Hello,

I was wondering if it's at all possible to customize the GPL installation to suit my needs. In particular, I would like to use only php5 as I have no need for php4. Also, I do not require a DNS server as I am using the one my host provides. I am currently awaiting the Ubuntu 8.04 (amd64) release, but I thought I would see if this will even possible. Thank you.

dimpared

Of course. We don't care what PHP version(s) you use. Virtualmin Professional has some additional code to handle switching versions on a per-domain or per-directory basis (so that the applications in Install Scripts can use whichever version is best supported).

And, you don't have to use any of the services configured by Virtualmin. Disable the ones you don't want, and they won't be configured (and you can then turn off the service so it doesn't use resources).

I'm building the Ubuntu 8.04 amd64 packages as we speak. Should be available by tomorrow. Sorry it took so long. I've had a lot on my plate over the past few days.

I was actually aware of disabling services and such. My question was actually in regards to the actual installation itself, as I know the GPL install script installs a number of packages by default. A number of which I have no use for. I was just wondering if it's possible to customize the script to not install those packages at all, so I don't have to remove them myself afterwards. I'm mainly concerned about system resources and don't want to have any excess applications installed or running.

Sounds great about the amd64 stuff, and no need to apologize. We all have those times when we're stretched a little thin. Thanks for all the great work you're doing!

Ah, in that case, the answer is no. Though I've been moving in the direction of making it more possible as time goes by. I'm kind of running into limitations of a shell script, but I'm hesitant to toss it out and start over in a more capable language. There's also the problem that for the majority of the scripts activities it knows very little about the system--so if it doesn't install everything, it has no good way to know what is and isn't available. Because Webmin isn't installed until after all of the dependencies (like Apache, Postfix, BIND, etc.) it can't help us in figuring all that stuff out.

There's also the problem of asking users questions--I don't want to ask more than those questions that absolutely must be asked. For example, if the hostname isn't set correctly, we need to fix it before we can proceed because things will break in irritating and confusing (to new users) ways if we don't. But asking whether to install a mail server or a name server is going way too far. So, it'll have to be a command line flag and it'll have to keep up with a lot more state than the script currently manages. Again, being in a better language with better data handling tools (associative arrays, for example, would make this a much easier problem) would make solving this sort of problem easier.

So, basically, the answer is no, but it's in the plans.

Got it! Thanks a lot for the informative answer.