Suexec error when Checking Configuration

Virtualmin
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Howdy,

While it’s possibly to get a working Virtualmin system by individually installing things through apt-get, that’s the hard way.

The best way to get Virtualmin up and running is to use the install.sh installer, which is designed to handle pulling in all the dependencies.

Ideally, you’d have a freshly installed system, and you’d run the installer on that.

In your case – if your system isn’t live yet, you may be able to get things working by executing the installer:

GPL: http://webmin.com/vinstall.html
Pro: http://virtualmin.com/serial/

You’d be best off by running that on a fresh system though.

If things are live, well, that’s a little trickier :slight_smile: You’d need to fix things on a case by case basis – if you need the Virtualmin Apache packages, you could manually install those in place of your current ones.

Of course, while it should work fine, you’ll want to make sure you have some backups made :wink:
-Eric

22

Howdy Shanta,

Webmin is not the way to install a full Virtualmin stack. If you just install the Virtualmin module, you’re just installing the Virtualmin module.

To get a full install of Virtualmin and all of its dependencies, including our software repositories and such, you need to run our install.sh script (assuming your running a supported OS). This is documented in the installation documentation. If you hate reading lots of documentation, at least read the quickstart install guide:

http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/id,virtualmin_installation_quickstart/

We recommend you not install Webmin before installing Virtualmin. It probably won’t hurt anything in the installation process, but it’s a waste of your time (and if you install via tarball or using a package from a source other than Webmin.com or Virtualmin.com, it will cause weird issues down the road that are very time consuming to correct).

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I tried the install script but it dose not work. It seems my os is not supported. Debian lenney

Virtualmin was installed by the apt-get package. As a rule I use Debian packages as they should put things were Debian would expect them.

If installing Virtualmin from apt-get sources is not recommended than you should say so on that site or not provide that method of installation.

How to I fix the Suexec error (Webmin reports apache2 Next generation, scalable, extendable web server Running latest 2.2.4-3 Virtualmin)?

Shanta

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I tried the install script but it dose not work. It seems my os is not supported. Debian lenney

The OS support page is, I think, pretty clear about what is supported by the install script:

http://www.virtualmin.com/os-support.html

If you’re using an OS not covered by that, then you’ll have to perform a manual installation.

Virtualmin was installed by the apt-get package. As a rule I use Debian packages as they should put things were Debian would expect them.

Of course. We always use the native package manager when possible. Personally, I’m obsessive about it…and I regularly scold folks for installing using tarballs and other assorted nonsense.

But, you’re right. lenny is not supported. You’ll have to perform a manual installation and configuration.

If installing Virtualmin from apt-get sources is not recommended than you should say so on that site or not provide that method of installation.

Of course apt is the recommended source for packages! But there’s a lot more to getting a fully functioning Virtualmin system than installing a few packages. There are dozens of configuration steps, and they are all very specific to the OS and version you’re installing on.

If we haven’t built a virtualmin-base package (which is the package that does all of the “magic” that you’re expecting to have happened when you installed webmin-virtual-server) specifically for your OS, it will not work for your OS.

virtualmin-base is the package that installs and configures a system with most of the dependencies and other assorted fun stuff (apt-get does something stupid with regard to dependencies that conflict with already installed packages, so there’s actually a bit more going on in the install script for Debian/Ubuntu than I’d like–we have to clean up and remove existing packages that will cause problems before installing virtualmin-base).

In short, if you’re going to run on an OS unsupported by the automated installation process (which uses apt-get for everything), you’ll need to perform a manual installation and configuration. And, you’ll need to build your own Apache package with suexec_docroot set to /home.

We don’t support beta/testing versions of operating systems (it’s hard enough to support all of the stable platforms we support) in our installer. We expect folks that are running experimental systems are a bit more advanced than usual and able to handle the manual process.

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Joe wrote:

Did you install Virtualmin using RPMs or wbm? (If the latter, why? I'm trying to figure out how to guide people better...we're still getting a lot of odd install processes that makes folks lives harder than it needs to be, and makes things harder to support.)

It will be 1 year since I set up the server in couple of days. If I remember correctly, I installed Vmin by copying the URL from the webmin website and pasting it in webmin to handle the installation. It’s usually what I do with webmin modules.I figured it was the best way to do it since one was made for the other and both were made by the same developers.

HTTPD was installed from the centos repo, although I have been updating it from utterramblings: www.jasonlitka.com

BTW, could you take a look at http://www.virtualmin.com/forums/virtualmin/unavailable-features-for-server-admins.html and give me your opinion on the situation. I would greatly appreciate it.

Regards,

Alexandar

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OK, I’m completely lost trying to follow this thread. We’re talking about apt-get and Debian and CentOS and the utterramblings repo and all sorts of craziness. :wink:

Could whoever didn’t start this thread start a new one on your particular topic (Debian or CentOS) and questions? I’m gonna try to catch up and figure out what I’m talking about…

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HTTPD was installed from the centos repo, although I have been updating it from utterramblings: www.jasonlitka.com

Unless this httpd was built with suexec_docroot set to /home, you can’t use suexec on your system. You’ll have to disable it, as I mentioned earlier in this thread (or maybe in another thread…I’ve mentioned it a half dozen times in the past few days, though!).

It will be 1 year since I set up the server in couple of days. If I remember correctly, I installed Vmin by copying the URL from the webmin website and pasting it in webmin to handle the installation. It's usually what I do with webmin modules.I figured it was the best way to do it since one was made for the other and both were made by the same developers.

That installs modules. Nothing else. As long as you’re willing and able to do all of the other stuff involved in getting a fully functioning virtual hosting server running, it’ll work fine. (But it makes it harder for me to know anything about your system, and offer advice when problems arise…since I have no idea what your system looks like, since it isn’t setup like our default.)

