Quick Reference: Installing Webmin on Linux Mint 20.2

I’m making this as a quick reference for installing Webmin when I need it. See also my post about installing docker.

Please don’t blindly paste shell commands into a terminal, do some research and understand what the commands do first.

Please do let me know of any mistakes in the below.

Starting from a fresh installation of Linux Mint 20.2 Uma (LXCE version if that matters), this is the general list of commands to run to get Webmin up and confirmed installed.

Webmin is a web GUI for the entire Linux system. It has a dashboard with the CPU activity, storage device information and how much the system has, for instance. Once installed you simply put in an IP address or host name into a browser (on the same network) and it comes right up. It has a built-in terminal (No Java or anything required) and an upload function for transferring files to and from the Linux system.

I like it for the at-a-glance convenience of seeing a lot information and performing administration tasks remotely.

TL;DR Edition

1. First, run an apt-get update
   sudo apt-get update
2. Use wget to get the jcameron key asc file
   sudo wget -q http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc
3. Then add this key
   sudo apt-key add jcameron-key.asc
4. This adds the webmin line repo to a webmin.list file
   sudo sh -c ‘echo “deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib” > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webmin.list’
5. Then update the repos
   sudo apt-get update
6. And finally install webmin
   sudo apt-get install webmin -y

I’ve run into both cases: sometimes Webmin won’t work until after at least one system reboot, sometimes it works immediately after install without reboot. For my mint install it worked without reboot. May want to anyway to be on the safe side.

---

More Descriptive version

First thing is to run an update to make sure apt-get is ready:

sudo apt-get update

Then grab the asc key with wget:

sudo wget -q http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc

Now I can create the webmin.list file in my sources.d directory:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webmin.list'

The result of the above will create that webmin.list file. The contents can be verified with a cat:

cat  /etc/apt/soures.list.d/webmin.list 

This would be a good time to do an update to make sure the package manager sees the webmin repositories:

sudo apt-get update

Once that is done, install webmin itself:

sudo apt-get install webmin -y

Assuming that went smoothly, reboot your OS to be on the same side and trying accessing your webmin. This can be done on the same machine you just install webmin on with the localhost address in a web browser:

https://127.0.0.1:10000

Mint will keep prompting anyway, but it may be a good idea to use apt-get to upgrade everything after this. And actually autoremove and autoclean as well. Those are optional.

Bonus: Packages I immediately add with every fresh install of Linux

Here are a few of my favorite packages. Not all of them are really required. tmux for instance is a way to splitting a console screen up and git is a file revision tracking utility mainly used for source repositories. But it’s here as a reference.

• vim
• wget
• tmux
• openssh-server
• cpu-checker
• git

To put it all together:

sudo apt-get install vim wget tmux openssh-server cpu-checker git -y

References:

Install webmin for Ubuntu: official documentation