Managing Linux Systems With Webmin

honestpuck writes "Webmin is a pretty neat tool for administering a server using a GUI, particularly remotely. Managing Linux Systems with Webmin, written by Webmin's author, Jamie Cameron, is an extensive look at using and extending it, a good guide not without flaws." Read on for honestpuck's take on this book's good / bad ratio. Managing Linux Systems With Webmin author Jamie Cameron pages 765 publisher Prentice Hall rating 6 - Serious flaws in structure in an otherwise excellent book reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0131408828 summary Good guide to using Webmin flawed by lack of structure

The book is structured as 60 chapters, without any division into sections and I have serious arguments with the order of chapters; why are the chapters about configuring Webmin at the end, for example. That said, the book has a fine index and the usual two-level contents make it a fraction easier to find what you want.

I do, however, have a little digression about the 'Bruce Peren's Open Source Series,' of which this book is a member. Frankly, I think they all need, and deserve, a much stronger hand in editing. With this volume it is the bad structure and order; with "Intrusion Detection Systems with Snort" I found myself engrossed by the information and furious at the appalling grammar and sentence construction, particularly in the introductory chapters. The others in the series look significantly better at first glance but could still use better editing.

Once again we have an author or publisher who throws Linux into the title to make sure that it gets found by the greatest mass of likely readers while the tool described is more (not that I criticise the practice, they want to sell books.) Any *nix system can be controlled using Webmin -- including a great deal of Mac OS X not available through 'System Preferences.' Indeed, I'd recommend the tool to all OS X users who want to gain better control and install better tools for the underlying BSD layer in OS X. I use it myself for just this reason. If you run any other *nix system don't be put off by the 'Linux' in the title: very little of this book is Linux specific.

This one is well written -- Cameron has a light, informative style that I look for in a tech book. The book is well laid out, he gives good examples, good explanations and screen shots.

Cameron starts out with three introductory chapters on Webmin, its installation and security before launching into forty three chapters on using various Webmin modules, but with no real pattern to the order of most of the chapters. Why, for example, is the NFS module at chapter 4 while the Samba module is discussed in 43? I could list another half dozen examples without raising a sweat.

There is then a chapter on Usermin, the Webmin system for ordinary users. This is followed by three chapters on the server clustering system, a few on Webmin configuration and logging before the volume ends with chapters on building modules and themes.

Some of the chapters on the modules within Webmin border on merely stating the obvious, others are extremely useful. Overall they constitute a good manual to using the system, Webmin users who have not spent a great deal of time administering servers will find them particularly useful. The chapters on clustering, using Webmin on multiple servers to perform the same task at the once on many machines, are a good guide to administering and using this useful facility. I found the chapters on writing your own module more than adequate, I'm well under way to writing my first one after only a short time with the system and book.

One final complaint. Where in this book does it tell you how to start Webmin? I didn't want Webmin running from boot, so I answered No to that question and Webmin then ran. Nowhere did it tell me how to restart Webmin after I rebooted my computer and having the script 'start' in the directory specified as the config directory is a little less than intuitive.

Prentice Hall have a page for the book that has an author bio, the Preface and a sample chapter. Though this book is supposedly 'open content,' I couldn't find an electronic version anywhere. It might have helped, as it would give me a way to search the book faster.

In conclusion, this is a good book. With a little work on the structure it would be an excellent book, rising from a rating of six to an eight or nine. the lack of structure makes it unduly hard to find what you are after. I would recommend Webmin, as a tool, to almost everyone running a supported server. If you have no need for the section on clustering and writing your own modules you could buy The Book of Webmin for a few dollars less or browse the same book (even download a PDF version free) at Swelltech, which is less comprehensive but much better structured (and tells you how to restart Webmin). If you want a guide to Webmin that includes notes on writing your own module then this will do until something better comes along, or they release a second edition with greater thought to structure and order.

You can purchase Managing Linux Systems With Webmin from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

$4.50 cheaper and free shipping

[Anonymous Coward]

Ref: Amazon has this book for $4.50 less than bn and with free shipping.

Re:$4.50 cheaper and free shipping

[Wakkow]

Shop around. Couple copies at half.com and cheaper than amazon at overstock.com. Addall is very helpful when buying my textbooks..

Duh

[stratjakt]

Why, for example, is the NFS module at chapter 4 while the Samba module is discussed in 43?

Because NFS is a unix feature, samba is a kludgy addon to play nice with windows.

Makes perfect sense to me, though I do agree with the criticism of Perens editorial skills as a whole.

Re:Duh

[Bruce Perens]

I'm not the copy editor. The way the series works is that I do some acquisition and the overall direction of the series. There is an executive editor at Prentice Hall PTR, Mark Taub, who is in charge of the series and assigns editors to books. Then, there is an editor for the book, in this case Jill Harry, who helps the author publish. But note that technical books are such a marginal business - with 5000 copies being considered "good" sales, that these days publishers pretty much let the author write their book.

Bruce

Electronic content will be made available

[Bruce Perens]

Electronic content (both open PDF and the editor file) will be made available for this book at phptr.com/perens . We upload content after a delay so that the retail pipeline is full before another publisher could print the book and kill our market.

