Managing a Linux server network used to require the use of a terminal emulator to access each of your servers. To update a local firewall rule, sysadmins had to learn arcana iptables commands to add the correct incoming and outgoing ports. To add a new local user, it is necessary to execute useradd with the indispensable alternatives. And to check free space on local file systems, Linux administrators probably ran df and du commands on each storage system.
Linux server administration would be so much easier with a point and click interface that did all the hard work for you behind the scenes., so he could focus on his work: manage servers. That's where Cabin comes in.
Cockpit provides a web-based dashboard for you to monitor and update your Linux systems. Con Cockpit, remote server administration is very easy. Let's take a look at what Cockpit has to offer:
To enter Cockpit on your server, point your web browser to the IP address of your server on the port 9090. For the Raspberry Pi mini server that I run at home, that's 10.0.0.11:9090 . But your network will probably be different; use the hostname or IP address of your Linux server in the URL line of your web browser and add :9090 to connect to the port 9090. Login with the root username and password of that server.
Once you have logged in, Cockpit displays a system overview screen. This enables you to check the status of your server at a glance.: CPU and memory usage, server information, server general health and configuration overview. You can see on my Linux system that everything is working fine, but i have some new patches to install.
The system overview also makes it easy to shut down or restart the server, as an example, for system maintenance. The overview also provides an excellent starting point for more complex tasks. If you need to join your server to a domain, or need more details, you can click on the blue links.
The left side of the Cockpit dashboard displays a navigation menu. Click on each one to verify records, storage and networking, update accounts, stop and start services or apply updates.
Checking records is simple on the tab “Records”. No more wading through your /var/log directory, trying to detect errors or warnings. The cockpit displays the log entries with a useful icon to indicate errors or warnings. Click on the menus at the top of the screen to filter the records by time, priority or identifier. The default value shows everything in “Error” and higher.
If you need more information about a particular log message, you can click it to get more details. As an example, I run my Raspberry Pi as a print server and the logs show that my printer was off when trying to print.
The eyelash “Storage” presents your file systems and E / Storage s at a glance. You can also add other storage, including remote NFS file systems, from this panel.
My Raspberry Pi server features an internal micro SD card for its main storage and a USB fob drive mounted on /backup so you can make backups. In the tab “Storage”, I can quickly view my disk usage to verify that my backup file system is half full and my main storage is almost empty.
The eyelash “Networking” allows me to check the network on a screen. My Raspberry Pi runs only on my home wireless network, so only my wlan0 Network device shows traffic.
Managing your firewall is also much simpler. Click the button “Edit rules and zones” to enter a dashboard that allows you to add or remove services from the firewall. No more debugging a list iptables commands to update your firewall rules, now adding and removing services from the firewall is simply a click of a button and scrolling through a list of services. Check the box next to the services you want to add and click the “Add services”.
If you need to manage local accounts, you can do it from the tab “Accounts”. You can quickly create new users with the “Create new account” or click on a username to edit account details. You can even add and remove SSH keys to support passwordless login.
The eyelash “Services” enables you to start and stop services. Click on each service and you will find a switch to enable or disable a service at boot time, or to reload, immediately restart or stop a service that is already running.
My Raspberry Pi is a server from scratch on my private home network, but it is still important to keep it up to date with the latest patches. When you manage your server with Cockpit, you may notice an alert icon next to the tab “Software updates”. That lets you know that your system needs to be updated. You can select to update all by clicking the “Install all patches”, or install only the most important patches by clicking the “Install security updates”.
And despite everything Cockpit has to offer, if you need to do something manually on the server, you can click on the tab “Terminal” to open an interactive shell. This is convenient if you need to do something on the command line, including editing configuration files or running scripts.
The default terminal view is white text on black, with the color profile “Negro”. You can change the colors according to your preferences using the menu “Appearance”, to determine colors in white text on a dark blue background (“Dark”) or black text on an off-white background (“Of course”) or simple black- blank text (“White”).
Using Cockpit simplifies server administration. I find that Cockpit helps automate routine things and makes difficult things easier to do. The interface is simple but powerful, and the interaction feels intuitive. Install Cockpit on your server and streamline your system administration workflow.
