[webmin-l] Ramblings after reviewing the pole

[John H. <web...@ew...>]

I've been using Webmin for about 2 years now. I for the most part love 
it. I find Jamie's Managing Linux System with Webmin to be one of the 
best resouce books on my shelf. His terse explanations of any particular 
program, before going into how it interacts with the module has helped 
me "quickly" learn about 'new to me' applications. (Jamie.. maybe you 
should cut these sections out and create a 'Pocket Guide to Linux'! I 
don't need no more stinkin' 1500 page Linux manuals!) :) I must contest 
the 'Webmin' book stinks comment and this must be from someone with no 
grasp of Linux.. and the frustration is being dumped to Webmin.

I do however feel that Webmin and Virtualmin are geek tools for only 
geeks. Stick an end user in there and you'll have a mess to clean up. I 
have some pretty good end users, not Linux people, and none have the 
ability to safely deal with this interface. I'm not complaining about 
that, I simply no longer allow access to Webmin by any of our users.

One of the things I like the most about Webmin, is the very fact that it 
'is' geeky. Don't force automation on me.. If I wanted automation I 
would just put in Windows servers. I have never seen as a for instance, 
a single GUI that I liked for dealing with bind. I personally believe 
that if you are going to run bind and manage domains, you really need to 
get a good grip on it. I personally use a template to create my bind 
records in Webmin and always edit changes by hand... That's just me.. 
but what I'm getting at here, is Webmin gives me the ability to do that 
and in a lot of different areas. More automation, would just 'dumb it 
down' to the average Windows GUI which rarely gives the end user the 
ability to really understand what is going on and what is really being 
written to the system.

So, please leave Webmin and Virtualmin geeky! Yeah, perhaps more in the 
way of help on every page of each module would be helpful, if not for 
any other reason than to explain what this 'three word button' really 
does. Sometimes it is just a case of guessing the meaning, testing what 
happens to make sure what you think it means is really what it means. A 
quick for instance is 'Custom Fields' in Virtualmin. I must have missed 
the introduction to this on the list, I might have some good uses for 
it, but don't really know what I could do with it based on the 
information within Virtualmin. Please, don't take this as a request for 
an explanation due to this email... just one of those nice pop-up help 
files would go a long way in a lot of places.

Webmin has come a LONG ways in the last two years. At the same time, it 
has slowly gotten more complex. Many of my requests have been added and 
I've seen many others. I do hope that it doesn't get to the point where 
it's trying to do too much.

Just as I started out... I for the most part love it! Some of the things 
that it does have such extreme intelligence that I'm amazed! Webmin has 
also 'taught me' how to do many things that I could have spent hours or 
days learning and has taught me how to do some things using better 
methods. It really is fantastic.

Not long after I started using the Webmin systems, a rather quick review 
of Usermin left me with the feeling that this was more for an ISP and 
less for a Hosting provider. It looked to me like Virtualmin and a few 
of the Webmin modules left turned on for a user was sort of redundant 
vs. Usermin. And it sort of is. However, back to the above statement, 
Webmin is geeky and needs to stay geeky and 'my' users shouldn't be 
allowed in there. Something sparked me to take another look at Usermin 
the other day and what I found was rewarding... but not without concerns.

I had yet another user wanting to do an auto-reply... simple enough.. 
And these requests get really annoying after on again - off again - 
change my message mundane work. From Virtualmin the task is really 
geeky, go write a file, upload it to the server, call it from 
Virtualmin... heck, a lot of our users don't know how to FTP and rely on 
our developers to do all updates. Usermin is far superior in this 
ability. So, on this latest request for this feature the other day, I 
set up Usermin on the box containing that account and turned off just 
about everything except for most mail functions. Usermin is still just a 
bit too geeky for the Joe Average user out there but yet has the more 
simplified ability to do the tasks that most of us sysadmins are dealing 
with from day to day. Yeah, I could add some modules to Squirrelmail to 
do these things... yeah, I could find some other interface to do these 
things.. but darn, Usermin is so close.

I think Usermin needs to be looked at from the end user's perspective.. 
something extremely hard to do when you're so far ahead of Joe Average 
when doing the programming. The mail forwarding module is a good 
example. First the name on the button... 'Mail Forwarding and Replies'. 
Well, that really doesn't mention auto-replies? I know we have a big 
need to keep the names of these buttons as short as possible, but 
perhaps since we are already in the Mail area, "Forwarding and 
Auto-replies" would suffice?

After clicking on this button, Joe Average is faced with "Deliver 
Locally?" Yes, this should be clear, but they might just think this is 
going to send a copy via snail mail to their 'local mailbox' at the end 
of their driveway. And no, this is not far fetched! Then "Forward to 
other address?".. Heck, I'm not too sure what this actually does.. Does 
is forward all mail to another address, or does it also forward to 
another address while still delivering to your local mailbox (inbox)? 
And darn, there's no pop-up help file to get more information on this. 
"Send automatic reply?".. well, this part is actually pretty clear 
although it might should say "Yes, respond to all incoming messages with 
the following automatic reply..." "Minimum time between autoreplies". 
Hmmmmm.... this sounds really interesting... but I wonder just exactly 
what it does? Seems like this could be handy to perhaps prevent a mail 
loop? If I set this to 60 minutes, I would only get 24 loops per day 
instead of as fast as the two system can operate. But then if I set it 
to 60 minutes, is this the total for all incoming email or just any 
particular one? If it is for all incoming email, that would only allow 
24 auto-replies per day which wouldn't work for most situations... 
Hmmmmmm... And, backing down to Joe Average... very few even know what a 
mail loop is and that they should do things like unsubscribe to mailing 
list before setting this up.. or heck, go back out and create another 
email account just for mailing list.... And then there's "Complex" 
mode.. yeah... I could use this, no problem. Joe Average??? Whew!!! God 
knows what would be created. I haven't found a way yet to turn Complex 
mode off, but that would be a nice feature.

Again, please don't take this as a request to have 'Usermin' and 'Mail 
Forwarding and Replies' explained to me.... I'm trying to step back to 
the end user's perspective or level of understanding. I do try to teach 
our users just a little bit each time I talk with them.. Gee, I was even 
able to teach one the difference between MSIE and Outlook the other 
day!! Usermin will never be simple enough for him... but the interface 
could certainly be dumbed down a bit so that it really is a 
'Half-Computer-Literate-User'min program instead of a 
'Semi-Geeky-User'min interface. And then, if POP account 
creation/editing/deletion and email Alias creation/editing/deletion were 
in there, three quarters of my tech requests would be covered.

I don't know.. maybe a 'Mailmin' system should be considered versus 
trying to wrap this stuff into Usermin? Anyway, it seems that there is a 
request for ideas or possible direction for Webmin. This is by far the 
largest shortcoming we have on our systems at the moment.

Again, please don't try to tech any of my example issues... I simply 
grabbed some areas which were good as examples.

And as always, thanks so much for Webmin and all the hard work, as my 
life is already so much easier... I guess I've sort of forgotten how 
things used to be and really that three quarters of my tech work is a 
greater percentage today than it was two years ago because 
Webmin/Virtualmin is saving me hoards of time in the other geeky/admin 
areas... it's just this simple stuff that users 'should' be able to do 
themselves.

Best Regards,
John Hinton