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There is no GUI (gnome/kde) installed on the server and I am a newbie on Linux.

Is there something like Midnight Commander but for system administration?

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1  
So, you installed Linux on your server but don't know how to use the command line? Maybe try Windows instead? – Cody Gray Dec 27 '10 at 10:15

migrated from stackoverflow.com Dec 27 '10 at 21:32

7 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

The most powerful tool in a sysadmin's arsenal is the command line. Learn to use it.

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-1 this is not a helpful answer. Correct maybe, but not helpful. – Mark Henderson♦ Feb 22 '11 at 1:24
up vote 1 down vote

You didn't mention which Linux you are using but for openSUSE you can just run yast it has a complete text based interface for system administration.

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up vote 1 down vote

Midnight Commander is available on most Linux distributions.

For debian:

apt-get install mc

For Red Hat systems:

yum install mc

then at the prompt:

$ mc
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Pretty sure he's not actually looking for MC, but something like it that works for configuring his server. You know, something like the "Configure Your Server" wizard that comes with Windows Server. ;-) – Cody Gray Dec 27 '10 at 10:16
He should have elaborated ;) – atx Dec 28 '10 at 9:32
up vote 1 down vote

As cartman mentioned, yast is great for OpenSUSE, if you're using redhat, you can try the system-config-xxx tools. From bash, try system-config [double-tab], and it will give you a listing.

As far as others, we'll need to know what flavor of linux you're running.

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up vote 1 down vote

I suggest you to use webmin.

It does magic for beginners.

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If you don't understand the basics of your system, it's going to end up compromised or broken. GUI's like this can help, but you need to know command line basics. There's simply no way around it. – devicenull Feb 22 '11 at 2:14
up vote 1 down vote

Suggestion, learn the Linux command line interface. It is better than any GUI tool

Practice doing simple administrative tasks on a virtual machine on your own machine, which will be a good start to learning Linux.

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up vote 0 down vote

Well, you should learn command line, but you can also install X server and forward it through SSH to your local PC, google helps you.

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