Awesome Linux Tools - Cockpit

[@gwgux]

We use this at work. I set it up on our Fedora servers for our new to Linux system admin. I just haven't gotten around to putting it on our Ubuntu servers yet. I'm now reminded to do so. ;)

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

I have been using WebMin on my Ubuntu home server for like, ever. Have never looked for anything else. Glad to see that like all thing in Linux there are other dashboards... :-) Thanks Jay for the video! LLAP

[@d00dEEE]

I have cockpit on both my Ubuntu LTS and Alma servers, both hosts are displayed in the same web session, so I can jump back and forth between them. Very convenient for checking system/service status at a glance.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Totally agreed!

[@LampJustin]

Finally good coverage of Cockpit!!! ^^

[@MichealG]

There are other modules that can be added, I think you should have mentioned; like smb sharing, nfs sharing zfs manager and file browser which make cockpit a lot closer to webmin. Redhat supports this project as it relies on systemd and doesn’t mess with configuration like webmin which has many cve’s.

[@girishverma9780]

Very good timing...I just did a presentation at work to show some members Webmin but Linux team suggested to use Cockpit as Webmin is not safe. Is Webmin truly not safe - they said it is built on older tech. I'd be open to hearing back on this. UPDATE: After trying out both cockpit and Webmin I am leaning towards Webmin. I am not a Linux expert but working part of storage team rolling out Linux based file server with Samba. Webmin seems to be more mature and experience with it has been better. 2FA enabled as well as being able to log in via certain IPs only provides for protection. Cockpit seems very clunky and more of a dashboard with some admin capabilities but that's all.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

I haven't checked out Webmin in quite a while, but I might give that another go. I think it's been over a decade (or longer) since I last looked at it.

[@girishverma9780]

@@LearnLinuxTVThank you for replying. It would be great to hear your opinion of it and/or comparison of it to cockpit. Great videos!!

[@hugbearsx4]

@@LearnLinuxTV If you do, please consider a comparison between Cockpit and Webmin in terms of (1) resources used, (2) actual admin features, (3) security and (4) ease of installation/management of the app itself. Anyway, thanks for the awesome content - it's very much appreciated!

[@Im.Tabachnik]

this is a really Awesome Linux Tool, thank you so much for showing us how to use it. I love it and I will use it on my work.

[@Danielo515]

Love to see someone doing tutorials for beginners not using apt-get anymore

[@MichealG]

Thanks Jay for sharing. Cockpit is a nice project. You can enhance securing by using 2fa as well

[@blevenzon]

Thanks Jay, awesome video. Super useful, because this makes Linux less intimidating for my helpdesk team.

[@CoachSergioBB]

Nice Vid thank you Question: Do you have a video showing how Cockpit handles patch management for multiple Linux servers from its centralized web interface; sort of automated manner?

[@mhassankhan]

Pls make a video on resource manager/ job scheduler such as openpbs or slurm.

[@send2gl]

Interesting, I like the command line but GUIs like this are very useful for a quick overview.

[@SB-qm5wg]

The VM plugins are pretty cool

[@averagedev7768]

Running fine on all company servers. In combination with uptime kuma and this panel i am able to monitor 38 ubuntu servers on the network.

[@JAFOpty]

my Software Updates or Applications tabs do not work in Ubuntu server for some reason. Works great on Fedora tho :(

[@docteejay]

Thank you, very useful to newbie like me.

[@marcosoliveira8731]

Really good information, as always. Thank you.

[@mharding1258]

Thank you for saying 'sudo' correctly! 🤣

[@RichardKleinLeugemors]

apt install cockpit-machines - and you can manage all our KVM/QEMU virtual servers from within Cockpit as well.

[@undergrounder]

Great tutorial, thank you Jay!

[@LearnLinuxTV]

My pleasure!

[@vPeteWalker]

Thanks Jay. This is great! By any chance do you have a recommendation for something similar on Alpine? Much appreciated.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Is this for the purposes of creating lightweight containers? If so, Alpine is pretty much the gold standard (as far as I know) but I haven't looked to see if there are alternatives.

