Ubuntu For Free

I recently had to reinstall one of my servers. It was a pain. I didn’t have the partitions correct, so I lost my web install, and I hate how Ubuntu does not let us put /etc on a separate partition because of init. I struggled for a while with being forced to enter a password when using ssh connections to the re-installed. The output of ssh -vvv user@host indicated the keys were found and authorized, so I was stumped. I asked the North Texas Linux Users Group for some assistance and the first reply pointed me in the right direction. It turns out it was caused by incorrect permissions on my ssh files. To resolve, I used

cd ~
chmod go-w .ssh .ssh/authorized_key*

I have been struggling for some time with finding a way of properly managing my network, from a easy to use, fast interface. I’m pretty much set in stone that a web solution was what I was looking for. I found it in a tool called Webmin. You can download it from http://www.webmin.com. It’s built on PHP and allows the user to completely administer a system from remote. It has user-programmable modules, so it can be used to configure anything. I especially appreciate the Custom Commands, because it allows me to establish custom buttons that edit specific files. I’m able to use it to manage packages, shares, users, mail, files, apache, mysql, samba, and a whole lot more. To me, the best part of it is I can configure everything in a comfortable interface, from an application that suits my environment, my web browser. The list of available modules is massive! Practically one for every purpose.