Ubuntu 18.04 - confusing install with Virtualmin

Help! (Home for newbies)
1

I decided after having issues with Centos 7 and Kernel 4.7 (needed for AMD Ryzen support) to use Ubuntu 18.04 which uses the Kernel 5.

So, fresh minimal install with gui of 18.04, Install Virtualmin immediately (no issues reported, install clean).

So far …

1/ Nothing shows in Network Interfaces all blank, but interfaces do show in “active”. Something to do with VirtualMin (still) not using Netplan, found instructions on turning Ubuntu back to “old method” but they flew over my head.

2/ Happens in Centos and Ubuntu. When running the Virtualmin install check, expects 127.0.0.1 in resolv.conf. This of course now gets overwritten every restart, and 127.0.0.1 vanishes. Where are you supposed to set this as a permanent entry for resolv.conf?

3/ (after install) Centos 7 - Disk temps all appear on dashboard, Ubuntu - they don’t.

4/ This is probably more Ubuntu than Virtualmin but understanding the setup for Apache is so confusing compared to Centos. I’m surprised that Virtualmin doesn’t use the same “setup” for both systems.

Nigel.

2

127.0.0.1 for Ubuntu netplan should be listed in /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml

I only edit netplan config manually, haven’t tried to edit it webmin/virtualmin yet. But doing it manually works. I install 18.04, set netplan config, update, install virtmin, then be sure config wasnt changed by virtmin. Should work.

Here a working 50-cloud-init.yaml.

network:
version: 2
ethernets:
eth0:
addresses: [‘xxx.xxx.xxx.186/28’,‘yyyy:yyyy:y:yy:yyy:yyyy:yyyy:yyyy/64’]
gateway4: xxx.xxx.xxx.177
gateway6: yyyy:yyyy:yyyy:3a::1
nameservers:
addresses: [127.0.0.1,‘2606:4700:4700::1111’,‘2606:4700:4700::1001’,8.8.8.8]

Obviously edit IPs to match your network. Note spacing must be spaces, not tabs. And hierarchy matters, like addresses lines must be indented more than the category above them. Quotes or apostrophes must be around ipv6 addresses.

For ubuntu disk temps, you have to install smartmontools. Its not installed by default. ‘apt install smartmontools’

3

Scotwnw … thanks for the reply, and so quick! Here’s the issue. I’m not a sys-admin person, I have a geeky side that runs their own server (and router for inside to outside) from home for my photograph web sites. Up to now I have used Virtualmin totally to configure my server (exactly what a good “web panel” should do!). (I did do some research before writing my frustration (which has grown) and all this has been known for years, but nothing programmatically changed for Ubuntu.) Sadly when I read “set netplan config” I don’t really understand what you mean. This is me, not you :slight_smile: .I’ve looked through the etc files and when I find
/etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml all it contains is …

Let NetworkManager manage all devices on this system

network:

version: 2

renderer: NetworkManager

However …

/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections I find my internal / external interfaces… external containing

[connection]

id=Outside World

uuid=130fc907-7014-39db-a091-286efb0c29cc

type=ethernet

autoconnect-priority=-999

permissions=

timestamp=1573083917

[ethernet]

cloned-mac-address=74:D0:2B:34:B5:08

mac-address=0C:9D:92:CD:08:62

mac-address-blacklist=

[ipv4]

address1=xx.yy.zz.aa/32

dns=127.0.0.1;192.69.23.12;192.69.23.14;

dns-search=

ignore-auto-dns=true

method=manual

[ipv6]

addr-gen-mode=stable-privacy

dns-search=

method=ignore

which has all the correct information in it. (Why do “they” make this so confusing!). Do I have two network managers loaded by default? NO, because both those files are Network Manager “owned” files, supposedly. How do I know what Virtualmin will /will not use! And to be honest, how do I even know that Virtualmin will use the .yaml file … (Did I mention how much I dislike XML :slight_smile: )

Rant Over!

