47.1. Introduction to Usermin

Usermin is a web interface similar to Webmin, but designed for normal UNIX users to carry out tasks that they should normally do at the shell prompt. It was written by the same author as Webmin, shares a lot of the same code, and has a similar underlying design and user interface. Whereas Webmin allows you do to things that would normally be done by logging in as root, Usermin lets you do things that can be done by logging in as a normal user.

Usermin is a very useful program to install if you want to give users on your system the ability to read and send email, change passwords, or edit files through an easy-to-use web interface. It groups all of these functions together and allows the administrator to choose which users get access to specific features.

Usermin can be downloaded from www.usermin.com in both RPM format for most Linux distributions or tar.gz format for other operating systems. It supports all of the same operating systems as Webmin and is installed in exactly the same way. If your version of Linux uses the RPM package format, the Software Packages module (covered in Chapter 12) can be used to install Usermin. Otherwise, you will need to extract the Usermin tar.gz file and run the setup.sh script, just like you would for Webmin.

Because Usermin uses port 20000 instead of 10000, you will need to go to the URL http://yourservername:20000/ in your browser to access it after installation. Enter the username and password of any UNIX user on your system on the login page that appears and hit the Login button. A main menu very similar to the one in Webmin will be displayed, but with different categories and modules. In its default configuration, Usermin should be quite usable for tasks such as reading email, changing your password, or logging in via SSH.

Usermin can be navigated in the same way that Webmin can and its modules have very similar designs. In fact, some of the modules are exactly the same as those in Webmin, such as Running Processes and SSH/Telnet Login. The only difference is that they run with the privileges of the logged-in UNIX user rather than root.

This chapter focuses primarily on how to configure the program from within Webmin, using the Usermin Configuration module. Usermin does not have any facility to configure itself. You must either use this module, or edit the configuration files in /etc/usermin directly. Needless to say, the former option is much easier. The instructions in this chapter were written for Usermin 1.030. Some older versions lack certain features, such as the ability to restrict access to modules for specific users and groups.

Also in Section 47.17 “About the Usermin Modules” is a complete list of the standard modules and a short description of the capabilities of each one. It is not a user's guide for Usermin however. The program is fairly easy to use and does not really need an instruction manual.