Webmin user ssh key setup

All it takes is a small hole for an attacker to sneak through and take total control of your system. Webmin's access control capabilities give you the power to lock down users, but only if used properly. Even though it is possible to create a user with access to only his own email, home directory and password, Webmin is not always the best way to provide this kind of single-user web interface.

A superior program is Usermin, which was developed by the same author and shares much of the Webmin code and user interface. It is designed to give each Unix user access to only those things that he would be able to access at the command line, such as his email, home directory files and GNUPG configuration.

Usermin runs most of its code with the permissions of the logged-in user, so there is far less chance of a user doing things that he is not supposed to, or even gaining root access.

See Usermin Configuration for more details on how you can manage Usermin from within Webmin. If you want to create, edit or grant permissions to a Webmin user or group, it must be done in this module. When you enter it from the Webmin category, the main page displays all users and groups on your system and the modules that they have access to, as shown in the image below. If a user is a member of a group, his membership and only those modules that did not come from the group will be shown.

The Webmin Users module. On a normal Webmin system, only the root or admin user that you login as will appear, which access to all modules that are supported on your operating system. If you want to create a new user who can login to Webmin, possibly with limited privileges, it must be created in this module.

The steps to do this are:. Creating a new Webmin user. You can speed up the process of creating a new user who has the same attributes and access permissions as an existing user by using the module's cloning feature. To clone a user, the steps to follow are:. If you want to create many users with access to the same modules and the same access control settings, it is better to create a group and assign the users to it.

That way you can change the settings for all members at once by just editing the group. You can change the username, password, language or any other attribute of a Webmin user including the one you are logged in as using this module. To edit a user, the steps to follow are:. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. All SSH implementations have options related to how clients authenticate and the messages displayed to them after login.

Specifically, you can permit or deny authentication by username and password or username and certificate, stop the root user logging in, and control if rlogin-style.

Click on the Authentication icon on the module's main page to bring up a form like the one shown below. To save and activate your new authentication settings, hit the Save button at the bottom of the form followed by Apply Changes on the main page.

Before a Unix user can use certificate authentication to login to an SSH server, he must generate a private key with the ssh-keygen command. This module can be configured to work with the Users and Groups module to run this command for all newly created users.

If your network uses NFS-mounted home directories, this will allow new users to login to other hosts without needing to supply a password with no further setup needed. To configure the setup of SSH for new users, follow these steps:. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

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Delivered Tuesdays and Thursdays Sign up today. Editor's Picks. The best programming languages to learn in Check for Log4j vulnerabilities with this simple-to-use script. TasksBoard is the kanban interface for Google Tasks you've been waiting for. The main page will always display six icons though, under each of which is a form containing fields for setting options related to some category, such as authentication or networking. At the top the implementation and version of SSH installed is displayed, so that you can see which of the instructions in this chapter apply to your system.

At the bottom is a button labeled Apply Changes which when clicked signals the SSH server to re-read its configuration file. No changes made in the module will take effect until you hit this button.

All SSH implementations have options related to how clients authenticate and the messages displayed to them after login. Specifically, you can permit or deny authentication by username and password or username and certificate, stop the root user logging in, and control if rlogin-style. By default, any Unix user will be allowed to remotely login to the SSH server on your system, or use it to upload and download files.

On a mail server system or one that hosts websites this may not be appropriate though - you might want to allow most users to only login to your POP3, FTP or Usermin servers instead. Fortunately, the SSH server can be configured to restrict who can login. Just follow these steps:. The SSH server has several options that allow you to configure the IP address it listens on, the port it uses and various protocol-related settings.

To edit them, follow these steps :. Even though this module is primarily for configuring an SSH server, it also lets you set options that apply to all client connections made from your system using the ssh and scp commands. Options can be set for connections to all hosts, or just to a specific one. You can set the port to connect to, the protocol to use and local and remote ports to forward.

This can be done manually or using Usermin , which has an SSH Client module with an identical interface to the one documented here for editing global client settings.