Kickass server admin tool

The other day while setting up Samba on our RH 9 box, I found out about this very cool sysadmin tool called Webmin. This thing is absolutely amazing. An entirely Perl/web-based application for helping with server sys admin. The primary purpose appears to be to provide a nice usable GUI for configuring and setting up the vast array of server software you will find on a typical server. It’s all module based, so there is a module to help you deal with Apache config, setting up Samba and Samba shares, NTP, Sendmail, Procmail and more. All kinds of good stuff. No more wading through config files and trying to remember where the config file for whatever daemon is located.

Of course, you still need to know what you’re doing, and not every single configuration option for every daemon or config file is available. This is no substitute for sys admin knowledge. It just places all the config stuff in one easy to access location and provides an easy to use interface. Very sweet indeed. And best of all, it’s open source!