How to Install Webmin on Ubuntu Server

Webmin is an open source Web based system administration tool for Linux systems. Webmin is an easy to use and because it is web based, Webmin can be used to control your Ubuntu server remotely from any computer running a browser.

In this tutorial we are going to install Webmin on Ubuntu 16.04 using the Webmin apt repository.

To install Webmin on Ubuntu, perform the following steps:

  1. Configure Ubuntu Webmin apt repository.
  2. Install GPG key.
  3. Install Webmin with apt-get command.

Webmin is not part of the default Ubuntu apt repository, so your first step will be to add the Webmin repository to your apt sources file.

Open the /etc/apt/sources.list file in a text editor and add the following lines to it:

deb https://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib

Download and install the GPG key:

wget -qO - http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Now you can install Webmin with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https
sudo apt-get install webmin

From the web browser you can connect to https://ip-address:10000 to access Webmin interface.

Install Webmin on Ubuntu Server

To perform administrative tasks, you need to login using a user account with administrative privileges.

Start/Stop Webmin Service

Webmin on Ubuntu runs as a service, hence we can manage the Webmin service with systemctl command:

To start Webmin service, run:

systemctl start webmin.service

To stop the service, Type:

systemctl stop webmin.service

To view service status, Type:

systemctl status webmin.service
● webmin.service - LSB: Start or stop the Webmin server
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/webmin; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2017-12-08 21:39:47 IST; 4min 32s ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 945 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/webmin start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 512)
   Memory: 260.1M
      CPU: 1min 27.630s
   CGroup: /system.slice/webmin.service
           └─1155 /usr/bin/perl /usr/share/webmin/miniserv.pl /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf

Webmin allows you to perform administrative tasks on your Ubuntu server, such as managing users, networking, installing software, managing services, server backups, and monitoring system activity.