04/04/2008

Graphical secure remote server administration

In short: install webmin on the server you want to administrate remotely, but allow only connections from "localhost". Give an account of your choice - preferably not any root-like one - ssh access. Build a tunnel to your server's local port 10000
via

ssh -L <chooseaport>:localhost:10000 <username>@<IPofremotemachine>

Now you can access the remote webmin interface simply by opening a browser of your choice on your machine and typing

localhost:<chooseaport>

into the address bar. Nice easy, and secure!

Additionally: if your SSH server is listening on a different port than the standard port 22, you can connect to it using the -p option, i.e.

ssh -p <portnumber> -L <chooseaport>:localhost:10000 <username>@<IPofremotemachine>

No comments: