Jeremy Davis's picture

Hi Eric, thanks for reporting.

I'm pretty under the pump at the moment, but I have opened a new issue on our tracker to ensure that this is not forgotten and I will circle back ASAP.

Judging from your report, it appears that the Webmin shell is not acting like a "proper" interactive shell!? I could have sworn that I tested it, in the lead up to removing Webshell in v18.0 but my (manual) testing may well have been inadequate? Either way, I should probably consult my notes to be sure.

I was under the impression that Webmin DID now provide a "proper" interactive shell - as of a number of releases ago. I actually raised the issue with them (re the non-interactive shell) some time ago and my Webmin bug report/feature request has since been closed with a note that an interactive shell has been implemented. That is indeed why Webshell was removed - as I thought that Webmin now provided the same functionality that Webshell did.

FWIW whilst Webshell was/is still working, it is quite old and is essentially "abandonware". At some point it is inevitable that it will stop working (unless someone takes over maintenance of it). Last I checked, it doesn't support modern SSL encryption (and requires/relies on old broken ciphers) - hence why we had it behind stunnel.

Regardless, your report suggests that either I've misunderstood something, or perhaps there is a dependency/configuration issue with our implementation?

I will need to investigate further and see if it's just a config/dependency issue on our end, or if indeed we've jumped the gun and removed Webshell before the functionality is included in Webmin.

I guess it is at least some consolation that SSH works as expected. Although I understand that that isn't quite as convenient and "turnkey" as being able to do it in your browser.

As something of an aside, I'm not sure what OS you are using, but Linux and Mac should come with the OpenSSL package installed (i.e. includes the commands you used on your TurnKey server). And on Windows it can be easily installed. I would expect that to give a better user experience than PuTTY (although obviously PuTTY should work too).

In the meantime, IIRC there has been a more recent release of Webmin (that I packaged). I can't confirm that that would work as intended, but may be worth a try? Having said that I don't recall the release timeline and PostgreSQL may well already include the newer Webmin!? Either way, if you do do that, it'd be great if you report back.

Probably the easiest way to update the (or at least check for) updated Webmin packages, is via apt. I.e.:

apt update
apt install webmin

If it says that webmin is already at the latest version, then that's a dead end.

If I can confirm that Webmin doesn't and can't yet provide the same functionality that Webshell did, I will look to re-implement Webshell into TurnKey and for existing appliances, at least document how to reinstall it.

Alternatively, if I discover that its a fault with our config/implementation I will document it initially (if it's easy enough to fix/workaround), with an aim to release updated (and fixed) Webmin packages.

Thanks again for the report and apologies on the inconvenience.