[GRLUG] webmin

[Michael Mol]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Benjamin Flanders <flanderb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I remember back in the Mandrake days webmin was an oft used administration
> tool.  I don't hear about it much these days.  In fact ubuntu doesn't even
> have it in it's repository.   I just looked it up and found it is still
> being updated.  Is there a reason that it isn't used much now days?  Is it a
> constant hack vector?  Is there something better?

Webmin is an OK tool if you don't intend for any of your
administrators to modify configuration files using any tools other
than Webmin, ever.

Which is to say, if anyone decides it's a good idea to change a
setting, and modifies the setting directly, Webmin will stomp all over
it.

Such is true with just about any file-modifying management tool,
really; if you use it to manage something, you need to use _only_ it
to manage that thing.

Personally, I advocate learning how to configure things directly,
rather than using a Webmin interface to do it. You're not subject to
bugs and limitations of your management tool, and it's far easier to
share pieces of your configuration when you're soliciting other people
for assistance, be it in IRC or on a mailing list.

(Depending on your environment, management tools may make sense. But
that's _really_ dependent on your environment. Webmin may make sense
in one context. Puppet in another. Chef in another. It depends.)

-- 
:wq