First steps with Zentyal¶

Dashboard¶

The Dashboard is the “home” interface. It contains a series of widgets that can be configured. You can reorganize the widgets at any time by clicking on their titles and dragging them.

By clicking on Configure Widgets, a new menu appears allowing you to remove and add new widgets. To add a new widget, you need to search for it using the top menu and drag it to the central section. To remove a widget, click on the X in the upper right corner of the window.

Dashboard configuration

One of the most important widgets in the Dashboard displays the status of all modules installed on Zentyal.

Widget showing the status of the modules

The image shows the status of a service and the actions you can carry out for this service. The different statuses are:

Running:

The service is running and listening to client connections. You can restart a service using Restart.

Running unmanaged:

If you haven’t enabled the module yet, it will be running with the default configuration set by the distribution.

Stopped:

The service is stopped either because the administrator has stopped it or because a problem has occurred. You can restart the service by clicking on Start.

Disabled:

The module has been explicitly disabled by the administrator.

Configuration of the module status¶

Zentyal uses a modular design in which each module manages a different service. To configure each of these services, you must enable the corresponding module from Module Status. All those functions that have been selected during the installation will be enabled automatically.

Module status configuration

Each module may have dependencies on others modules in order to work. For instance, DHCP module needs to have the network module enabled so that it can serve IP addresses through the configured network interfaces. The dependencies are shown in the Depends column and until these are enabled, you can’t enable the module.

The first time you enable a module, you are asked to accept the set of actions that will be carried out and notified of the configuration files that will be overwritten. After you have accepted all the actions and listed files, you must save changes in order to apply the configuration.

Confirmation to enable a module

Applying the configuration changes¶

An important feature to consider when working with Zentyal is the way configuration changes are applied. First, changes must be accepted in the module forms, then, to make these changes effective and apply them permanently, you must click on the Save Changes button in the top menu. This button will only appear if there are any unsaved changes. By clicking on this button you will see a confirmation dialogue where you can also discard unsaved changes. An exception to this rule is the users and groups management. Here the changes are applied directly to the LDAP database.

Save Changes

General configuration¶

There are several parameters in the general configuration of Zentyal that can be modified in System ‣ General.

General configuration

Administrator accounts:

You can configure user accounts with administrator rights.

Language:

You can change the interface language using Select a language.

Administrative interface port:

By default it is the port 8443/TCP with HTTPS, so you can use the default HTTPS port for the web server. However you can change it to another port and specify it in the URL when you access https://ip_address:port/.

Hostname:

It is possible to change the hostname or the domain. For example zentyal.home.lan. The hostname will be used as an ‘A’ register (hostname) of the local DNS domain.

DHCP client interface¶

When you configure an interface to make DHCP requests you are not configuring only the IP address, but also the DNS servers and gateway. This is usual for hosts within the local network or for external interfaces connected to the infrastructure routers.

DHCP configuration of the network interface

Static interface¶

If you decide to configure a static interface, you must specify the IP address and the network mask.

Static configuration of the network interface

PPPoE¶

If you use PPPoE [1] (a connection method used by some Internet providers) on your ADSL router, you can also configure these types of connections. To do this you only have to select PPPoE and introduce the Username and Password supplied by your provider.

PPPoE configuration of the network interface

VLAN trunk (802.11q)¶

If you connect the server to one or more VLAN networks select Trunk (802.11q) [2]. Once selected, by using this method, you can create as many interfaces associated to the defined tag as you wish and consider them as if they were real interfaces.

The VLAN network infrastructure allows you to segment the local network to improve performance and security without the need to invest in hardware that would usually be necessary to create each segment.

VLAN configuration of the network interface

Bridged mode¶

The bridged [3] mode consists of associating two physical network interfaces attached to your server that are connected to two different networks. For example, one card connected to the router and another card connected to the local network. By using this association, you can redirect the network traffic transparently from one card to the other.

This has the main advantage that it is not necessary to modify the network configuration of the clients of the local network when you install a Zentyal server as a gateway. Yet you can manage the traffic that actually passes through your server with the firewall, content filtering or intrusion detection.

This association is created by changing the interface method to Bridged. When you choose this method, a new option (Bridge) appears: here you choose to which group of interfaces you want to associate this interface.

Creating a bridge

This will create a new virtual interface bridge which will have its own configuration as well as a real interface. So, despite the traffic goes through the bridge transparently, you can use the interface to offer other services like Zentyal administration interface or FTP.

Configuring bridged interfaces

Bonding¶

You may want to bundle two or more physical network interfaces in order to create a virtual network interface with the sum of the network bandwidth [4].

The configuration is similar to the bridged mode. You create the virtual interface bond<N> by configuring the first interface as Bundled and then you will be able to add other network interfaces to this virtual device.

Bonding virtual device

There are several Bonding modes available:

• Static: Send packets in parallel, in sequential order via each of the physical interfaces.
• LACP: Advanced control and negotiation protocol of physical links. Need both ends supporting this standard.
• Balance (alb): Traffic balance based in negotiating network capacity using ARP.
• Balance (tlb): Traffic balance based in current load and proportional capacity of each link.
• Backup: Enable additional links only if main one fails.
• Broadcast: Transmit all packets through all physical links. Protects against transmission errors, but does not increase bandwidth.

Gateways and network Proxys¶

In the case you configure the network interface manually, you need to define the Internet acess gateway by using Network –> Gateways. Normally this is done automatically if you enable DHCP, but not in the other options. For each gateway you can indicate the Name, IP address, Interface to which it is connected. In addition, the Weight defines the priority compared with other gateways and you can also indicate if the gateway is the Default gateway.

In addition, if an HTTP proxy is required for Internet access, you can also configure this in this section. This proxy will be used by Zentyal for connections such as updates and the installation of packages or the update of the anti-virus data files.

Configuration of gateways

DNS¶

To allow the system to resolve domain names, you must indicate the address of one or several name servers in Network ‣ DNS.

Configuration of DNS servers

Network diagnosis¶

To check that the network has been configured correctly, you can use the tools available in Network ‣ Tools.

Ping:

Is a tool that uses the ICMP network diagnosis protocol to observe whether a particular remote host is reachable by means of a simple “echo request”.

Network diagnosis tools, ping

Traceroute:

You can also use the traceroute tool that is used to determine the route taken by packages across different networks until they reach a given remote host.

Traceroute tool

Domain name resolution:

In addition, you can use the domain name resolution tool which is used to verify the correct functioning of the name service.

Domain name resolution tool

Finally, by using the Wake On Lan tool you can activate a host using its MAC address, if this feature is enabled in the target.