Installing Webmin and Virtualmin from packages

Please note: this guide has not yet had a complete run-through from scratch.  If you hit problems, please e-mail alastair@plug.org.au

Do you want to install Webmin and Virtualmin from packages, i.e. not using the official install script?  The process is finicky, but can be done, as shown here.  One reason you might wish to to this is that you might not want the default "kitchen sink" installation and all the dependencies it brings in.  (Or you might not like how the official install script modifies /etc/apt/sources.list rather than adding a file called /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webmin.list .  Or you might be concerned about the fact that the install script is served from a non-HTTPS URL and is therefore open to modification in transit or other security breaches.  Et cetera.)

The end result of this process is a server that uses PHP, fcgid and Apache.  Unlike a standard Virtualmin installation, it is a "bare bones" server that can be used for web hosting only.  It assumes that other features like e-mail hosting and DNS are provided by the cloud or separate servers.
This guide assumes that you are using Debian or Ubuntu.  It might be possible to apply some of the instructions below on other systems, but many won't work unless substitute commands are used. Note: older versions of Debian (wheezy and earlier) and Ubuntu (precise and earlier) don't have the apt command; you can use aptitude instead.  (FYI, aptitude is installable in recent OS releases if you prefer it.)

Install Linux

This is out of scope for this guide.

Linux Preparation

As an alternative to the steps in the sub-sections below, you can install the required packages manually, but there are a lot of them to remember.  http://al.id.au/svn/tools/debian/apache-fcgid/  has a script called setup-fcgid, but note that it currently works only on older releases of Ubuntu (pre Xenial) and Debian (pre Stretch).

Setup LAMP and Postfix

1. Run sudo tasksel
2. Move text cursor to "LAMP server" and press Enter
3. Move text cursor to "Mail server" and press Enter
• Virtualmin won't work without Postfix etc.
• Note that Webmin's Exim support is listed as experimental, so on Debian (where the default MTA is Exim) you might want to install Postfix instead if you have no preference
4. Press Tab to go to the <Ok> button and press Enter
5. When prompted to set a MySQL server password, do so unless you will be uninstalling MySQL as per the next sub-section; in this case, you will be prompted multiple times, so press Enter each time
6. When the Postfix configuration dialog pops up, read the intro carefully and then choose the option that applies to you

Install extra packages

If you are running Ubuntu Xenial (or newer) or Debian Stretch (or newer), run this command:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-fcgid apache2-suexec-custom php-cgi

Otherwise, run this command:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-fcgid apache2-suexec-custom php5-cgi

Alter the PHP configuration

This is needed to prevent Apache's built-in PHP module from trying to run PHP files.

If you are running Ubuntu Xenial (or newer) or Debian Stretch (or newer), run this command:

sudo rm /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php7.0.conf

Otherwise, run this command:

sudo rm /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf

Remove MySQL server if necessary

Note: Only do this if you'll be using a separate database server.

1. Run sudo apt purge mysql-server mysql-server-5.7 mysql-server-core-5.7

Webmin and Virtualmin Packages

Keys

1. Run mkdir /tmp/virtualmin-keys
2. Run wget -N -P /tmp/virtualmin-keys http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/{RPM-GPG-KEY-webmin,RPM-GPG-KEY-virtualmin,RPM-GPG-KEY-virtualmin-6}
3. Run shasum -a 256 /tmp/virtualmin-keys/{RPM-GPG-KEY-webmin,RPM-GPG-KEY-virtualmin,RPM-GPG-KEY-virtualmin-6}
4. Confirm that you get the output shown below.  (This is necessary because software.virtualmin.com doesn't have a valid HTTPS certificate and thus only works from the non-HTTPS URL.  Therefore you are required to perform extra checking to make sure you'll get the real packages.)

Required output:

36a563bec98a9894065d5f45fbfe58ef51985aecc561569e6288b009ef28f251  /tmp/virtualmin-keys/RPM-GPG-KEY-webmin
08294ec28b36249adf8d51352153235d2467b081d2f3e133771da9100b6fbc81  /tmp/virtualmin-keys/RPM-GPG-KEY-virtualmin
d8bd1baa45a96a837efe1cd535f8a9325aff18751e8571cf3e792c5ea3ffb039  /tmp/virtualmin-keys/RPM-GPG-KEY-virtualmin-6

APT config

1. Run sudoedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webmin.list
2. Paste in the contents shown below
1. Note: the lines may appear to contain a single URL, but they don't, so don't remove any spaces
3. Modify the two placeholders as follows:
1. {{OS}} -- debian or ubuntu
2. {{RELEASE}} -- the codename of your Distro release
• You can find this by running lsb_release --short --codename
• For stretch, use jessie instead (the directory for stretch is missing from the server) 

This is the contents of the file mentioned above:

deb http://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/{{OS}}/ virtualmin-{{RELEASE}} main
deb http://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/{{OS}}/ virtualmin-universal main

Installation 

1. Run sudo apt-get update
2. Run sudo apt install webmin-virtual-server virtualmin-base

Configuration

First, configure the apache2-suexec-custom package:

1. Run sudoedit /etc/apache2/suexec/www-data
2. Change the first line to /home
3. Save and quit (press Ctrl-X)

Next, log into Webmin and configure it:

1. Go to https://host.address:10000/
• Replace host.address with the IP Address or full host name of your server
2. Log in with your normal Unix account
3. In the left-hand menu, click on Servers and then Apache Webserver
4. Click on the Global configuration tab in the right-hand section
5. Click on Configure Apache Modules
6. Tick the actions, fcgid and suexec boxes
7. Click [Enable Selected Modules]

You can now click on Virtualmin at the top of the left-hand menu and create "Virtual Servers", which are simply managed Apache vhosts.

Caveats

If you want to host a site named after the primary address of the server, it might not work, because the Apache default vhost will try to serve those requests instead.  (This only happens if the server's hostname is configured to match the primary address.)

To fix this, do this:

1. Run sudoedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf 
2. Uncomment the ServerName directive
• The value should be nonsense, as the point is to set it to something that will never match a real vhost
3. Save and quit (press Ctrl-X)
4. Run sudo service apache2 reload