| SYSTEM INFORMATION | |
|---|---|
| AlmaLinux 9.3 | REQUIRED |
| Webmin 2.202 | REQUIRED |
I did this to myself - I am documenting what happened in case someone else runs into the same problem. I am building an AMD server in Oracle OCI. Coming from an older version of CentOS, I picked the current version of AlmaLinux. I installed the latest virtualmin package, set up the correct ingress rules, and created a host file entry pointing “oracle-amd” to the server’s public IP. In Chrome, I was able to reach “oracle-amd:10000”, continued with the post-installation wizard, applied pending updates, and began building virtual servers.
One of my applications needed PHP 8.1 - AlmaLinux 9 comes with PHP 8.0.30. I did a “dnf upgrade” in the hope of picking up PHP 8.1 (I am still getting used to “streams”) which picked up some kernel and python3 updates. Suddenly I was unable to access webmin/virtualmin. I got the same error running curl against localhost:10000 on the server. Reboots did not help. Webmin appeared to be running - I could not see anything obviously issues except /var/webmin/miniserv.error showed “timeout at /usr/libexec/webmin/miniserv.pl line 1338.”
I could not back out the last system upgrade. I built a new AMD server, ran “dnf upgrade” which seemed to pick up both the first and and second batch of updates mentioned above. Only then did I install virtualmin. I immediately got the same error trying to access webmin/virtualmin. With WireShark and tcpdump I could see port 10000 traffic from my laptop arriving at the AMD server and responses coming back but with no data.
By pure luck, I happened to copy the URL in the Chrome browser and noticed that it read **http://**oracle-amd:10000. Switching to https://oracle-amd:10000 allowed access on both on the new and old server. I admit that the virtualmin instructions include https:// but have slipped into the habit of typing URLs without the protocol part because most websites redirect. I cannot explain why http://oracle-amd:10000 worked before the Linux updates - none of the second batch of updates seemed relevant. Anyway, life is once again good.