intended as the primary configurator, and the actual config file is in XML or binary, or documentation on the commands is sparse.
• When the GUI config tool completely overwrites the existing configuration to achieve it's functions instead of reading in the existing file and delicately changing just the lines needed. (linuxconf is guilty of this, especially to the sendmail setup where it practically takes over.)

Although nobody has made one that I've seen, I'd love to see a configurator that has the original text config file in a window pane below or beside the main options panel, and update it as options are changed, so you can see the actual commands and what is being changed. Maybe even color highilight the changed lines. That would rock.

What we need to do is start a project which will create these applets, with a consistant look and feel, which will appear in a control panel when an app is installed.

We don't need to _start_ anything, just join one of the existing projects if you want to help: linxuconf, gnomecc, webmin, etc.

I've found Webmin to be about the coolest configuration tool I've seen. Check it out.

Well yes Apache.org did get compromised but NOT due to an Apache server problem. It was a complicated hack and took advantage of a configuration problem (mainly Apache had their incoming FTP tree viewable in their web space among others) Or perhaps you're referring to another event.

Yes, Apache is not all nice point and click, but there ARE tools out there (Webmin's Apache module is NICE) to make administration easier. Yes Apache has had vulnerabilities in teh past, but considering its widespread use and installed base, I'm extremely impressed with how secure its been - upgrades to Apache are rare which reduces TCO.

Yes, all systems and software have problems. But overall, I'll stick with OSS where appropriate and regarding your issues with MySQL and Apache, a few simple posts to mailing lists or news groups related to the software will often get your problem fixed faster than most 3rd party setups.

1) Get:
- 1U 4bays rack mountable chassis from Sliger Designs
- 3WARE 6410 Escalade IDE controller (Choice of 0/1/0+1/5 Raid) on a 90 PCI riser card
- 4 x 75/100GB ATA100 drives (maybe DiamondMax)
- MicroATX mainboard with NIC and Video integrated on board (invest in RAM not in processing power - 750/850MHZ should be more than sufficient)
- Minimum Linux/*BSD OS booting from a read-only 16 to 64MB flash IDE device, loading kernel and a customised Ramdisk root filesystem, mounting Raid devices in R/W mode, starting SAMBA (and/or Netatalk).
A good starting point is Linux Bootdisk HOWTO

2) Choose 0+1 Raid and you get quick and completely redundant 150/200GB storage that can survive the full failure of one disk.

3) Want remote grafical managment from a standard web browser? Go for Webmin or SWAT.

Check out JShock. It is a Java system for creating and displaying interactive web-based presentations similar to Shockwave. It's not exactly what you want, but it's free (and GPL'd I think).

All MS GUI's SUCK

Maybe it would be possible to make a good GUI?

I have found that Webmin provides a GUI for Apache. But have never tried using it.

Apache = free

Interchange = free

[My|PG]SQL = free

linux, FBSD, etc = free

These products together outweigh commercial alternatives (with six figure price tags) by a long shot...

Oh, and there ARE GUI config packages for Apache.

Not to mention the fact that an experienced admin can administer an enterprise-level server much more efficiently from a shell. How about remote control? How much bandwidth does an SSH connection use in comparison with RDP?

If you can see past the FUD and misinformation and shotty benchmarks, you will notice that high product prices doesn't mean high quality.

Apache hasn't introduced any significant user features in two years. (For example, has Apache even managed to deliver a standard GUI configuration tool in all this time?)


Yes and? When was the last time you heard of a major security flaw plaguing Apache? I wanna slap you people!

blah

The thing is, with Perl and Java, the language's runtime handles memory allocation/de-allocation. And barring a bug in the language itself, there's no way an app written in such language can overflow a buffer. Either the buffer will be grown dynamically to fit the data, or the app will get an exception. But corruption of unrelated data cannot happen in this way.

The postfix/cyrus combination already offers most of what you want. Although I haven't looked into the web based part yet, the management is probably best done with webmin. For reading mail from the web, there's so many perl scripts floating around I'm not even going to bother picking one for you...

Webmin was released under the BSD license from the start and was then acquired by Caldera. Caldera left the license used by Webmin alone and continues to contribute to the project.