p.s. Thanks for the tip on disk temps. My reference was why automatic in Centos, but not in Ubuntu.

p.p.s … and I’m sure this has triggered the issue that I cannot restore a single virtual server and always have the message “Restore failed : Failed to work out externally visible IP address” … even though

Host Addresses

8.44.146.52 Yes apache-web-server.twin-peaks-video.com , apache-web-server

Network interfaces (active) reports

enp4s0 Ethernet 8.44.146.52 255.255.255.255 fe80::76d0:2bff:fe34:b508 Up

enp7s0 Ethernet 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 fe80::ed65:6a2c:e09f:f2c7 Up

lo Loopback 127.0.0.1 255.0.0.0 ::1 Up

Dashboard reports

System hostname apache-web-server.twin-peaks-video.com (8.44.146.52)

Operating system Ubuntu Linux 18.04.3

Check Configuration reports

Default IPv4 address for virtual servers is 8.44.146.52

But if I try to restore a virtual server I get the message

Starting restore of 1 domains from local file /home2/nigel2/VirtualMin_Backup/Sunday-October-20-2019/twin-peaks-video.com.tar.gz …

Extracting backup archive file …
… done

Re-creating virtual server twin-peaks-video.com …

Restore failed : Failed to work out externally visible IP address

If I set “Ignore virtual server creation warnings?” Virtualmin posts

Re-creating virtual server twin-peaks-video.com …

Restore failed : Failed to work out externally visible IP address

And exactly the same thing happens if I set in Restore Virtual Server >> Source and Format >> “Original IP address”

I thought that Virtualmin supports Ubuntu 18.04 … but sadly this just doesn’t seem to be true.

4

OH. So this is a desktop Ubuntu 18.04 install if you have network settings in etc/Networkmanager something, right? Welcome to even more confusion. The desktop uses a different manager for networking than the server version. Ignore everything I said. It doesn’t apply to desktop ubuntu.

But this would explain the confusion in virtualmin, its not geared toward desktop installs. it expects network info to be in /etc/network/interfaces for 16.04 and lower, and in /etc/netplan/something*.xml for 18.04 plus. Which is where that info is on server installs.

If networking is working fine, Im sure its just a matter of putting proper settings into virtualmin manually. Should be able to tell virtualmin the default interface and default ip, instead of it having it try and guess. But I think you’ll be chasing problems forever if this is a desktop install. Especially with all the networking changes that happened starting in 18.04.

5

Scot,

That explains everything, and my (and Virtualmins) total confusion on this. It’s a great shame that the Linux developers keep changing from stuff that “just works”. I looked at how the Ubuntu Desktop was configuring the interfaces and that was perfect, I could read and fully understand. This new method using XML format is just horrible. There’s something intrinsically wrong with a design that if you miss a “space” so things are not aligned it will not work. And not being able to recognize a “tab”, sorry, I’ve hurt programmers for less!

What this does not explain is why all of Webmin and Virtualmin knows exactly what my outside IP address is (going to be) , but everytime I try to restore a server I get the blasted message “Restore failed : Failed to work out externally visible IP address” … no matter what setting I use.

I suppose really this is a bug as well, as Virtualmin should have warned me at the start of the process during install.

I’ll download Ubuntu Server install and see if I can get that working.

Much thanks for all your help… Nigel.

6

You can always add a gui interface to the ubuntu server edition, however one has to ask, do you need virtualmin if running gnome?

7

How Gnome allow you to create virtual servers and alter their settings? If allowing you to edit files - vi or vim allow you to the same. In which case you might as well edit\do everything manually.

8

I have added a lightweight GUI to run firefox / virtualmin. (After rebuilding for Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS…)

The main reason for using Virtualmin is that everything is under one roof, and most importantly transferring all the web sites / email / etc over. And one has to say Virtualmin does a good job, even though I’m going from Centos to Ubuntu.

The only thing that has really surprised me is that Desktop 18.04 using kernel 5.0 but Server 18.04 uses kernel 4.15 … but fortunately that supports AMD Ryzen