I tried using this to handle my 10-ish Docker containers, but I ended up using Portainer. Sure, not the same thing, but if someone (like me) thought Cockpit might be nice for managing a small Docker host, this didn't work for me
I've used this before in the early days of my Linux SysAdmin work, especially in the homelab.
It's pretty solid, but the limited amount of projects and lack of visibility into the CLI it uses on the backend hinder the ability to translate sysadmin work into tangible Linux skills, so I dumped it at home in favor of straight SSH sessions and some TUI stuff.
That said, if I gotta babysit Linux in an Enterprise without something like Centrify? Yeah, Cockpit is a solid, user-friendly abstraction layer, especially for WinFolks.
Cockpit is great! My NAS (built on a weird “N17” AMD 7840HS laptop processor put into a desktop “server”mITX motherboard by those wizards in China) stuck in a Jonsbo N2 with 5x4TB Samsung 870 evos in ZFS raidz1 is entirely managed by it
I keep meaning to look into making plugins for it, but honestly I’ve barely needed to. Cockpit, the 45drives ZFS plugin fork, and the web terminal have been more than enough for me
It is very nice. I hope more apps and options are added as it makes very simple to do some admin tasks.
Want to manage services? No problem, it is very easy. Clear failed and disable? Easy.
Want to see some disks and do admin operations on disks? It does.
Want a simple system monitor? It tracks cpu, ram and more in a pretty interface.
RHEL is dropping old interfaces like cluster management and starting to use Cockpit only.
I just wish Cockpit would replace Hawk2 for cluster management as it is better then the old deprecated cluster manager web interface.
But yes, install Cockpit or keep it installed ready to be use cause one day it saves the day...
I installed the latest Fedora Server on my Framework Desktop and noticed that Cockpit was enabled automatically. Overall impression is that its pretty good for getting a quick overview of things and you can certainly do _some_ administration with it, but you run into its limitations pretty fast trying to get any serious work done with it.
It's probably great for those who are new to Linux and want that NAS-like admin web UI to get the basics set up as a stepping-stone before launching deep into the command line.
I used Cockpit for years after I started having issues with my network card in FreeNAS. It's generally very good, though I never really figured out how to graphically swap out a hard disk in a RAID without trashing the data (which happened once).
I suspect that was user error on my end, so if you want a more-or-less no-nonsense way to manager a server, it's certainly worth checking out.
I tried this out about 2 months ago when setting up a new server. I wanted something simpler and less resource heavy as webmin but it was just too simple. Adding questionable, half baked add-ons to get various functions to work just didn't give me the flexibility of webmin.
i used to set up webmin for the linux challenged admins so they could do basic tasks. it was nice because you could lock them to specific functions in certain modules and make it difficult for them to break things
In a sense, one instance on your local machine can use your SSH identity to look at N systems. This consolidates the Cockpit endpoints you might need to use/ports to open... but doesn't give much in the way of orchestration.
edit: A peer comment makes me think this has faded out of support, maybe; I haven't tried in about a year.
I think they dropped multi server managment because it was possible to add a few servers but I guess they drop that one out. You do can logon into a server right on the logon page. That is nice.
When it evolved a couple years ago to automatically set up the bridge for libvirt correctly, it had arrived. When that thing can set up pushbutton podman apps with decent net and persistence defaults it will be gold.
I just want to check from my phone how my home server is doing. Maybe someone else gets a perverse pleasure out of catting /proc/meminfo but I don't understand the need to make things more complicated than necessary.
Ripe for a supply chain attack. What safeguards do they have to protect against one?
I tried using this to handle my 10-ish Docker containers, but I ended up using Portainer. Sure, not the same thing, but if someone (like me) thought Cockpit might be nice for managing a small Docker host, this didn't work for me
I've used this before in the early days of my Linux SysAdmin work, especially in the homelab.
It's pretty solid, but the limited amount of projects and lack of visibility into the CLI it uses on the backend hinder the ability to translate sysadmin work into tangible Linux skills, so I dumped it at home in favor of straight SSH sessions and some TUI stuff.
That said, if I gotta babysit Linux in an Enterprise without something like Centrify? Yeah, Cockpit is a solid, user-friendly abstraction layer, especially for WinFolks.
Cockpit is great! My NAS (built on a weird “N17” AMD 7840HS laptop processor put into a desktop “server”mITX motherboard by those wizards in China) stuck in a Jonsbo N2 with 5x4TB Samsung 870 evos in ZFS raidz1 is entirely managed by it
I keep meaning to look into making plugins for it, but honestly I’ve barely needed to. Cockpit, the 45drives ZFS plugin fork, and the web terminal have been more than enough for me
It is very nice. I hope more apps and options are added as it makes very simple to do some admin tasks. Want to manage services? No problem, it is very easy. Clear failed and disable? Easy. Want to see some disks and do admin operations on disks? It does. Want a simple system monitor? It tracks cpu, ram and more in a pretty interface. RHEL is dropping old interfaces like cluster management and starting to use Cockpit only. I just wish Cockpit would replace Hawk2 for cluster management as it is better then the old deprecated cluster manager web interface. But yes, install Cockpit or keep it installed ready to be use cause one day it saves the day...
I installed the latest Fedora Server on my Framework Desktop and noticed that Cockpit was enabled automatically. Overall impression is that its pretty good for getting a quick overview of things and you can certainly do _some_ administration with it, but you run into its limitations pretty fast trying to get any serious work done with it.
It's probably great for those who are new to Linux and want that NAS-like admin web UI to get the basics set up as a stepping-stone before launching deep into the command line.
Very well done. For me cockpit is more than enough a mainstream proxmox
I used Cockpit for years after I started having issues with my network card in FreeNAS. It's generally very good, though I never really figured out how to graphically swap out a hard disk in a RAID without trashing the data (which happened once).
I suspect that was user error on my end, so if you want a more-or-less no-nonsense way to manager a server, it's certainly worth checking out.
I tried this out about 2 months ago when setting up a new server. I wanted something simpler and less resource heavy as webmin but it was just too simple. Adding questionable, half baked add-ons to get various functions to work just didn't give me the flexibility of webmin.
Interesting. This looks nice. Made me think of webmin which I used... years ago.
Went to look and webmin's changed. Pretty crazy.
i used to set up webmin for the linux challenged admins so they could do basic tasks. it was nice because you could lock them to specific functions in certain modules and make it difficult for them to break things
yeah! I had some things through there early on when I was building sites. I had some custom scripts that could also be triggered by the users.
Does this work well with fleets? I remember looking at this early on it seemed fairly single-server focused.
In a sense, one instance on your local machine can use your SSH identity to look at N systems. This consolidates the Cockpit endpoints you might need to use/ports to open... but doesn't give much in the way of orchestration.
edit: A peer comment makes me think this has faded out of support, maybe; I haven't tried in about a year.
I think they dropped multi server managment because it was possible to add a few servers but I guess they drop that one out. You do can logon into a server right on the logon page. That is nice.
Red Hat wants you to use Ansible for that.
When it evolved a couple years ago to automatically set up the bridge for libvirt correctly, it had arrived. When that thing can set up pushbutton podman apps with decent net and persistence defaults it will be gold.
the opinion you didn't ask for:
avoid admin UIs... at best they make you lazy, at worst a security nightmare
I just want to check from my phone how my home server is doing. Maybe someone else gets a perverse pleasure out of catting /proc/meminfo but I don't understand the need to make things more complicated than necessary.
If you want people to self-host, this is a gateway to that.