Webmin version 1.740 released

News
1

Howdy all,

I’ve rolled out version 1.740 of Webmin for all repos. This version is a pretty big one, in that it includes Ilia’s Authentic Theme as an option (it is not enabled by default, as it still has some quirks that are being fixed as they get found).

Note that if you want to switch to Authentic theme you should install the Perl LWP package first (see note below)!

Changes since 1.730:

  • Added the awesome new Authentic Theme by Ilia Rostovtsev!
  • More German translation updates, thanks to Raymond Vetter, >Norwegian updates, thanks to Stein-Aksel Basma, and Catalan translation updates from Jaume Badiella.
  • Added support for editing DMARC DNS records, which are specially encoded TXT records for defining the response to SPF and DKIM violations.
  • Added an option to use an SSL connection when Webmin sends email, for connecting to remote mail servers like Gmail that don’t allow unencrypted SMTP.
  • Added module access control options to limit visible system status information on a per-user basis.
  • Added a button to reload the Postfix configuration.

Note about the Authentic Theme: The version found in this version of Webmin depends on the Perl LWP module, so you’ll need to install it before switching to the theme (it won’t warn you, it’ll just give you a blank screen with a spinner). You can do that easily on CentOS/RHEL with:

# yum install perl-libwww-perl

On Debian/Ubuntu:

# apt-get install libwww-perl

Or you can use the Webmin software packages module to install it using yum or apt-get.

This dependency has been removed in future versions, and so you won’t need to install this package for future Webmin releases using this theme.

We want bug reports about this theme! It will become the default Webmin/Virtualmin/Cloudmin/Usermin theme in the next month or two, as soon as we’ve worked out the bugs, and spent some time on accessibility.

We especially want feedback on the theme, if you use any assistive technology to interact with Webmin. If you have impaired vision, mobility issues, etc. we’d like to know what we need to do to make it work for you. I will be doing some testing on this front in the near future, but my ability to understand the needs of other folks is limited, so real world usage feedback would be amazing and you would have my gratitude. It took us years of feedback in small batches to get things pretty good in Webmin on this front, and I’d rather not step backward.

Also, the virtualmin-mobile-theme will likely be End-Of-Lifed eventually (as the new themes both Ilia and I are working on are responsive and designed to work OK on both mobile and desktop screens), but for many users of assistive technology, the mobile theme is the best one; it certainly works best for screenreaders. We’d like to make sure that the new themes are at least as good as that, before calling them “done” and before declaring EOL on virtualmin-mobile-theme.

As always, let us know about issues you find.

You can file tickets about the theme itself on Ilia’s github page here: https://github.com/authentic-theme/authentic-theme (You can also update to the latest version there, which already has fixes for some of the issues we’ve found in the version included in 1.740.)

Regards,

Joe

2

Hi Joe,

Today I changed my theme to try the Authentic Theme, and yes, I already had the latest perl-libwww-perl installed. Once I changed the theme the right frame looked ok, but the left frame was really wrong, most of the links gave me File not found error, and then I thougt I need to reload everything, I could not find a way to log out so I close the browser window and I also closed my browser (cleans everything on exit). Then I tried to log back on but I only got the blank screen with the spinner, leaving me unable to log in and change theme back to the Virtualmin Framed theme… This is bad!!!

Then I thougt… my mobile phone, hopefully the mobile theme kiks in so I can change the theme back, and it worked! But what should I have done if I didn’t have the mobile phone to do the change!

Best regards,
Leffe

3

Howdy,

Hmm, I unfortunately wasn’t able to reproduce an issue like you’re describing. What you may want to try is to change that theme just for one test user, rather than globally, which should make it a lot easier to change back if something goes awry.

When doing that, I’d be curious if using a different browser helps. Let us know which browser you’re using though.

Also, to change the theme for just one user, I went into Webmin -> Webmin -> Change language and theme, and there I set the “Personal choice” option next to “Webmin UI Theme”.

-Eric

4

I want to say, I also have this problem. Upon changing to Authentic, I’m thrown Perl 500 errors and missing file errors and become unable to access Webmin.

However this only appears to happen on the index / sysinfo page. I was able to manually navigate to ip:10000/webmin to change the theme back.

I believe I have the required file package, but I’ll check again. The updater should check to ensure the package meets the requirements rather than relying on the end user though, especially since the new theme is installed by default now. Not everyone checks the announcement forum before every update.

5

Howdy,

Joe mentioned that in future versions of the theme, that the LWP requirement is gone… so it won’t be necessary to install that in the future.

I’d be curious what issues you see in /var/webmin/miniserv.error – since it was throwing 500 errors there should also be a related error message in the error log there.

-Eric

6

Hi Eric,

I can mail you the miniserv.log if you want.

My browser is Firefox 36.0.1

And something else is now wrong, my webmin/miniserv.error log is flooded with this line

Use of uninitialized value in string eq at /usr/libexec/webmin/virtual-server-theme/newleft.cgi line 173.

I did try list 50000 lines and all of them is the same error, The miniserv.error did contain 85546 lines with the same error!!!

I really hope the clean Virtualmin Framed Theme will be a optional and maintained theme even in the future, without all new “fancy” stuff.

Regards,
Leffe

7

That newleft.cgi is a warning being generated by the Virtualmin Framed theme, I believe Jamie knows about that one though. I’ve added a note to make sure of that.

You aren’t seeing any other errors in your miniserv.error log though, after trying to switch to the Authentic theme? Just that warning about newleft.cgi?

I’ll do some additional testing with Firefox to see if I can reproduce that issue.

-Eric