How to Install Cockpit to Monitor and Administer Linux Server via Web Browser - Geeks Warrior

How to use cockpit to manage system performance on Linux - Cockpit is a web-based monitoring tool that is user friendly and allows you to manage and monitor resources graphically via a web browser. With Cockpit, you can monitor CPU usage, memory, storage, bandwidth, monitor logs, add new accounts to your Linux system, perform software updates, and access the terminal console on your Linux server.

If you work as a Linux sysadmin, maybe you are familiar with SSH client applications such as PuTTY, with the PuTTY application, you can access Linux servers remotely via the command-line interface (CLI). You have to run certain commands to manage or to monitor the resources on the server, but if you use the cockpit, you don't have to bother running the command line through the console terminal, you just have to open the browser and control everything using the cursor.

Cockpit allows you to see many aspects of the system performance on the server and make configuration changes, here are some of the features available in the cockpit : 

• Monitors system activity (CPU, Memory, Disk I/O, and Network Traffic).
• View log entries on the system.
• View a list of partitions and hard drive capacity.
• Monitor traffic on the network card (send and receive).
• Adding a new account.
• Check the service status on the system.
• Perform software updates.
• Opens and starts the terminal console.
  

How to Install Cockpit on Linux

Cockpit can be installed and run on many Linux distributions, please follow the steps below to install cockpit on each Linux distribution according to the one you are using.

1. How to install cockpit on Fedora

By default, the cockpit is installed on fedora servers, but if you want to install the cockpit on fedora derivative distribution, please run the following command in the terminal.

$ sudo dnf install cockpit
$ sudo systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=cockpit
$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=cockpit --permanent

2. How to install cockpit on RHEL

Cockpit is included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and later.

On RHEL 7, you have to enable repository extras with the following command :

$ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

RHEL 8 does not need a non-default repository.

Then install the cockpit with the following command :

$ sudo yum install cockpit
$ sudo systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=cockpit
$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=cockpit --permanent

3. How to install cockpit on CentOS

Cockpit is already available on CentOS 7.X, to install it please run the following command in the terminal :

$ sudo yum install cockpit
$ sudo systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
$ sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=cockpit
$ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

4. How to install cockpit on Debian

Cockpit is already available on debian unstable and backports (Debian 10 Buster).

If you are using Debian 10, then you have to enable the backports repository with the following command :

$ echo 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main' > \
 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
$ sudo apt update

5. How to install cockpit on Ubuntu

Cockpit is available on the Ubuntu 17.04 repositories and later, and is also available on official backports for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

To install Cockpit in Ubuntu, you can run the following command in the terminal :

$ sudo apt-get install cockpit

6. How to install cockpit on Arch Linux

For arch users, you can install the cockpit using Pacman with the following command :

$ sudo pacman -Syu
$ sudo pacman -S cockpit
$ sudo systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket

7. How to install cockpit on openSUSE Tumbleweed

For openSUSE Tumbleweed users, you can install the cockpit with the following command :

# zypper in cockpit
# systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=cockpit
# firewall-cmd --reload

How to Run Cockpit on Linux

If the cockpit is already installed on your Linux, you can access it via a web browser like mozilla firefox or google chrome. Please point your web browser to :

https://ip-address:9090
-- OR --  
https://server-domain.com:9090

You will see a login page to log into the cockpit as shown below. Please log in with your Linux server account.

This is the initial display when you log into the cockpit, on this overview page you can see information about CPU usage, memory, system information, hostname, and date configured on the Linux server.

With cockpit, you can view and read log entries on the system quite easily, all logs of all services running on Linux servers can be monitored through this Logs menu.

You can also view information about the storage media installed on your Linux server, such as partitions, hard disk size, and see the read speed and write speed on the hard disk.

In the Networking menu, you can monitor network traffic on your Linux server. Moreover, you can also perform network-related configurations such as creating a bridge interface, adding VLANs, and changing the IP address configuration.

You can also add a new account to your Linux system. To add a new account, click the Accounts menu, then click the "Create New Account" button as shown below.

You can also perform software updates installed on your Linux server.

In addition to server monitoring purposes, cockpit can also be used to perform all activities related to server administration, cockpit has built-in terminal features integrated with your Linux terminal console.

There is also a dashboard menu that contains information about CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk I/O which is displayed in graphic form.

That's the discussion about cockpit, an application for web-based Linux server monitoring. Cockpit can also be used to monitor multiple Linux servers at once in a single dashboard.

In the next article we will learn how to add a new Linux server to the cockpit dashboard, so make sure you keep visiting this blog. Thank you.