Webmin is included in most of Caldera's ``server'' Linux offerings and can be installed on almost every UNIX derivative.

Most of Webmin's modules are licensed under the GPL rather than BSDL.

The URL is www.webmin.com/webmin and information about Caldera's involvement and the bit about the license is under the Introduction to Webmin page.

Samba includes a web-based administration called SWAT (Samba Web Administration Tool) that can be added to inetd and services. Webmin also has a module for Samba.

ACK! I hit 'submit' when I was shooting for 'preview'. Here are the correct URLS

webmin

e-smith

I agree, Linuxconf is pretty worthless, it's too crufty and finicky to be really useful. My vote goes with Webmin. I've found that it is generally respectful of existing config files and existing comments and that the modules that come with it implement the full range of config options available. Access to the various config modules can be subdelegated and all access can be logged, very useful in corporate environments. It is implemented entirely in Perl and can be easily updated over the Internet. It does not require much for package management as it only installs stuff into /etc/webmin.d and wherever you uncompress the tarball (/usr/libexec/webmin). It can also be secured via SSL (it's web based) so that your passwords are not sent in the clear (if you allow access by machines other than localhost).

Just my $0.02

Alabanza.com and their spin-off YourWebHost.com both show their excellent control panel, developed by Alabanza.com, with US and Chinese programmers. Alabanza now wholesales hosting (with control panel) to a bunch of resellers, who market and bill for Alabanza.
I was told by Alabanza's techsupport two years ago that the control panel was started from Webmin, and quickly branched. I think Alabanza called it Webmiester for a while. Like Webmin, the Alabanza Control Panel is framework supporting extension modules all written in perl/cgi.

-Nathaniel

http://www.webmin.com

It was a breakthrough in one important area: it made Unix easy to use. More specifically, it was a Unix system easy enough for one's grandmother could use

If you say that they were the first machines to bring a Xerox/Macintosh style UI to a commercial, UNIX-based platform, I think that would a bit more accurate. But even then, Smalltalk provided that kind of UI on UNIX platforms years before NeXT.

But there are many other styles of easy-to-use UIs. Your ATM probably runs on UNIX--is it difficult to use or administer? Many uses of UNIX in banking, offices, and other applications have similar, highly specialized and very easy-to-use UIs. And I have seen many non-computer folks become productive with the UNIX command line with no problems; it's not rocket science and only takes a few hours.

Linux today is better, but [...] there's still too much resorting to the shell and the editing of configuration files.

If you use something like Webmin, you get an easy-to-use, browser-based administration system for Linux. I don't think even NeXT has come close to that kind of simplicity.

Still, I don't want to diminish the significance of the NeXT machine. It was an excellent engineering achievement and its legacy lives on both in Java and in MacOS X.

I want a web server; not necessarily to be a professional web server admin: I've found the apache module of webmin incredibly helpful if you want to run apache but are less concerned with managing the web server itself.

Here is a screenshot of the webmin module.

PS: webmin is itself a great tool if you want to play with multiple distributions and not worry too much about the individual conf file idiosyncracies. Try it at webmin.

I want a web server; not necessarily to be a professional web server admin: I've found the apache module of webmin incredibly helpful if you want to run apache but are less concerned with managing the web server itself.

Here is a screenshot of the webmin module.

PS: webmin is itself a great tool if you want to play with multiple distributions and not worry too much about the individual conf file idiosyncracies. Try it at webmin.

Monty

While I prefer to edit by hand myself, Webmin says it supports Freebsd, openBSD, BSDI, possibly others, I just took a quick look at their supported os list. Might wanna post a positive/negative review here depending on your opinion of it, so people like me might consider it when needing to admin lots of boxen. :)



bash: ispell: command not found

It is certainly well and good that the "plumbing down below the GUI" looks like BSD, as that represents a well-understood and well-regarded set of "plumbing." That means that you get easy ports of "server side" stuff like Apache, PostgreSQL, Perl, Python, and such.

But with Apple having had some difficulty deciding what their GUI strategy would become, it's going to be a bit problematic to just plain choose a GUI. Do you go with:

• Yellow Box?

  Oops. No longer available.

• OpenSTEP?

  Oops. No longer available.

