2.1. Downloading Webmin for Your System

The latest version of Webmin can always be downloaded from www.webmin.com/. At the time of writing, the latest release was Version 1.100, but new versions come out frequently. All of the instructions below, however, will use Version 1.100 for the filenames. If you download a later release, the version number in all the filenames and paths will have changed.

Some Linux distributions, such as Mandrake and Caldera, include Webmin as a standard feature, so it may already be installed on your system. The version that they include, however, may not be the latest official version that is available for download. If you are happy with the release that you already have, however, you can skip this chapter.

Other Linux distributions, like Debian and Gentoo, include Webmin as a package that can be downloaded and installed automatically. On Debian, the command apt-get install webmin will install the latest version available in the Debian APT repository. This can sometimes be a few versions behind the newest official release, however, so you may want to download from www.webmin.com/ instead. On Gentoo Linux, the command emerge webmin will install the latest version from the Gentoo Portage repository, which should be the same as the newest official release.

If you are upgrading from an older Webmin version, the process is exactly the same as installing for the first time. Any changes that you have made to the configuration of Webmin itself, or to other servers like Apache or Sendmail, will be left unharmed by the upgrade.

While Webmin supports a wide variety of UNIX variants, it does not cover all of them. Because it deals with system configuration files that differ in location and format between different kinds of UNIX operating systems, it has been written to behave differently depending on the type of operating system that it is running on. To see a complete list of supported operating systems, visit the web page www.webmin.com/support.html. If your operating system is not on the list, you cannot use Webmin.

Before downloading Webmin for installation on your system, you have to choose a package format in which to download it. The available formats are:

RPM If you are running Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Caldera, MSC, or any other Linux distribution which supports the RPM packaging format, then the RPM package is your best choice.

tar.gz The tar.gz packaged version of Webmin will work on any operating system, but is slightly harder to install than the RPM and Solaris packages.

Solaris package If you are running Solaris on Sparc or x86, then this is the package format for you.

For instructions on installing your chosen package type, see Section 2.2 “Installing the RPM Package” below.