[ale] webmin or not?

JD jdp at algoloma.com
Tue Aug 12 15:10:46 EDT 2014


On 08/12/2014 12:43 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> :-). +1
> 
> Gotta start somewhere. Hopefully not on something important.
> On Aug 12, 2014 11:08 AM, "Boris Borisov" <bugyatl at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> No offense to anybody but if you cannot install rpm deb or whatever is on
>> your system don't name yourself admin ...
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Beddingfield, Allen <allen at ua.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> If you are in the SUSE world, check out webyast as an alternative.
>>> --

So I vaguely remember trying to install/configure/setup something like webmin on
my slackware box around 1995-ish and being stumped. Asked our UNIX admin (NASA
Lab) what he thought about that plan and he replied with the same thoughts that
I've retained all these years. If you can't install it, you don't have any
business using it (for administration web-apps). I got the impression that being
able to install it really wouldn't be his only criteria ... and having just
looked over the installation steps today - I wouldn't consider that enough of a
test before allowing anyone root access.  There needs to be a higher bar, IMHO.

OTOH - working on a home computer, we are all admins and struggle through all
sorts of stuff that we don't have the background or skills to accomplish.  Lots
of us used DMZ mode because we didn't understand networking or firewalls - we
just knew that our trivial website worked in the DMZ, but not if that was
disabled. After all, nobody knew we had a web server running there, right?

BTW, the person who prompted this question didn't get webmin running last I
checked - it isn't connected to the internet (excellent) and he wants to do php
programming with the system. Seems like a reasonable reason NOT to learn system
administration to me. ;)

So - anyone gotten Perl 5.20.0 installed successfully?  I've got 2 failing tests
for locale issues that don't make sense to me.  Perhaps I have no business
installing it?


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