• Aqua?
• Quartz?
• Carbon?
• Cocoa?

The really critical thing about all of these options are that none of them, save, perhaps for OpenSTEP, via GNUstep , has any ability to run on any of the existing Unix-like systems.

In effect, in order to use existing Unix apps in GUIed manner on MacOS-X, you need to create a GUI from scratch and layer that on top somehow.

That may be nicely supportive of "web-oriented" applications; I'm sure WebObjects will work nicely on OS-X, as will the sysadmin tool WebMin, and so long as you've got a good web browser, that can provide a way of doing a bunch of useful things.

But that does not provide you with a port of the latest Sid Meier game, nor does it provide a way of running the latest SAP GUI.

webmin, which I use almost as much as a text editor, supports https. It's cooler than linuxconf too... http://www.webmin.com/webmin/ I'm suprised it's not mentioned anywhere else here...

The only remote admin tool you need. Well, except for an SSH tunnel to encrypt it.

It's sad to say, but OpenBSD just didn't work for me. It's an awesome OS, and I wish I had a reason to use it, but when I set it up as a Firewall/NAT box, the ftp proxy simply didn't work. Not only does the ftp proxy not work for me, but appearently it doesn't work for a lot of people, no one knows why either, it just arbitrarily decides if it wants to work on your system or not. Not only that, but I installed Webmin, a sweetass web based administration tool onto my OpenBSD box just to see what it was like on OpenBSD, and you wanna know what it's like? Two words: KERNEL PANIC. Webmin (v .77) actually kernel panicked my OpenBSD box. I was able to reproduce it over and over.

Needless to say, I installed RedHat on it and havn't had a problem since, FTP proxy and all that good shit works fine, and no kernel panics. It's a shame though, OpenBSD seems like a much better designed OS, and it's easy as shit to use and learn....

Test based configuration isn't the only choice. You can also use webmin, which is a Web based configuration tool that lets you configure many system components (sendmail, bind, samba, ... and also apache) using a user-friendly browser frontend

I noticed that they said linuxconf was unweildly ( my word) for them. I would suggest webmin over linuxconf in most situations anyways. With support for ssl and being accessable by web browser ( i know linuxconf is as well) it makes remote admin a charm.

That leads to my second point. I've never worked with novell but why run a gui on a server? I still can't get past this. The key to *nix in general that I find to be most appealing is true remote admin capabilities. Do it all over ssh and there's the secure connection you need. Is remote MMC encrypted? I ask because I haven't had a chance to play with it.
It just seems to me that a gui is a bottleneck in a server.

Cobalt Linux release 4.0 (Fargo)
Kernel 2.0.34C50_SK on a mips

Of course this is just a "normal" Qube2 not a gateway one but it's a cutey nevertheless. It needs to be said however that the /.'er could achieve Qube results with a penguin computing box and webmin as well - just not as cute =) - And occasionally we need to present to the "Board" =)

a decent article in general, but there are a couple things that should be mentioned.

round 1
Red Hat offers several new installation options, including Custom, Workstation, and Server.
this isnt new to 6.1, i know 5.2 had them, possibly earlier versions as well. they also fail to mention kickstart, which allows you to create a file specifying an installation procedure and then use that file to do unattended installs. as they later point out, unattended installs are a new feature of openlinux 2.3.

Red Hat doesn't include software to partition your hard drive.
last time i checked, fdisk, cfdisk, and sfdisk were all included. as is fips, which will allow you to repartition without destroying data. granted these arent "graphical" in the way a newbie would prefer, but they are included.

round 2
Yes, email tech support (offered by Caldera) or postings on Usenet deliver somewhat speedy answers, but there's nothing like a bit of human contact when you feel stumped, frustrated, and ready to crawl back to Windows.
they apparently dont know about irc ("chat rooms" for the less informed). its fairly easy to find at least one person who can, if nothing else, offer insight to a problem. the major irc networks all have linux channels, afaik.

round 4
not so much a critisism, but there are tools out there that can be downloaded and installed with little hassle to facilitate remote administration. check out Webmin for one...


anyone else catch anything (other than the reference to the development kernel, 2.3.x)?

--Siva

Keyboard not found.