Ajenti – Web admin panel | Hacker News Reader

Ajenti – Web admin panel

github.com

183 pointswhalesalad36 comments

Nice to see an admin panel that doesn't require PHP or Apache/Nginx installed. I'll take this for a spin. Requirements: https://github.com/Eugeny/ajenti/blob/master/requirements.tx...

I seems to be licensed under the AGPLv3 (desc here: https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-affero-general-public-lice... )

Check out Webmin, no PHP/Apache required and it's super powerful, though its look smells a bit of the 90s. :)

I agree webmin is fantastic and the UI it actually not that bad with a theme.

Just wondering what theme you use? I have been using this https://github.com/metal696heart/Webmin-Theme-Metal

Webmin as claimed by the authors, does not mess up the configuration files.

Looks neat!

Looking at examples like http://support.ajenti.org/topic/403351-setting-up-a-python-w... it seems that the panel is very opinionated on how to set up things. There are myriad of ways of setting up Django website, so I guess, it would be a significantly improvement if docs would explain what exactly goes on behind the scenes when the configuration is applied. Or maybe I just looked at the wrong place and missed those details.

And certainly needs proper licensing terms explained. "License not required" is very bad phrasing for everyone conscious about the matter - when taken literally it reads as "the software can't be (legally) used" in many jurisdictions. If I got it right, Ajenti seems¹ to be available under AGPLv3, so that's what the site should proudly tell.

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¹) https://github.com/Eugeny/ajenti/blob/master/docs/LICENSE

Interesting, I didn't realize that Ajenti charges for commercial licensing of their web hosting addon.

http://ajenti.org/licensing

It's on github separately but without a license: https://github.com/Eugeny/ajenti-v

Can't be sure this could be treated as an official statement, but https://github.com/Eugeny/ajenti-v/blob/efcee75286418fbbd25e... has a mention of LGPLv3.

If that's real terms the software's distributed under and not some mistake, then it's a proper Free Software project and I don't see any reason why one can't or won't use AGPL/LGPL software commercially. Adding any "secret sauce" seems nearly pointless for web hosting solutions, and even if that's truly necessary it probably could be easily hidden beneath "xGPL software merely writes a config file, and doesn't link with the proprietary bits" waiver.

We've recently undergone transition from an invalid combination of LGPL + custom clauses to dual-licensing under AGPL and proprietary. I actually forgot to replace the license mention in this buildscript, thank you!

This looks great, I wonder how this will compare to Redhat's cockpit project they are pushing quite heavily. Obviously both are new and still massive works in progress.

http://cockpit-project.org/

http://www.projectatomic.io/docs/cockpit/

Looks great. Minor point, can you guys turn your screen shot lightbox into gallery mode so users can navigate through all of them at once?

> Does not overwrite your config files, options and comments. All changes are non-destructive.

I'm wondering how this works exactly. Does it mean it comments out changes it makes? Or keeps a backup somewhere?

It probably keeps them in its own directory and tells the program to look in said directory.

Then it has to supply its own init scripts (or units or whatever) to run separate daemons. Or take part of init's job and run and supervise everything by itself, which isn't a really good idea.

That's wrong.

I'm hoping it means the installation is non-destructive and it uses your existing configs, with no changes, as a base and then modifies them from there when you use the webui.

If that's true, it's poorly phrased.

It uses python-reconfigure[0] to parse the config files into syntas trees (similar to ASTs). Seems to be written by the same author. Either the author didn't know about Augeas[1] which aims to do the same things and has more parsers AFAIK or for some reason couldn't use it.

Edit: Here[2] is the list of Augeas lenses(parsers) -- it's pretty extensive.

[0] - http://eugeny.github.io/reconfigure/ [1] - http://augeas.net/ [2] - http://augeas.net/stock_lenses.html

I'm way to paranoid to install things like this on production servers.

Firewall it to localhost and access it over an SSH tunnel.

The author of this project should have a little section on how to do this. I'm sure lots of people would love the convenience but worry about security.

There's already documentation for how to do that in a zillion other places though, I don't think every project needs to regurgitate those instructions.

They can mention that it's possible and link to resources explaining how to do it. That way, people that didn't know it's a possibility can learn and apply it.

I understand your thoughts completely. They are awesome projects, but I could never imagine hosting this on a production server open to the word.

Use nginx to password protect the path!

Still really paranoid about using something like this in production.

This looks great.

Me and a partner recently launched a dead-simple SaaS tool to monitor cron jobs and other scheduled tasks (http://cronitor.io). Using it really is as simple as adding an "&& curl {your URL code here}" but we've already heard from somebody who relied on cPanel and wasn't sure how he could add our monitoring code.

I see your comment here about a plugin architecture. Are you planning on keeping a directory of plugins? Do you think a plugin to integrate with Cronitor is possible given your current plugin APIs? I'd love to hear your thoughts, here or at shane@cronitor.io

I had written a comparison between server management systems including Ajenti: http://yusufarslan.net/choosing-control-panel-server-managem...

I just installed apache on all my servers just to run http://www.linuxdash.com but I would add this along side it instantly! linxdash would give me my read-only password protected status that I can view from any browser, and Ajenti would give me my ssh / local interface for really managing things!

Looks/ed pretty cool. Took it for a spin. Setup is, indeed, pretty simple. Only problem I ran into is that Ajenti runs on port 8000; same as my node server. Easy enough fix.

First impressions: Its quick, responsive, and has a nice interface. Have to see how it integrates its firewall with UFW.

I'm already using it on a VPS running Nginx. Features are essential but fulfill my needs. It is also very lightweight and well designed.

Looks like the project has improved immensely since I checked this out last year. Love the new look! I'll be reinstalling.

Yay no need to configure it with a webserver

How is this better than, say, Virtualmin?

If this was a Rails engine whose views and CSS I could adapt to my own I'd be sold!

In which way does python hinder you in editing the CSS? How about making your own or learning python?

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I said something like this was available for Rails as well that would be awesome.

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