Google recently dropped their Axion CPU — an Arm‑based monster built for speed, efficiency, and cloud‑scale workloads. It powers the new C4A VM family inside Google Cloud, giving you up to 50% better performance and 60% less power usage compared to similar x86 instances. Pretty wild.
But here’s the question I had: Can you run Virtualmin/Webmin on it? The short answer: Yes — but with a couple of tweaks.
🧠 Quick Background Virtualmin is a popular web hosting control panel built on Webmin. It lets you easily manage Apache/Nginx, MySQL/PostgreSQL, mail servers, DNS, FTP — all from a browser.
Normally, it’s targeted at x86_64 servers, but Google’s Axion is ARM64 (Arm Neoverse V2, Arm v9). That means some packages need a little massaging before everything plays nice.
✅ The Good News Webmin works flawlessly on ARM64.
Virtualmin mostly works out‑of‑the‑box.
You can use Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ARM64, Debian 12/13 ARM64, or other supported distros on Google C4A.
For web hosting only (no mail), installation is smooth.
⚠️ The “Gotchas” You Might Hit No official ARM64 Virtualmin repos yet
You might see warnings like:
nginx Copy Edit Skipping acquire of configured file ‘main/binary-arm64/Packages’ … Totally normal — it just means no ARM64‑specific repo exists, so it falls back to universal packages.
Email features need extra work
The package procmail-wrapper isn’t built for ARM64 in Virtualmin’s repos.
If you need mail (Postfix, SpamAssassin, etc.), you’ll have to compile procmail-wrapper manually.
🛠 Fixing the Mail Issue If you plan to run email on your Virtualmin setup:
bash Copy Edit cd /root wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/virtualmin/procmail-wrapper/master/procmail-wrapper.c gcc procmail-wrapper.c -o procmail-wrapper mv /usr/bin/procmail-wrapper /usr/bin/procmail-wrapper.backup cp procmail-wrapper /usr/bin/procmail-wrapper chmod 4755 /usr/bin/procmail-wrapper Now mail delivery should work like normal.
🚀 Install Steps on Axion C4A Deploy a VM on Google Cloud using:
bash Copy Edit wget http://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/scripts/install.sh sudo /bin/sh install.sh Fix mail (if needed) using the steps above.
📋 Compatibility Summary Feature Works on Axion ARM64? Webmin core ✅ Yes Virtualmin core ⚠️ Mostly yes Virtualmin Pro ARM64 support ❌ Not yet Mail / procmail-wrapper ⚠️ Needs manual fix DNS, MySQL, Apache, Nginx ✅ Yes
🎯 Final Thoughts If you’re running a web hosting control panel on Google’s new Axion Arm64 CPUs, Virtualmin/Webmin is 100% doable.
For web‑only hosting: smooth sailing. For mail hosting: be ready to recompile one tiny component.
In exchange, you get the raw speed, power savings, and scale that Axion C4A VMs deliver — and you’re future‑proofing your stack in an ARM‑driven cloud world.
