"Webmin is stopped" - And wont start no matter what I do

Running CentOS7, webmin suddenly stopped working after an update a few days ago. Can someone please help me debug?!

[root@admin /]# /etc/init.d/webmin start

[root@admin /]# /etc/init.d/webmin status
Webmin is stopped

[root@admin /]# /etc/init.d/webmin restart
Stopping Webmin server in /usr/libexec/webmin
cat: /var/webmin/miniserv.pid: No such file or directory
kill: usage: kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] pid | jobspec … or kill -l [sigspec]
Starting Webmin server in /usr/libexec/webmin
Failed to open SSL key /home/s65/ssl.key at /usr/libexec/webmin/miniserv.pl line 4416.

[root@admin /]# /etc/init.d/webmin status
Webmin is stopped

Howdy,

It sounds like it’s failing due to this problem here:

Starting Webmin server in /usr/libexec/webmin Failed to open SSL key /home/s65/ssl.key at /usr/libexec/webmin/miniserv.pl line 4416.

That is, it’s looking for the above mentioned SSL key, but it appears to have been deleted. Is that something you can restore?

-Eric

Not really - that account was imported during a test migration which was aborted. That cert was never actually on this server and actually the whole s65 account was deleted recently. The home directory doesnt exist and the user is gone but the SSL reference remains?!

How can I remove this reference to the ssl cert without webmin tho?! Thanks for the help Eric!

Ok I found a reference to /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf somewhere and commented out the references to the offending SSL cert and it came back up. Cheers!

I get a permissions denied error when i edit /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf

Note that to be able to edit the miniserv.conf file (or any file in /etc/), you’d need to ensure you’re logged in as the root user… or that your user is using “sudo”. Without that, the user wouldn’t have permissions to make changes to that file.

-Eric