web gui for server administration

[Aaron C. de Bruyn]

> I would like to replace my IPCop router with an Ubuntu Command line
> system to which I can then add some additional functionality such as VPN
> server, but the major hurdle is that Ubuntu does not provide an easy GUI
> to administer the server. The only web based GUI that I am aware of is
> Landscape by Canonical, which however is not released under GNU. Another
> tool is Webmin, however I have heard it is not recommended. 

I was in your boat almost a year ago.  ipCop and Smoothwall didn't cut it--and none of the other firewall distributions did it either.
For a few weeks I tried setting up a firewall from scratch--but realized it would just take waaay too much of my time to maintain it or tweak it.

I'd recommend you look at 'pfSense'.  It does all the basic stuff I needed, plus a few of the advanced features that ipCop/Smoothwall didn't have working yet.

http://pfsense.com/

You can run it directly from CD, from a USB key, or even install it in much the same way that ipCop installs.

Actually--the initial install is the hard part.  Once that's done, you can just upgrade it from it's web interface.

Take care,

-A