Stuck with the “Cannot write to directory /etc/webmin/virtual-server/” error? We can help you.

Often after freshly installing Webmin on the server, when we perform certain tasks like adding SSL to the site or trying to change the default Apache directives in a template we may end up with this error.

Here at Bobcares, we often handle requests from our customers to fix similar errors as a part of our Server Management Services. Today we will see how our support engineers fix this for our customers.

How to fix “Cannot write to directory /etc/webmin/virtual-server/” error

Before going into the steps for fixing this error we will see what causes this error.

Causes :

• Issues with installation
• Access to Webmin users
• Permission of the folders

Steps to fix “Cannot write to directory /etc/webmin/virtual-server/”

We can see the methods that our Support Techs follow to fix this error.

1. Grant access to Webmin users

Insufficient permission of the Webmin user can be one of the possible reasons for this error.

To fix this error we can do the following:

1. While installing the Virtualmin module go to Webmin Configuration

2. And take Webmin Modules

3. From there, select the option ‘Grant access to all Webmin users’

This will provide permission to all the Webmin users.

2. Reinstalling the Webmin installation

At times this error can also be caused due to mistakes or issues during the installation.

And one of the reasons for this can be any package that is already installed in the system.

To ensure that there are not package conflicts, we must do the installation of Webmin on a fresh OS.

Otherwise, we can try reinstalling Webmin:

1. Firstly, we can uninstall the existing one with the following command:

install.sh --uninstall

2. After that we can install it with the following command:

install.sh

Alternatively, to perform the reinstallation using the operating system package manager in Centos systems, we can use:

 yum remove webmin
 yum install webmin

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Conclusion

In short, we saw how our Support Techs fix the error “Cannot write to directory /etc/webmin/virtual-server/” for our customers.