1.3. How and Why Was it Developed?

Webmin, the program, was designed and created by me, Jamie Cameron—the author of this book. I started it back in 1997 and released the first version (0.1) in October of that year. Since that time, its user interface, features, and appearance have changed dramatically, and almost all of the code has been re-written. The basic concept of a web-based administration tool, however, has been the same since that very first release.

I started writing it when I was the administrator for a system running a DNS server and was spending a lot of time updating the server's configuration files to add new host records requested by users. Giving them the root password was not an option—they did not have the experience to properly edit the zone files and re-start the server. The solution was a simple web interface that would display existing DNS records and allow them to be edited, created, and deleted. Users could then safely be given access to this interface to make the changes that they needed.

DNS management was just the start though. Once I saw the possibilities for simplifying the configuration of a UNIX system though a web interface, I started adding other features to the program and putting them into modules. Next came modules for UNIX users, Samba, mounting filesystems, NFS, and Cron jobs. I thought up the name Webmin, made it available for anyone to download, and announced it on a few mailing lists. The initial feedback was good, so I kept on writing.

Over the years, the program has gone through three different user interfaces, grown to 83 modules, added support for non-English languages, provided advanced access control, included lots more operating systems, and offered many other features. The Linux distribution companies Caldera and MSC.Linux have supported the project financially, and many users have made contributions of code patches, modules, translations, and suggestions. In addition to the standard modules, over 100 have been written by other people and are available to be added to Webmin on your system once you have installed the program.