How to install the server management software Cockpit on Linux

How to install the server management software Cockpit on Linux

Cockpit is a free and open source server management software that allows us to easily manage our GNU/Linux servers through its nice web Front-End Interface. Cockpit allows linux System Administrators, System maintainers, and developers to easily manage their servers and execute simple tasks, such as managing storage, checking logs, starting or stopping services, and other tasks. Its report interface provides some excellent functions to easily switch between the terminal and web interface. In addition, it not only makes it easy to manage a server, but more importantly, you only need one click to manage multiple servers connected to the network at the same time in one place. It is very lightweight and easy to use on web interfaces. In this blog post, we will learn how to install Cockpit and use it to manage the servers running the Fedora, CentOS, Arch Linux and RHEL release operating systems. Below are some great functions of Cockpit on our GNU/Linux servers:

1. It contains the systemd Service Manager.
2. There is a Journal log viewer for troubleshooting and log analysis.
3. Storage configurations, including LVM, are simpler than ever before.
4. You can use Cockpit for basic network configuration.
5. You can easily add and delete users and manage multiple servers.

 

1. Install Cockpit

First, we need to install Cockpit on our linux-based server. The cockpit installation package is available in most official release software repositories. In this blog post, we will install Cockpit through their official software repositories in Fedora 22, CentOS 7, Arch Linux, and RHEL 7.

 

CentOS/RHEL

Cockpit is available in CentOS and RHEL official software libraries. We only need to use the yum manager to install it. You only need to run the following command with sudo/root permission to install it.

1. #yum install cockpit

Install Cockpit on Centos

 

Fedora 22/21

Like CentOS, the official Fedora software library also has available Cockpit by default. We only need to use the dnf Package Manager to install Cockpit.

1. # dnf install cockpit

Install Cockpit on Fedora

 

Arch Linux

Currently, no Cockpit is available in the official Arch Linux software library, but the Arch User Repository (AUR) Library is available. You only need to run the following yaourt command to install it.

1. # yaourt cockpit

Install Cockpit on Arch linux

 

2. Start and enable Cockpit

After Cockpit is successfully installed, start the Cockpit service using the service/daemon manager. In 2015, although some linux distributions still run the SysVinit management daemon, most linux distributions use Systemd, and Cockpit uses systemd to complete almost all functions from running daemon to service. Therefore, Cockpit can only be installed in the latest linux release that runs Systemd. To start Cockpit and enable it to automatically start every time the system is restarted, we need to run the following command on the terminal or console.

1. #systemctl start cockpit
2. #systemctl enable cockpit.socket
3. Created symlink from/etc/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/cockpit.socket to /usr/lib/systemd/system/cockpit.socket.

 

3. Allow access through the firewall

Start Cockpit and enable it to automatically start upon every system restart. Now we need to configure a firewall for it. Because the firewall program runs on our server, we need to allow it to access Cockpit from outside the server through some ports.

 

Firewalld

1. # firewall-cmd --add-service=cockpit --permanent
2. success
3. # firewall-cmd --reload
4. success

Allow Cockpit to pass Firewalld

 

Iptables

1. # iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80-j ACCEPT
2. # service iptables save

 

4. Access the Cockpit Web Interface

Next, we will finally access the Cockpit web interface through a web browser. Depending on the configuration, we only need to open https: // ip-address: 9090 or https://server.domain.com: 9090 in a browser. In this blog, we use a browser to open https: // 128.199.114.17: 9090, as shown in.

Access the Cockpit Web service through SSL

An SSL authentication warning will appear because we are using a self-signed authentication. We only need to ignore this warning and go to the logon page. In chrome/chromium, We need to click Show Advanced and then click Proceed to 128.199.114.17 (unsafe ).

Cockpit logon page

To enter the dashboard, enter the detailed logon information. Here, the user name and password are the same as the user name and password used to log on to our linux server. After entering the login information and clicking the Log In button, we will enter the Cockpit dashboard.

Cockpit dashboard

Here we can see all the menus and the visual results of CPU, disk, network, and storage usage. The dashboard is shown in.

 

Service

To manage Services, click Services in the menu on the right of the web page. Then, we can see that the service is divided into five categories: Target, system service, socket, timer, and path.

Cockpit Service

For more details, please continue to read the highlights on the next page:

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