Updated on: June 23, 2020
Linux Cockpit is used to provide a web interface, through which we can manage the entire Linux machine in GUI (Graphical user interface). It provides a user-friendly interface to manage machines from anywhere in the network. It’s very easy to install, configure, and manage. In most of the network we are using some tools as putty to access remote machines, yes putty is also very easy to install and manage but still, it provides only CUI (command user interface) mode. So to manage a machine through putty we should have knowledge of command, without knowing command we can’t do anything on a Linux machine. On the other hand, the cockpit is based on GUI, so it’s very easy to operate even if you are not aware of commands still You can still manage Linux machine through the cockpit.
The cockpit is a browser-based server administrative tool, which is sponsored by Red Hat. In red hat latest operating systems Like Red hat Enterprise Linux 8, Centos 8, and Fedora 21, the cockpit is included by-default.
How We Can Install and Configure it.
As we know in red hat latest operating systems have already installed and configured service so there is only a need to start the cockpit service, but if you are using another one you need to install and configure it.
To install the cockpit first we install the cockpit through yum server.
# yum install cockpit*
Once it is installed if want to verify we can use this command
# rpm –qa | grep cockpit
After installing the package need to start the service
# systemctl start cockpit
We can verify our cockpit service is running or not through this command.
#systemctl status cockpit
At last in the configuration step we need to allow cockpit service through the firewall.
# firewall-cmd –permanent –add-service=cockpit
# firewall-cmd –reload
If it is already allowed from the firewall so no need to do this step just verify it with using this command and you will see the cockpit is already added in services.
# firewall-cmd –list-all
Now it is time to check whether the cockpit service is working or not. To check this service our network should be configured in a proper way which means the LAN card of the machine should be activated with a valid IP.
To access cockpit open web brewers and put in address bar
http://ip of cockpit machine:9090
Login with username and password. Once you log in it looks like this.
As we can see there are a number of options available on the right side of the screen. These are the functions which we can configure through the cockpit.
System: – It will show us information about our system like name and performance of CPU memory etc.
Log:- In this log option we can read log in very easy way and we can filter is as per requirement
Storage:- From here we can create and manage partitions. And can see storage-related logs also.
Networking:- We can manage networking from here, we can change IP, we can see bandwidth of the network.
Accounts:- We can create and manage user accounts from here.
Services:- We can start stop services from here.
SeLinux:- Security enhanced Linux we can manage from here.
Subscriptions:- We can take subscriptions form Red Hat and register the system from here
Terminal:- At last we have a terminal also if we want to use any command-line utility we can do it with this terminal, in the cockpit. These are some important options, inside of it we can file many options to manage the system in a very easy way.