Houston Command Center - Installation, Interface Overview, and Beginners Guide

Houston Command Center by 45Drives is a Linux management console that enables you to perform routine tasks on your server through your favorite web browser. In this video, Jay will provide a full getting started guide for beginners that will include an interface overview, installation instructions, and more!
Note: This video was not sponsored by 45Drives (or anyone else for that matter).
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Time Codes
00:00 - Intro
01:31 - Installing Cockpit (Houston is based on Cockpit)
03:31 - Enabling the Cockpit Socket
06:46 - A quick tour of Cockpit
08:38 - Houston compared to Cockpit
10:12 - Taking a closer look at Houston
15:03 - How to install Houston Command Center
17:49 - Installing ZFS support for Houston
Relevant Articles
• Official blog post for this video ➜ learnlinux.link/houston
• Houston instructions for Rocky 8 ➜ learnlinux.link/houston-rocky
• Houston instructions for Ubuntu 20.04 ➜ learnlinux.link/houston-ubuntu
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Learn Linux TV provides technical content that will hopefully be helpful to you and teach you something new. However, this content is provided without any warranty (expressed or implied). Learn Linux TV is not responsible for any damages that may arise from any use of this content. The person viewing Learn Linux TV's content is expected to follow their best judgement and to make their best decisions while working with any related technology. Always make sure you have written permission before working with any infrastructure. Also, be sure that you're compliant with all company rules, change control procedures, and local laws.
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[@Dreamshadow1977]

While I passed on installing Houston on my two rpi home servers, I did put in Cockpit and I like it. Thank you for the convienent tool.

[@TMS26164]

God bless you abundantly, you are a great teacher, i use your techniques of teaching because you are awesome

[@ardenshackelford7807]

Great video! I've wanted to check out Houston for some time now, nice to see it can be pretty straight forward! I do want to note that in the section for Houston, you mentioned that the Virtual Machine management portion was new, compared to Cockpit. You can actually get the same functionality in standard Cockpit by going to Application and installing it from there :)

[@AkulaFX.]

great, thanks a lot for your teaching.

[@giannakossimos1]

Thank you so mach 😊

[@chrisradtke]

This was pretty cool

[@fk_tech]

Nice video. All these plugins are available for arch Linux. File sharing, virtual machine, docker, navigator. Zfs I use it all on aarch64 except for virtual machine as that's not an option on arm

[@larbesabdellah7079]

I love all your videos all your content, but please do a video or a serie of videos about installing arch with script and install fresh hyperland and configure it and make it as a complete taskbar , I think most of people love to see that , you are the only Linux guy that we wait , me and many many persons to do it , so take it in consideration, thank you 🌹

[@Bill_the_Red_Lichtie]

Houston came preinstalled on my HL15, I really tried to use it, but as an Arch Linux user I didn't want to learn Rocky (RHEL), I wanted a NAS, so I installed TrueNAS (Scale), and treat it as an appliance.

[@0r_1x]

Hey Bill! (0r1x from 45HL forums). I've done the same, which is a bit of a shame. I really liked the theory behind adding a UI on top of CLI commands, whereas TrueNAS has always felt UI first CLI second. My frustrations in Houston came from the choice of Winbind for realmd over sssd (I'm no stranger to realmd, but sssd and PAM are the standard these days). As well as only supporting Ubuntu 20.04 and Rocky 8, both which are long in the tooth. Ubuntu 24.04 is right around the corner as well. I really wish I liked TrueNAS more, but the NFS and SMB permissions have ALWAYS confused me in their UI of both Core and Scale.

[@thebinkbink6349]

Every time Jay says "Cool" take a shot. You will not make it to the end of the video. ;)

[@jamesalles139]

sounds like a fun game

[@ballsdeep9648]

Cool!

[@alan_marx]

Very cool

[@kar1kam1]

Has everyone forgotten about webmin?

[@DrMerciless]

I went to setup a dynamic MOTD and I unintentionally installed the RHEL 8 web console. I didn't even know you could do that then this video comes out. Sometimes the simulation is winking at me.

