One user to manage all virtual servers

Hi,

Having researched and compared available solutions for hosting guis’, we have been really impressed with the advanced power of virtualmin/webmin combination.

One thing which was lacking(or maybe I missed it) is the ability for one user to control/administer all virtual servers(domains). As of now with virtualmin, each new virtual server gets it’s own user with restricted access to directories/mysql db/ftp, etc. Is there a way to make one user the super admin for a particular number of virtual servers.

Again, my apologies if I missed this, but I haven’t been able to find an answer to this in the forums thus far.

Thanks,
dilip

I’m hoping someone else speaks up, as there may be an even better way of doing it.

But first off, the "root" user does have access to everything in Virtualmin.

I suspect you’re asking about non-privileged users – whether it’s possible to create a user within Virtualmin itself that has rights to all the Virtual Servers.

One way to do that would be to use a reseller account (which are only available in Virtualmin Pro), and associate the various Virtual Servers with that account.

But is it possible to just create a new Webmin user, and give that user rights to control all the Virtual Servers? If it’s possible, I can’t seem to figure out how to do it :slight_smile:
-Eric

I think dilip is asking something more along the lines of, "Can a user create and manage new virtual servers?" And the answer is, "yes". A virtual server account can be granted permission to create new virtual servers (called sub-servers), up to a specified limit (or unlimited).

This is a common query from folks coming from Plesk, where the workflow is, “create a user, create a website belonging to the user”. The workflow in Virtualmin is more straightforward: “create a website”, which automatically springs a user into existence. The end result is the roughly same: You have a user that can manage their own website and email addresses, etc. But, if you’re looking for some sort of user creation step that is separate from the creation of the virtual server, it doesn’t really exist in Virtualmin.

There are reseller users, that Eric mentioned, but that is a very special case: You want someone to be able to create and delete and perform basic maintenance on virtual servers, but they aren’t the “owner” of those virtual servers.

So, to make one user the administrator for a number of virtual servers you would make those virtual servers into sub-servers of the “main” virtual server. That’s what a sub-server is. It is a virtual server that is owned by an existing user.

If this seems confusing, you can just remind yourself that creating a virtual server creates a user and a website. Creating a sub-server just creates a website (and you have to choose what user it belongs to).

Thanks for explaining it better. A reseller account would come closest to what I needed. Didn’t think of it in the manner explained, because of the general definition of resellers.

The school of thought was actually based on unix administration rathen than plesk, which is never to do anything in root user mode once the system is setup, unless required. Hence, I was trying to create a sub-admin who could manage multiple virtual servers and had limited access to certain parts. Something similar to what is available in webmin, wherein you can allow access to specific parts. This way, I can use the sub-admin mode most of the time and avoid making any inadvertent mistakes.

I did try setting up domains as sub-servers - ex: sub1.example.com - within a virtual server - ex: example.com - based on documentation, but was not sure if that was the right way to proceed because some articles referred to these domains as sub-domains within a domain. Wasn’t sure if this could cause BIND setup issues/DNS issues or something else, so thought that I should ask before going forward. Thanks to you Eric and Joe for your answers. Amazed by the quality of relevant replies in here. I will proceed with this method and see how it works.

  • Dilip
I was trying to create a sub-admin who could manage multiple virtual servers and had limited access to certain parts. Something similar to what is available in webmin, wherein you can allow access to specific parts.

This would actually be the same as in Webmin (or, at least, it seems likely). You can use Webmin ACLs to grant a user access to just Virtualmin, Apache, BIND, and a handful of other modules…assuming you want a “super” Virtualmin user, who has full access to all virtual servers, but without full root Webmin access, this is what you’d want to do. Resellers are quite tightly restricted (because they are not usually trusted users), and there’s not really any way to unrestrict them.

Apologies for reviving an old thread.

Is it possible for sub-servers to be created under /home instead of they being created under the main virtual Server folder?

Howdy,

Sorry, that’s unfortunately not possible… a Sub-Server would always be put within the /home/USERNAME/domains directory.

-Eric