Sorry about the editing stuff, I'll point your review out to Mark, the executive editor. My role is acquisition and overall series direction - I don't get involved in production.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Electronic content will be made available

[Bruce Perens]

The license actually allows you to scan the book, or use the electronic version, and print commercial copies. The only production would be printing. So, we prefer to have all initial orders to bookstores shipped and distributed before someone has a chance to do that.

Bruce

Re:Lowest slashdot book review rating ever!

[Bruce Perens]

No, no one-way trip for the editor. Jill is a salaried person at Prentice Hall who has a lot of good books to her name. Just as an aside, I think she was moving across the country during this one, and having a baby, etc.

Also, given that the total revenue to the publisher on any technical title is only expected to be about $150K, the author pretty much gets their way these days.

Note that the editor file for the book will be uploaded before long, and if you have problems you are welcome to fix them like any Open Source.

Thanks

Bruce

bad no-no

[dAzED1]

"I found myself engrossed by the information and furious at the appalling grammar and sentence construction, particularly in the introductory chapters"

Rarely is it good for one to complain about grammar when one does not have a great grasp of it themselves. Any review is suspect in quality when it mentions (esp without examples) problems with "grammar and sentence contruction," and then proceeds to do be riddled with such itself.

So that I'm not a hypocrit, here is an incomplete list types of errors found:

"more than adequate, I'm well under way" should be "more than adequate; I'm well under way"

"Prentice Hall have a page for the book" should be "Prentice Hall has a page for the book"

"the lack of structure makes it unduly" should be "The lack of structure makes it unduly"

"If you want a guide to Webmin that includes notes on writing your own module then this will do until something better comes along, or they release a second edition with greater thought to structure and order" should be "If you want a guide to Webmin that includes notes on writing your own module, then this will do until something better comes along or they release a second edition with greater thought to structure and order." Seperating "if" and "then" should make sense to IT folk, even if they don't know what a conjunction is. The comma before the word "or" was improper, considering there was only two items being compared.

Oh, I could go on...but eh. I'm sure that my own complaint about the complainer's grammar has problems too...but ya don't see me writing a review on his review. Such things (reviews, that is) should be done with a little more editing...you know, that thing that supposedly (can we believe that?) was lacking in this book's publication.

Re:remote web server administration uh ?

[capnsue]

Webmin runs its own mini web server on some port (often 10000). Stopping httpd isn't going to kill your session.

Re:Lowest slashdot book review rating ever!

[Bruce Perens]

Right. Don't worry, I'm not offended. Whoever read the google post will get a giggle out of it.

I'm just trying to be nice to people who I do know, and who generally get very little help from me (the $1000 or so I make from a book wouldn't even pay my consulting rate to write a foreword, so I am mostly off doing other things to pay the bills or working on Open Source).

Bruce

The Book of Webmin

[porkrind]

It's from No Starch Press. As the reviewer mentions, it is not as comprehensive, but it is well-written and is a great introduction to Webmin for newbies and *gasp* Windows sysadmins coming over to the good side.

Book of Webmin page at nostarch.com

Full disclusure: I am the acquisitions editor for No Starch Press

used webmin for years

[kaoshin]

When you are stuck at a place who's firewall rules don't allow you to shell to your box without using wierd connection methods like http tunnelling, webmin thru SSL is about the best alternative. I set up an email trigger with procmail to turn on the service so it isn't running all the time, and set limits on retries, after I found some logs of some dialup accounts trying to log into it. Anyway, I use it to read my spam proofed email, run apt-get for security updates, and write lyrics (saves me from having to email personal stuff to myself unencrypted over the network or lug a disk around).

Re:I've used it

[lscoughlin]

Uh, webmin is perl, not php.

what the hell are you talking about?

-L

Note from the editor

[Bruce Perens]

I got this from the editor:

It seems I had a miscommunication with the freelancers doing the production. This book grew from an estimated 400 pages to well over 700. In an attempt to conserve space, we opted to take out the physical pages dividing the book into Parts. I thought it was understood that we would still have Parts indicated in the TOC and at the start of appropriate chapters, but they were mistakenly taken out altogether. I'm going to work to get the parts re-added to the electronic version anyway, and to the reprint when the time comes.

Thanks

Bruce

Webmin is pretty good...

[Not The Real Me]

for administering linux. As a quick solution for managing Sendmail, DNS, MySQL and Postgresql, it does the trick.

For more complex Postgresql and MySQL functions you still need to use other tools.

Sendmail and Bind are the big things I use Webmin for. Sendmail's configuration files are so convoluted that screwing it up is easy. Webmin eases configuring Sendmail.

Also, I like using Webmin to add multiple IP addresses (virtual) to a single server. It's alot quicker and cleaner than hand editing the network scripts and interfaces.

Explanation for the ordering of chapters

[jcam2]

I'm the author of this book, so I thought I'd add a comment explaining why the chapters are ordered the way they are. Basically, they follow the categories that modules are grouped under in Webmin itself, so all the system, networking and hardware related topics are covered first (such as users and groups and managing printers), followed by chapters on servers like apache, sendmail and squid.

Because it wasn't really written to be read all the way through from start to finish like a novel, the ordering shouldn't matter too much to readers anyway :-) Rather, you can just read the first few chapters that explain how to set things up, and then skip to the chapters covering the specific servers that you are interested in.