[@MMWielebny]

Cockpit supports vm mgmt via cockpit-machines package. You do not need Houston for that ;)

[@toromac9786]

Yeah, came to say the same thing. There actually seemed to be quite a few things that seemed like Jay was saying are only available in Houston such as joining a domain and virtual machine management

[@theparten]

Hie Jay can you help me how and where i can get that display on your monitor? I really would love to add it to my machine too...

[@williamguru]

Can you build out a small office network using Linux only, or will AD be needed for user and device management?

[@mitcHELLOworld]

Absolutely you can! There are also free alternatives to AD such as FreeIPA or IDM. If you only have a small amount of users you can certainly do local Linux user/group permissions and we have a ton of customers that take advantage of this. - Mitch Hall Chief Architect at 45Drives

[@IrlymMylros]

Whenever you say you had fun producing this video, make sure you look it too 😀, never seen anyone looking so sad when saying it😂 Thanks for the video.

[@Sdirimohamedsalah]

Any solution to protect this for an administrator with a dynamic IP ?

[@dimitristsoutsouras2712]

It would be better for Huston to have been based upon webmin, since each time I was between those two, webmin was the clear choice. Even with this add ons from Huston, webmin is better and can manage zfs as well.

[@thebinkbink6349]

They both have their own advantages. They complement one-another. I use both on my physical server. For example. Cockpit is better with managing VMs, webmin is better when dealing with an email server.

[@numodular]

Does the VM option already have VM software installed, or are there additional dependencies to download for it to work with Cockpit/Houston?

[@mitcHELLOworld]

Installing the VM module will install required dependencies for you! :) - Mitch Hall Chief Architect at 45Drives

[@numodular]

@@mitcHELLOworld Thanks for the response. I sometimes run into optional dependencies that can help more, especially with VM complexities. Good to know you guys are on top of it.

[@DV-ml4fm]

Nice tutorial. I still prefer command line utilities to monitor my system.

[@jakehinebaugh8230]

okay i follwed this to the letter. i still land at cockpit. i'm trying to move from true nas to houston. i've even reinstalled rocky 8 twice and started over. I still keep landing at cockpit and i can't import my pool. help if you can

[@rayk32]

Would be cool if you could hide the 45Drives stuff from the menu.

[@BrickTamlandOfficial]

thats a feature of cockpit

[@rayk32]

@@BrickTamlandOfficial 45Drives wrote it into Houston which they created. I would guess they’d have to create the ability to hide those 45Drive menus.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

Very easy. Since Houston/Cockpit is module based, you simply uninstall the ones you dont want. - Mitch Hall Chief Architect at 45Drives

[@cirniman]

It would be interesting if Houston could manage all of my linux servers and not just the machine it‘s installed on. Or is there such a feature?

[@mitcHELLOworld]

You can install Houston on multiple machines and manage them all through a single Houston Pane of Glass. - Mitch Hall Chief Architect at 45Drives

[@abdullahX001]

No build for Debian Bookworm yet :(

[@vadimesharak726]

Where is webadmin?

[@lonesomewalker]

I do not get the point: all this informations are available by ssh, WITHOUT a web interface with system user accounts. Why would i install such a vulnerability?

[@night_h4nter]

for the web interface

[@lonesomewalker]

@@night_h4nter yeah, stupid me 🙂we need MORE attack surface! This video shows me to unsubscribe. Teaching how to install vulnerabilities -> i can't recommend this channel anymore to people who are interested to learn how to administrate linux servers at all.

[@numodular]

@@lonesomewalker It appears he's using Rocky 8, so he may be catering to both the average Linux user, and older hardware that doesn't require more expensive hardware spec. Probably just catering to his wider audience, even with more root-prone access vulnerabilities.

[@billy5688]

See ya, bye.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

LOL. I'm sorry.. this is just hilarious to me. I will literally save my breath. haha

[@ll__superior__ll]

Azure rdp ??