[tlug] Linux as a black box server?

[Jonathan Q <jq@example.com>]

One of duties is to admin a Debian server on a small company LAN.  It's our 
MX, provides caching DNS + internal DNS services, SAMBA, printing, the usual.  
In the future, it will also server a website to the outside world.

I'm not in the office all the time, and was asked to set up something that 
people could use in case they had any trouble with the server (not that they 
do, since I switched it to Debian :-) and I wasn't here.

What I finally settled on was to run Webmin on the inside network interface, 
over https.  The webmin user has access to only one module, Custom Commands, 
and has no rights for editing or viewing the commands, nor creating new 
commands.  Upon logging in, the webmin user is presented with a screen 
containing buttons for:

- Restart Windows Networking
- Restart Outside Network Interface
- Restart Inside Network Interface
- Restart Firewall
- Restart Printing System
- Reboot

The only instructions necessary were giving the username, password, login 
port, and "If none of those buttons fix the problem, wait for me to get 
there."

Has anyone else set up anything like this?  If so, what approach did you use?  
What problems/end-user suggestions did you have?

It's been a slow day on TLUG, maybe this will at least spark some scandalized 
discussion of how I could use a web-based admin interface ;-)

Jonathan
-- 
Jonathan Q
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