51.19. Allowing Unauthenticated Access to Modules

It is possible to set up certain Webmin modules so that they can only be used to view information or to execute harmless commands. For example, the System and Server Status module's access control features can be set to give a user read-only access, letting them see which monitors are up and which are down. The Custom Commands module can also be configured for a particular user to let him only run commands that display information.

The anonymous access feature of this module lets you grant access to certain modules to clients without them needing to log in at all. Such clients will be treated as a specified Webmin user and thus will only have the rights that you grant to that user. They will, however, never need to supply its username and password when accessing allowed modules on your system. This can be useful for making certain information (such as the server status display) available to everyone on your network without needing to give them all a username and password. It should be used with extreme care, however, as granting anonymous access as a powerful user could compromise your entire system.

To set up unauthenticated access to some modules, follow these steps:

1.
First, use the Webmin Users module to create a user called anonymous, for example, who has the modules and access control settings that you want to give to unauthenticated clients. Its password can be set to No login allowed, as this user will never log in conventionally. The user should be given the Old Webmin Theme to minimize the number of image directories to which you will need to allow access later.

2.
Then, click on the Anonymous Module Access icon in the Webmin Configuration module.

3.
The form that appears contains a table with two columns and, initially, two empty rows. Each row specifies a URL path on your server to which to allow unauthenticated access, and a Webmin user as which requests to that path should be treated.

In the first row, enter /images for the path and anonymous for the user so the directory containing Webmin's title images can be accessed by unauthenticated clients.

In the second row, enter the path for the module that you want to allow (such as /status), and anonymous as the user again. Never enter a path of /, as it will allow unauthorized access to your entire Webmin server! The path to a specific CGI program (such as /custom/run.cgi) may make sense in some cases.

4.
Hit the Save button to turn on anonymous access. If you want to allow more than two URL paths, click on the icon again so that the table is redisplayed with two more empty rows.

If a user who has already logged visits a module that has been allowed anonymous access using the preceding steps, Webmin will still identify him correctly as the logged-in user.

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