Install Webmin – CentOS YUM

Tutorial Overview

Install Webmin on CentOS 6 using yum
Ensure secure HTTPS support via SSL
Change the default Webmin port

Webmin Overview

There are plenty of web based control panels to choose from nowadays, however, most are very intrusive with regards to the changes that they make to your VPS and what software you can ultimately run.

Most other control panels would be classed under the ‘web hosting’ banner, whereas Webmin on the other hand, is a general administration GUI allowing you to run whatever software you like and doesn’t clog up your VPS with lots of unneeded applications in the process.

In this tutorial we show you have to install Webmin in CentOS using YUM, if you are using Ubuntu, please see our other tutorial for installing Webmin on Ubuntu using APT.

Preparing CentOS

Preparing CentOS for a Webmin installation is really quick and simple.

We just need to update the operating system applications and libraries to ensure we are working with the latest releases.

This is not actually a requirement, but rather just ‘good practice’.

To do so run the following from your VPS terminal:

yum -y update

Yum will now run through its current list of repositories and install any updates to existing applications and libraries.

Our next job is to install the perl-Net-SSLeay extension, as this will ensure that Webmin is installed with HTTPS (SSL) support:

yum -y install perl-Net-SSLeay

Once this is installed we can move on to creating the files required in order to add the Webmin repository to our CentOS VPS.

To do so we must create a new repository file providing details of where the Webmin repository is.:

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/webmin.repo

Copy and paste the following into the file:

[Webmin]
name=Webmin Distribution Neutral
#baseurl=http://download.webmin.com/download/yum
mirrorlist=http://download.webmin.com/download/yum/mirrorlist
enabled=1

Now save and exit the ‘vi/vim’ editor as follows:

ESC key
:wq
ENTER key

Next we need to add the Webmin GPG key to our CentOS VPS so that yum trusts the source. To do so run the following commands:

wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc
rpm --import jcameron-key.asc

Finally to install Webmin run the following:

yum -y install webmin

Webmin will now be downloaded and installed.

At the end of the installation, some help text will be output detailing how to connect to the Webmin GUI.

Changing Your Webmin Port

It is advised that you change the port number used to connect to Webmin as a security precaution against port scanning applications.

To do so, login to Webmin (https://[IP ADDRESS]:10000) and navigate the following menus:

Webmin -> Webmin Configuration -> Ports and Addresses

You will want to change the Porst and Addresses options to suite your preferences.