1.2. Who Should Use Webmin?

Webmin was written for use by people who have some Linux experience but are not familiar with the intricacies of system administration. Even though it makes the process of creating UNIX users or managing the Squid proxy server easy, you must first have some idea of what a UNIX account is and what Squid does. The average Webmin user is probably someone running it on their Linux system at home or on a company network.

The program assumes that you are familiar with basic TCP/IP networking concepts, such as IP addresses, DNS servers, and hostnames. It also assumes that the user understands the layout of the UNIX filesystem, what users and groups are, and where user files are located. If you use Webmin to manage a server like Apache or Sendmail, you should first have an idea of what they can do and what kind of configuration you want completed.

Webmin itself runs with full UNIX root privileges, which means that it can edit any file and run any command on your system. This means that it is quite possible to delete all of the files on your system or make it un-bootable if you make a mistake when using the program, especially if you are configuring something that you don't understand. Even though Webmin will usually warn you before performing some potentially dangerous action, there is still plenty of scope for causing damage.

Even though it can be used on a system with no connection to the Internet, Webmin does benefit if your Linux system is on a network. It can download new software packages, Perl modules, or even new versions of Webmin for you, if connected. A permanent high-speed connection is best, but even a dial-up connection is good enough for most purposes.

Because Webmin runs with root privileges, you must be able to log in to your system as root to install and start it. This means that it cannot be used on a system on which you have only a normal UNIX account, such as a virtual web server that is shared with other people. You might, however, be able to get your system administrator to install and configure it for you.

If you are already an experienced UNIX system administrator, Webmin may not feel like the tool for you because using it is generally slower than directly editing configuration files and running commands. However, even the experts can benefit from its automatic syntax checking and the actions that it can perform automatically.

It is also possible to give different people different levels of access to Webmin, so that an experienced administrator can use it to safely delegate responsibility to less-skilled subordinates. For example, you might want someone to be only able to manage the BIND DNS server and nothing else, while giving yourself full access to the system and all of Webmin's functions.