Ubuntu For Free

I recently established my network to use SSH connections. My three Ubuntu systems I discovered were using weak keys that had been generated using the flawed packages. If you haven’t been paying attention, Canonical issued USN-612-1 on 5/13/2008. If you’re using keys that have been generated since September 2006, it’s likely that you need to regenerate all keys. If you have any doubts, I encourage you to regenerate all keys. It will affect any key used that was generated on a compromised system. The biggest trouble for me was getting OpenSSL and OpenSSH-server packages to update. I used the ssh-copy-id command to make it the process easy for me.

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.