How to Install Webmin on Ubuntu 10.04 painlessly

Okay it took me over 6 hours to get the correct working steps and procedure to install webmin on ubuntu 10.04. Needless to say my vps must have been burned due to overusage the last few hours. I did 8 reinstalls and tried to get webmin work on ubuntu 32bit & 64 bit versions.

As said i used a VPS to do all the work and what you will find here is easy step by step procedure to install webmin without a single error. The installation was successful for the 32bit (i386,i686) as well as 64bit(x86_64) systems with the following steps.

Errors i got at first and why you are here

root@crybit:/home# dpkg --install webmin_1.650_all.deb
(Reading database ... 38372 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace webmin 1.650 (using webmin_1.650_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement webmin ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of webmin:
 webmin depends on libnet-ssleay-perl; however:
  Package libnet-ssleay-perl is not installed.
 webmin depends on libauthen-pam-perl; however:
  Package libauthen-pam-perl is not installed.
 webmin depends on libio-pty-perl; however:
  Package libio-pty-perl is not installed.
 webmin depends on apt-show-versions; however:
  Package apt-show-versions is not installed.
dpkg: error processing webmin (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 webmin

And also after trying to install packages mentioned at webmin doc page we will see this error too
root@crybit:/home# apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions python
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
python is already the newest version.
python set to manually installed.
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  apt-show-versions: Depends: libapt-pkg-perl (>= 0.1.21) but it is not going to be installed
  perl: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.3) but 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.1 is to be installed
        Depends: perl-modules (>= 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.3) but 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.1 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

Apt-get install webmin shows a similar error
root@crybit:~# apt-get install webmin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
webmin is already the newest version.
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  webmin: Depends: libnet-ssleay-perl but it is not going to be installed
          Depends: libauthen-pam-perl but it is not going to be installed
          Depends: libio-pty-perl but it is not going to be installed
          Depends: apt-show-versions but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
 

Before starting our installation lets check our version of os installed.
I will soon put up updates on other ubuntu versions soon.

root@crybit:~# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS
Release:        10.04
Codename:       lucid

And also do a system architecture check. The below is shown for 32bit version, 64bit will show x86_64.

root@crybit:~# uname -a
Linux server 2.6.18-308.8.2.el5.028stab101.1 #1 SMP Sun Jun 24 20:25:35 MSD 2012 i686 GNU/Linux

The sources list
Use a common editor like vi, nano to enter these sources which are required to update & install dependencies of webmin. If yours contain sources different than this keep them too, no problem.

root@crybit:~# vi /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid main
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-updates main
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security main
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-updates universe
deb http://webmin.mirror.somersettechsolutions.co.uk/repository sarge contrib
deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib

Adding signature GPG Key for verifying repository.

root@crybit:~# cd /root
root@crybit:~# wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc
root@crybit:~# apt-key add jcameron-key.asc

Now we can update and install the packages needed for webmin.

root@crybit:~# apt-get update
root@crybit:~# apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions python libapt-pkg-perl

The “libmd5-perl” package was depreciated and was removed from ubuntu repositories, so we must manually install this pacakge.

root@crybit:~# wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/libm/libmd5-perl/libmd5-perl_2.03-1_all.deb
root@crybit:~#  dpkg -i libmd5-perl_2.03-1_all.deb

Selecting previously deselected package libmd5-perl.
(Reading database ... 21303 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libmd5-perl (from libmd5-perl_2.03-1_all.deb) ...
Setting up libmd5-perl (2.03-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...

Time to download the webmin latest version from webmin site.

root@crybit:~# wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.650_all.deb

Install webmin 1.650

root@crybit:~# dpkg --install webmin_1.650_all.deb

(Reading database … 45562 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace webmin 1.650 (using webmin_1.650_all.deb) …
Unpacking replacement webmin …
Setting up webmin (1.650) …
Webmin install complete. You can now login to https://5.5.5.5:10000/
as root with your root password, or as any user who can use sudo
to run commands as root.

Login to webmin 
https://5.5.5.5:10000/
Username: root
Password: yourrootpassword

A screenshot webmin control panel which we were anxious to see.

Post installation tips- Always upgrade the installed apps.

You can now do it from Webmin panel under System >> Software Package Updates
Update all Packages

or from backend

root@crybit:~# apt-get upgrade

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  apache2 apache2-doc apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin
  apache2.2-common apt apt-utils cron dhcp3-client dhcp3-common dpkg dselect
  expat gnupg gpgv insserv libc-bin libc6 libcap2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3
  libexpat1 libfreetype6 libgcrypt11 libglib2.0-0 libgnutls26 libgssapi-krb5-2
  libk5crypto3 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 libpam-modules libpam0g libpython2.6
  libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libssl0.9.8 libtasn1-3 libwbclient0 libxml2 lsb-base
  lsb-release lynx lynx-cur procps python2.6 python2.6-minimal samba
  samba-common samba-common-bin smbfs snmp sudo tzdata vim vim-common
  vim-runtime
57 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 57.7MB of archives.
After this operation, 1245kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

All done successfuly. Was quite a pain in the arse some hours ago but now its so easy to install webmin. Please share in your comments and let me know if you were successful with this. have a nice day.