Is webmin extinct?

maverick6664 · Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:50 pm Post subject: Is webmin extinct?

Hi,
Today I found all the webmin versions were masked. So I am at a loss what to use in the future....any recommendations?

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Don't have access to Gentoo at the moment, but I suspect it's because Webmin has a very bizarre and non-free license. It's really short and easy to understand last I looked, but some distros I know of (most notably Debian, which means any derivative as well) refuse to have it in their package list in any normal way because of the license. It seems really chummy at first, then you start thinking about how you can reasonably include it anywhere and you get stuck.

genterminl · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:23 am Post subject:

It's not the license. Look at /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask:

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

LOL!

Dude, that's what it's FOR!

John R. Graham · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 1:21 am Post subject:

Hmm. Expect coreutils to follow as the dangerous utilities rm, cp, and mv have the same issues.

- John
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jeffk · l33t Joined: 13 Sep 2003 Posts: 671

I unmerged webmin-1.510, per the new mask change. It was a huge help when I was learning linux, but now I only use it for the batch user dump-add.

For my own edification, can someone summarize what webmin is doing that it shouldn't be per QA? And are those things central to the function of webmin, such that it will never be coming back to portage?

Thanks.

MoonWalker · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2002 Posts: 510

Now I haven't checked on this, if webmin suddenly started to do something new in terms of breaking gentoo QA rules but I doubt it. In such case it's sort of a bizzare move as webmin probably does what it always have done, fibbling with core system files.

I wonder if not this really boild down to lack of maintainer, that no gentoo folks really want to deal with webmin, with perl, as bumps allways have been late or very late even when it just been a matter of renaming the ebuild, basically. But webmin is a too widespread and popular tool by sysadmins or was, so you cannot just remove it, not without a reason or a replacement. Now a reason have been found.

The alternative? Well you can either maintain your own ebuild in your private overlay (e.g. PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage in make.conf) or possibly an ebuild will come to live in one of the many overlays available through layman. You can also use webmins own intsall routine and maintain it outside of portage as webmin basically is able to update it self. This is what I did before there was an ebuild and probably will go back to if the ebuild will be removed from the tree altogether.
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Genone · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:34 am Post subject:

The problem listed in package.mask is not that webmin itself (when installed) does these things, but the setup script (just take a look at the ebuild).

maverick6664 · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:27 am Post subject:

Let's narrow the question; then what is the best administration package for samba? My main problem is controlling samba w/o webmin. (note usermin is masked).

Thanks
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M · Guru Joined: 12 Dec 2006 Posts: 432

Did you tried SWAT? It comes with samba if you set use flag. I think you can create/delete users from swat. If you are using ldap with samba then any web frontend for ldap can do the job.

bobtongue · n00b Joined: 11 Aug 2010 Posts: 16

MoonWalker · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2002 Posts: 510

maverick6664 · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 1:16 pm Post subject:

MoonWalker · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2002 Posts: 510

maverick6664 · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 1:23 pm Post subject:

I see. I won't start a new topic here. I'd like to stick to webmin.
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ali3nx · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 5:09 pm Post subject:

jeffk · l33t Joined: 13 Sep 2003 Posts: 671

Just so I'm clear on the reason for removal (please correct me):

The webmin ebuild writes to filesystems outside of the portage sandbox, against QA policy.

If the ebuild were compliant, would that reopen webmin's portage inclusion chances? It's not the program itself that's causing the problem, right?

(update: wrong, per ali3nx's updated comment on CVE's, etc.

Thanks.

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3269 Location: Canada

genterminl · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 5:52 pm Post subject:

ali3nx: just for clarification - webmin is unsupported within Gentoo (i.e., nobody maintaining the ebuild), but upstream is still supported.

Also, I only searched fairly briefly, but I did not find any current CVEs for webmin. The most recent one I found was for versions before 1.500.

I also ask in general, is there any good replacement with similar functionality?

Jack

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

IMO Webmin is a great idea in the abstract. It allows a relatively lightweight UI over a system which need not have any sort of X.

On the other hand, there seem to be two major issues as far as I can tell:

The first is some sort of unpleasant editing of files during the installation process.

The second is the license, at least if it hasn't changed in the last couple years. It seems that the person who develops it has particular ideas about conditions of use. That's fine, but unfortunate since it has prevented Webmin from being included more widely and possibly becoming an extremely common front-end for headless servers and appliances.

That said, it seems to me that some sort of replacement could be crafted to fit into a standard web server and follow more rules, and have a more friendly license.

bobtongue · n00b Joined: 11 Aug 2010 Posts: 16

So the bottom line is that no one wants to maintain the ebuild, and so it will be dropped from the package database? Someone must have written the ebuild that seems to be offending the developers. Is this a pissing contest between them and the maintainers of the package database? It seems very sudden to remove a product from the tree that is still being supported by the author. I am confused about how this all works. I suppose that I can still use Webmin if I want to install it manually, but it seems so silly to remove it from the tree. I like to keep a stable up to date OS, and installing outside of portage is probably not the best way to do that. I am wondering if anyone has communicated with the author of the ebuild.

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

it's not just authoring an ebuild, it's following the program.

if no devs wish to support kde -> no ebuild for kde
if i do a kde ebuild and follow the update and patch for its bug -> everyone happy
if i do a kde ebuild and just leave it as-is -> devs handle bugs for something they don't wish and like -> getting bore, showing the exit for that ebuild.

but i must agree with you that it's a bit rude as currently i didn't saw any open bugs for webmin (but maybe they already close all bugs for it as invlid/won't fix...)

anyone feeling to open one to get an answer ? (nah, not me, devs hates me enough like that)

Genone · Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:41 pm Post subject:

Just to clarify: the problems apparently are in the setup script provided by webmin, which is called by the ebuild. Normally the script would cause several sandbox violations, the ebuild contains some code to supress them, but that's not a permanent solution (that's the QA issue mentioned in the package.mask comment). If anyone wants more details, the ebuild contains references to the relevant bug reports.

ikshaar · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 5:34 pm Post subject:

I can understand the hard mask (kinda), but it's annoying if it is removed from portage.

I have it setup on all my cluster nodes (~20 computers), that will be huge pain if I have to setup a local portage tree just for it on all of them...

I can unmask for now, but once it is removed from portage, i guess I won't be able to use emerge world for my updates...
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darkphader · Veteran Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 1219 Location: Motown

Personally I prefer old school CLI, edit config files with vim and use scripts that accomplish many other tasks. There are, however, a great number of gui tools available depending on what exactly you want to do:
http://www.samba.org/samba/GUI/
See here as well:
http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Account_Management_Tools
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