Ubuntu 12.04 and Virtualmin

I know you will be getting Virtualmin ready to support Ubuntu 12.04 and look forward to it. Here's my question:

We are rolling out a new VMWare ESXi 5 server today and are creating an Ubuntu 12.04 install strictly for Spam/AV scanning to work with our existing Ubuntu 8.04 server. We would also like to create another Ubuntu 12.04 server to start moving some of our email only clients off the existing 8.04.

If we set that second server up and start moving clients, can we install Virtualmin for Ubuntu 12.04 when it comes out and will it read the existing virtual domains and email accounts? I want to do it the right way. Thanks.

Status: 
Closed (fixed)

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Howdy -- that's not likely to work well, unfortunately.

Virtualmin does a lot of configuration with Postfix to make a shared hosting setup work well -- and performing a Virtualmin installation after email accounts are setup on the server would likely break the existing setup.

An alternative to what you proposed would be to install Ubuntu 10.04, which Virtualmin supports now -- and then just do an upgrade to 12.04 sometime within the next 3 years (it's end of life is in 2015).

Ok. I've installed 12.04 on a server I've called rjrspaminator1.com (still resolving) and did a bare bones basic install and then manually installed spamassassin and Clamav to use it for remote spam/av scanning. Per your suggestion, I installed Ubuntu 10.04 and am now trying to get Virtualmin installed and use this server for email only clients. Is there a way for an installation of Viurtualmin Pro on one server to access and maintain another Virtualmin installation?

We want to move all email off of the server that is doing everything for better performance. Do we have to install Vmin on both the EMAIL server and the LAMP server and maintain double entry, one for email and one for everything for our client?

For example, Client1 has email and website with us. We want to put their email on the dedicate Ubuntu email server running Vmin and put the website on the dedicate Ubuntu LAMP server, but manage it from a central panel. If so, how, if not, how should we proceed since we like and want to leverage Vmin.

Thanks

Virtualmin doesn't support having a split email setup that's managed by one Virtualmin instance.

You can certainly tell Virtualmin that email is hosted elsewhere -- but you couldn't manage your remote email from that one Virtualmin install.

Here are some thoughts on all that --

You could certainly install Virtualmin on your dedicated email server, and use it to manage your email users. You could create a Virtual Server on your email system, and set it up with just three features -- email, spam, and virus scanning.

That can all be done with Virtualmin GPL, you wouldn't need Virtualmin Pro on that email server.

Also, Cloudmin for Physical Servers may be an option to consider here. It's able to act as a single management point for Webmin/Virtualmin installs. It's the cheapest of the available Cloudmin products, and if you tried it and didn't like it, you could always get a refund.

Webmin/virtualmin will be supporting Ubuntu 12.04 here in the not-too-distant future, and you would then be able to use Cloudmin to handle management of all your servers. For example, rather than logging into each server to perform system updates, you could log into Cloudmin, see what updates are necessary for each server, and then tell it to apply those updates to all servers.

That's a plan. I'm getting the following when trying to install Virtualmin on the email server (Ubuntu 10.04). It's a brand new installation and the domain does resolve. Here's the output from the installer:

FATAL - Fatal Error Occurred: Something went wrong during installation: 0 FATAL - Cannot continue installation. FATAL - Attempting to remove virtualmin repository configuration, so the installation can be FATAL - re-attempted after any problems have been resolved. FATAL - Removing temporary directory and files. FATAL - If you are unsure of what went wrong, you may wish to review the log FATAL - in /root/virtualmin-install.log

That's just a notice saying it failed -- can you attach the install log itself, which should help us determine what went wrong? That's in /root/virtualmin-install.log.

Also, note that your hostname does need to resolve though -- typing "hostname -f" needs to return a response.

Since I'm using VMWare 5, I just destroyed the Ubuntu 10 machine and now installing a new one with only the base components (no mail, LAMP, etc). I found something online from others who had problems installing as well and one had said they finally got it installed after creating a basic Ubuntu install without any packages. I'm almost down installing it and will try to install again. Is there an apt-get for Virtualmin? Otherwise I have to install ftp and then upload the install script. Also, I was installing is with sudo since root account is not enabled.

To install Virtualmin, you would need to log in and run the install.sh script.

We would typically recommend installing SSH, and then logging in over SSH as root to run the installer.

ronald's picture
Submitted by ronald on Sun, 04/29/2012 - 19:27 Pro Licensee

when you want root in Ubuntu, type: sudo -i at the shell
enable root and set a password, do: sudo passwd root
after the job, disable root: sudo passwd -dl root

Still failing. Here's the output: INFO - Removing Debian standard Webmin package, if they exist... INFO - Removing Debian apache packages... E: Unable to locate package webmin-core INFO - Installing dependencies using command: /usr/bin/apt-get --config-file apt.conf.noninteractive -y --force-yes install postfix postfix-pcre webmin usermin ruby libapache2-mod-ruby libxml-simple-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl unzip zip quota php5 php5-cgi php5-mysql ...in progress, please wait... .E: Unable to locate package webmin E: Unable to locate package usermin

/usr/bin/apt-get --config-file apt.conf.noninteractive -y --force-yes install postfix postfix-pcre webmin usermin ruby libapache2-mod-ruby libxml-simple-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl unzip zip quota php5 php5-cgi php5-mysql failed. Error (if any): 0

Displaying the last 15 lines of /root/virtualmin-install.log to help troubleshoot this problem: INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:01 - INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:01 - Download of http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/apt.conf.noninteractive Succeeded. INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:01 - Installing Webmin and Virtualmin package signing keys... INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:01 - Download of http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/RPM-GPG-KEY-virtualmin Succeeded. INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:01 - Download of http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/RPM-GPG-KEY-webmin Succeeded. INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:02 - OK INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:02 - OK INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:03 - Hit INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:03 - Removing Debian standard Webmin package, if they exist... INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:03 - Removing Debian apache packages... DEBUG - 2012-04-29 20:20:03 - Reading INFO - 2012-04-29 20:20:03 - Installing dependencies using command: /usr/bin/apt-get --config-file apt.conf.noninteractive -y --force-yes install postfix postfix-pcre webmin usermin ruby libapache2-mod-ruby libxml-simple-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl unzip zip quota php5 php5-cgi php5-mysql Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information...

FATAL - Fatal Error Occurred: Something went wrong during installation: 0 FATAL - Cannot continue installation. FATAL - Attempting to remove virtualmin repository configuration, so the installation can be FATAL - re-attempted after any problems have been resolved. FATAL - Removing temporary directory and files. FATAL - If you are unsure of what went wrong, you may wish to review the log FATAL - in /root/virtualmin-install.log

Is there any chance you could attach your full install log, located in /root/virtualmin-install.log?

I'm not sure what would cause that error, I'm hoping some additional clues may be in that log file.

If it's unclear from that what the problem is, the next step may be to have us log in and try the install ourselves. Thanks!

I think I just figured out the issue. I spoke with someone that dais Virtualmin is only compatible with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I checked and had 10.10 instead. I'm uploading the ISO for 10.04LTS and then will try again.