[@Ranblv]

can you use fail2ban to protect cockpit? or restrict access to it for specific ip?

[@LearnLinuxTV]

I would think so, I'm not sure if there's an official jail or not. Since fail2ban allows you to write your own jails, I'd be surprised if you couldn't. I haven't tried that myself though.

[@NilsNormann]

I have been staying away from web interfaces like this because I worry that they might change configs in a non-standard way. Or at least in a way that is different from my work flow. This could make trouble-shooting trickier than it otherwise would have been.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

I don't disagree, that's a valid concern. However, it might make sense to use something like Cockpit solely for monitoring, rather than making changes to things.

[@hoterychannel]

What reason can be for that strange design decision- to use regular system account instead of creating some "virtual"? Cockpit allow anyway very limited range or features but if someone steal root (or user with sudo) password...

[@PowerUsr1]

wow i didnt even know about this package. i still prefer the cli but this...this is fantastic

[@yourpcmd]

Here's a problem. It's on port 9090. I have an XMPP server running on port 9090 for the admin web interface. Can the port for cockpit be changed during installation or nano into the config file?

[@hovasty]

Hi, for some reason after installing cockpit last night I can not access my server via ssh. It just completely broke. Other packages I have installed are docker and git. I am using it as docker machine to run some services. I tried reinstalling it but the same result AFTER installing cockpit. I am using Ubuntu server 20.04. Any ideas what is causing this?

[@declanmcardle]

# systemctl status sshd -l # journalctl -r -u sshd etc.

[@declanmcardle]

ssh -vvv on the client....

[@GrishTech]

One disappointment with cockpit on non-rhel distros is that udisk2 is not compiled (or does not support) iscsi management. Thus, you can't manage and format iscsi disks in ubuntu for example.

[@m4l490n]

Thank you for this video!! I would have never discovered this myself, and it is a very nice web interface! I already installed it on my debian server, and I'm very pleased. It is awesome! I just wanted to ask you if you have configured this to work with Let's Encrypt certs. I just can't make it work with them.

[@slamlander3360]

what's up with webmin?

[@PE4Doers]

Sorry, Linode will NEVER happen with me. Subscription services will eventually be an issue. I have some horror stories.

[@DaveSomething]

it's like WebMin light?

[@LearnLinuxTV]

I haven't used Webmin in ages, so I'm not even sure how that stacks up today. Might be worth a comparison though.

[@DaveSomething]

@@LearnLinuxTV I will have a go at it...

[@DaveSomething]

@@LearnLinuxTV I installed it on my Pi4... I like it, thanks!

[@ardatun]

​@@LearnLinuxTV I'm using webmin for ages. It's by far superior. I actually stopped watching this after 30seconds when I saw cockpit's interface. Nice video though

[@KiraSlith]

Okay, but why is this video identical to Linode's?

[@richieh9100]

@LearnLinuxTV Do a review on Slackware 15.0 newest version

[@tigerfish66]

ahhh the old dashboard challenge........do the positives of ease of use outweigh understanding the age old CLI management techniques.......of course it depends on your use case , my old employer used to love WEBMIN, simple READ-ONLY tasks and management was available to the help desk for checking stuff, new admins promoted from the help desk however, our preferred method of getting new staff, they were absolutely hampered by a lack of true admin CLI skills, tricky......

[@vladk4444]

You forgot to mention how to uninstall: sudo systemctl stop cockpit sudo systemctl disable cockpit sudo systemctl stop cockpit.socket sudo systemctl disable cockpit.socket sudo apt remove cockpit*

[@fio_mak]

GUI for managing linux servers? Does not make any sense. Especially on production. GUI have its own overhead. And doing things via GUI is not the way to deal with linux. No matter if ur new or experienced.

[@rajismiley8937]

webmin 3.0

[@ierosgr]

Webmin is by far superior to this childish retro look alike interface ... nice presentation though for something that has no place there, where other guis manage to do the job more efficient being better looking and with more options

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Webmin certainly got a lot of mentions in the comments, so I think it probably deserves another look.