How To Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver)

Cockpit is a free, web-based server manager for Linux operating systems. With Cockpit, a system admin can perform tasks such as managing storage, Users, containers, network configuration, inspecting logs and so on.

Cockpit is released under the LGPL v2.1+, and it is available for Redhat, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Atomic, and Arch Linux.

This guide helps you to install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04.

Features

  • Modify the network settings
  • Easily manage the user accounts
  • With the use of sosreport, it can collect system configuration and diagnostic information
  • Connect and Manage multiple systems from a single Cockpit session
  • Gathers system performance using Performance Co-Pilot framework and displays it in a graph.
  • Manage the containers via Docker
  • Provides web-based shell in a terminal

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04

Cockpit is included in Ubuntu 18.04, so you can just use apt command to install it.
sudo apt update

Install the Cockpit package.

sudo apt -y install cockpit

Start and Enable the Cockpit.

sudo systemctl start cockpit.socket
sudo systemctl enable cockpit.socket

Working with Cockpit

Once you start the Cockpit service, it will start listening on port 9090. Now, open up your browser and navigate it to below URL.

https://ip-add-ress:9090
Cockpit uses a self-signed SSL certificate for secure communication. So, you need to add an exception in your browser to access the Cockpit.
Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – Add SSL Exception

Log in with your local user account. In my case it is raj.

If the user is a non-privileged user and has sudo access, then tick mark Reuse my password for privileged tasks.
Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – Login Page

Once you have logged in into Cockpit, you will be taken to the system overview page where you can see a detailed overview and performance graphs of the selected system.

You can take a look at the details of running services by clicking on the services page; here, you can manage (start, stop, restart, etc..) the services by clicking on a particular service.

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – System Services

Troubleshoot your system’s problem by having a look at the system logs.

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – View System Logs

You can view the storage information by clicking the Storage.

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – View Storage Information

Manage the system users by going to Accounts.

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – Manage User Accounts

You can also take the terminal console of a machine by going to Terminal.

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – Take System Terminal with Cockpit

Manage Multiple Servers with Cockpit

If you have multiple servers and want to manage them in a single Cockpit session, then click on Dashboard and click on Plus sign icon and add them one by one.

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – Add Remote Machine in Cockpit
While connecting to the remote machine, the Cockpit would ask you to enter the username and password of the remote machine if the current logged in user (in Cockpit) and the user in the remote machine are different.

Below screenshot shows that two machines are attached to this Cockpit session

server.itzgeek.local (Ubuntu 18.04 – Local Machine)

client.itzgeek.local (Ubuntu 18.04 – Remote Machine)

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – Machines List

The below screenshot shows the detailed information of a remote system.

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04 – Detailed Information of Remote System

That’s All.

cockpitmonitoring-toolspanelubuntu 18.04
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