Freebsd 8.4 installation error

There isn't an 8.4 tree at http://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/freebsd/ so installing FreeBSD 8.4 fails. No procmail script. I fixed it on my copy, but you could just copy the 8.3 stuff into an 8.4 tree and fix it for next time.

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Uh, there are GOBS of errrors in 8.4, might want to take 8.x off the list of "these work". Starting with Apache installation fails, then goes downhill from there. The note above is a minor issue.

It seems the original submitter has the rest working. I have Virtualmin running on 9.x and 10.x machines as well and they work just fine. Perhaps you can create a seperated ticket with the issues you are running into Dave so that they can be properly analysed. (I am willing to help and look).

With best regards, Remko

I am the OP. Do a clean install of 8.4, the install.sh script will run, but the end result isn't a virtualmin installtion. I could probably make it all work, but I wanted someone here to know that out of the box, 8.4 doesn't install. 9.x and 10.x aren't supposed to work, but the docs say 8.x works. Thats why I started this thread.

Did you try installing from the Ports System?

virutalmin from ports doesn't give you a full experience. The "install.sh" script is the preferred way to install virtualmin on a clean new installed version of the OS. From the "install" page: "We recommend you use the automated installation, if at all possible, as manual configuration can be tedious and error prone, even for experienced system administrators. "

Starting with the simplest issue, the procmail script isn't there, and postfix is going to try really hard to deliver mail with procmail, and with no script things fail badly. I wasn't going to continue debugging other script errors after that one, simply because so many errors occurred on the 2nd attempt to run the install.sh script, after fixing that one issue.

Hope that better explains whats going on?

Just give it a try on a fresh 8.4 box, you will see almost immediately what I mean.

Joe's picture
Submitted by Joe on Wed, 07/23/2014 - 14:15 Pro Licensee

There have been some really big changes in FreeBSD since I last had time to work on the installer for it. Package management and updates, in particular, have changed dramatically with cperciva and others updates to the package management tools.

I would need some assistance from experienced FreeBSD users to make things work nicely again, I think, as a lot of it is over my head and often I don't even know where to start reading.

To learn about important things in FreeBSD now (that directly affect Virtualmin) you need to start with PKG: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/pkgng-intro.html And yesterdays update: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1237611+0+current/freebsd-p...

Oh, and the ZFS stuff, but thats not really "new" any more. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/filesystems-zf...

The new way to start servers is more Centos like too, you use "service httpd start" kind of things. See: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-r...

Nothing else really new comes to mind, although there are gobs of other changes, these are the things that most affect Virtualmin.

(personal wish: Figure out how to run and manage each virtual server in a separate Jail, then we have the perfect system)

Joe's picture
Submitted by Joe on Wed, 07/23/2014 - 20:54 Pro Licensee

Thanks for the pointers, that will help (and I like what I've seem of the changes...the packages and updates situation, and it's lack of ability to effectively verify what exactly is installed, on FreeBSD always made me uncomfortable, so I'm glad to see improvements there). I believe I'd also found some networking differences in the past, but it's been a while since I sat down with a FreeBSD system.

As for the Jail idea, I seem to recall people working on the idea in the past. Since Virtualmin runs as root, it wouldn't be impeded by a jail setup. But, there will be holes in the jail, unavoidably, when using a shared Apache installation (but that's true of any shared hosting system configuration). I've been playing with SELinux of late, and while it is awesomely powerful, there are still holes in the permissions model. It doesn't mean things are insecure...just that there are a few vectors that would be able to break through the jail, were they to be compromised. It's unfortunate that SELinux and Jails aren't more similar. I'd like it if the new features in that direction could apply across all the supported operating systems. FreeBSD has some sort of RBACL system, though, doesn't it? Might be an alternative direction to go to achieve similar ends, rather than Jails, and with more flexibility.

If you want to do something like you are mentioning Joe, you want Apache2.2/2.4 with mpm-itk, and have the server run for each user individually (or more or less). We do that for all our vhosts, and prevented a multitude of attacks with that.

Please let me know what you are looking for within FreeBSD, I am a community member, and committer for what it's worth.

To the OP, I install using the ports system so that the dependencies are there, the procmail version that webmin / virtualmin offers can just be installed and will just work [tm]. After that I upgrade to pro and have the pro-services installed.

pkg info | egrep 'virtualmin|webmin'

virtualmin-4.09 Virtual hosting management system based on webmin webmin-1.690_1 Web-based interface for system administration for Unix