How to install Webmin on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Linux

Objective

The objective is to install Webmin on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Linux along with required Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack.

Operating System and Software Versions

Operating System: – Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Linux
Software: – Webmin 1.870 and higher

Requirements

Privileged access to your Ubuntu System as root or via sudo command is required.

Scenario

This guide assumes the following scenario:

open firewall port 10000 or disabled firewall. See appendix below on how to open port 10000 on your UFW firewall
webmin server can be resolved via hostname webmin.linuxconfig.org. Confirm your DNS settings before continuing.

Difficulty

EASY

Conventions

# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Instructions

Install Prerequisites

The only main prerequisite for running a Webmin on your server is installed and running LAMP stack. Fortunately, installation of LAMP on Ubuntu is a trivial task:

$ sudo apt install wget

You will be prompted for a MySQL administration password. Simply enter it and take a note of it. You will need this password later within Webmin to access your databases.

Install Webmin

To install webmin on Ubuntu 18.04 we first need to add Webmin’s external repository and verification key signature:

$ wget -qO- http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc | sudo apt-key add
$ sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib"
$ sudo apt update

Once ready install Webmin by using the following linux command:

$ sudo apt -y install webmin

The last lines of the Webmin installation output will reveal instructions on how to access Webmins interface. Example:

Webmin install complete. You can now login to https://webmin.linuxconfig.org:10000/
as root with your root password, or as any user who can use sudo
to run commands as root.

Access Webmin web Interface

To access Webmin’s web interface start up your web browser and open the URL as shown during the Webmin installation process. Your browser will most likely complain about invalid HTTPS certificate.

This can be ignored or alternatively you can create Let’s Crypt certificate using webmin Webmin -> Webmin Configuration -> SSL Encryption -> Let's Encrypt once you login.

untrusted SSL certificate - webmin ubuntu 18.04 bionic

Appendix

Open port 10000 with UFW

Given that your UFW is already enabled you can allow incoming traffic from any source to TCP port 10000 using the following linux command:

$ sudo ufw allow from any to any port 10000 proto tcp