I don’t want it to sound like you can’t install things in any way you want. You certainly can, and we take great pride in Virtualmin being extremely flexible. However, installing a Webmin module does just that: it installs a Webmin module. If you expect it to do anything else (like install Apache or other services, configure them for use in Virtualmin hosting, etc.) you’ll be disappointed. Installing a module is a non-invasive process–simply installing Webmin or any Webmin module does nothing to your system except install Webmin or the module, and it can’t/shouldn’t do anything more.

I’ll try to make this distinction a lot more clear in the Webmin.com/Virtualmin.com site redesign that’s ongoing. We’re still obviously failing to guide people on what Virtualmin (the module) is and how to get Virtualmin (the full-stack product) installed easily and reliably.

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Boy…am I glad I wansn’t the only one with the Recheck Config error :slight_smile:

After reading 2 or 3 topics I also checked my config and these were all the steps I have performed to get SuExec and the Recheck Config working properly!

[code:1][root@# ~]# /usr/sbin/suexec -V/usr/sbin/suexec -V
suexec policy violation: see suexec log for more details
[root@molskiweb ~]# /usr/sbin/suexec -V
-D AP_DOC_ROOT="/var/www"
-D AP_GID_MIN=100
-D AP_HTTPD_USER="apache"
-D AP_LOG_EXEC="/var/log/httpd/suexec.log"
-D AP_SAFE_PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
-D AP_UID_MIN=500
-D AP_USERDIR_SUFFIX="public_html"
[root@# ~]# rpm -qf /usr/sbin/httpd
httpd-2.2.3-11.el5_1.centos.3[/code:1]

I was also running the CentOS version of Apache and SuExec with the incorrect ‘DOC ROOT’.

So I performed this command:

[code:1][root@# ~]# rpm -ivh http://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/centos/5/i386/virtualmin-release-1.0-1.rhel.gpl.noarch.rpm[/code:1]

And after that one a simple:

[code:1][root@# ~]# yum update httpd[/code:1]

Where it updated the following packages without problems:

[code:1]=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size

Updating:
httpd i386 1:2.2.3-11.el5.3vm virtualmin 2.5 M
Updating for dependencies:
mod_ssl i386 2:2.2.3-11.el5.3vm virtualmin 314 k
[/code:1]

Update complete!

[code:1][root@# ~]# rpm -qf /usr/sbin/httpd
httpd-2.2.3-11.el5.3vm
[root@molskiweb ~]# /etc/init.d/httpd status
httpd (pid 16306 16305 16304 16303 16302 16301 16300 16299 16283) is running…
[root@# ~]#
[/code:1]

Everything is working perfect and the my configuration is okay again :wink:

Molski

29

Okay, somehow 2 of the command are not shown in the "code" section :frowning:

So here they are:

  1. rpm -ivh http://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/centos/5/i386/virtualmin-release-1.0-1.rhel.gpl.noarch.rpm

  2. yum update httpd

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Joe wrote:

That installs modules. Nothing else. As long as you're willing and able to do all of the other stuff involved in getting a fully functioning virtual hosting server running, it'll work fine. (But it makes it harder for me to know anything about your system, and offer advice when problems arise...since I have no idea what your system looks like, since it isn't setup like our default.)

I don’t want it to sound like you can’t install things in any way you want. You certainly can, and we take great pride in Virtualmin being extremely flexible. However, installing a Webmin module does just that: it installs a Webmin module. If you expect it to do anything else (like install Apache or other services, configure them for use in Virtualmin hosting, etc.) you’ll be disappointed. Installing a module is a non-invasive process–simply installing Webmin or any Webmin module does nothing to your system except install Webmin or the module, and it can’t/shouldn’t do anything more.

I’ll try to make this distinction a lot more clear in the Webmin.com/Virtualmin.com site redesign that’s ongoing. We’re still obviously failing to guide people on what Virtualmin (the module) is and how to get Virtualmin (the full-stack product) installed easily and reliably.

At the time my understanding of Vmin was minimal. I was used to using webmin and manually editing and installing components. There have been changes to the webmin and Vmin sites and the information they provide. I always though that Vmin was just a module for Webmin, plus the system was already running httpd and mysql before I installed Webmin.

Do you have a page on the Vmin or Webmin sites that explains the difference between the Vmin module and Vmin RPM?

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Do you have a page on the Vmin or Webmin sites that explains the difference between the Vmin module and Vmin RPM?

There is no difference. Both contain the Virtualmin module and nothing else…just in two different formats. The RPM is preferred for folks who use RPM-based systems (and the deb is preferred for folks who use deb-based systems). But, .wbm (the Webmin module package format) has rudimentary dependency support, and can even work with the Virtualmin Package Updates module (though it’s not easy obvious how to configure that capability).

In all cases, however, installing any of the virtual-server module packages just installs a Webmin module. It does no configuration of the system and installs no additional packages. To get a full "Virtualmin system", you have to configure lots of other services (and install a few other Webmin modules, most importantly the security-updates module and the virtual-server-theme module, but there are a handful of additional modules to get other functionality for stuff like domain registrations, management of other database types like Oracle and SQLite, Mailman mailing list management, Subversion repos, etc.).

The Webmin and Virtualmin websites will be getting somewhat merged (by some definition of “merged”) in the not too distant future, and we’ll hopefully make all of this stuff a lot more clear.

I think one of the big problems is that Virtualmin is used to refer to both the module and the whole product. I try to only refer to Virtualmin the module as “the virtual-server module” or “the Virtualmin Virtual Servers module”, and use the term “Virtualmin” only to refer to the whole stack of apps. But it’s still easily confused. :wink:

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