Installation and Usage of the Linux System Visualization Management Tool Cockpit

IntroductionCockpit is an open-source web management tool for Linux servers developed by Red Hat. It simplifies system monitoring and management operations through a visual interface, supporting real-time resource monitoring, service management, container control, and more. Cockpit is designed as a lightweight tool suitable for basic operations and is ideal for single-host usage.Official Website

https://cockpit-project.org/

Core Features and Characteristics of Cockpit1. System Monitoring

Real-time viewing of CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network traffic with graphical data representation, hardware information display (such as PCI devices, storage partition details)

2. Management Tools

Service Management: Start and stop system services (such as SSH, firewall), view logs<br/>User and Permissions: Manage accounts, SSH key authorization<br/>Storage Configuration: Supports LVM, filesystem mounting, disk space visualization<br/>Network Settings: Configure network interfaces, firewall rules (firewalld integration)

3. Extension Support

Container Management: Integrates Podman/Docker (requires installation of the cockpit-docker plugin)<br/>Virtual Machine Management: Manage KVM virtual machines through cockpit-machines<br/>Third-party Plugins: Such as storage management (cockpit-storaged), software package updates (cockpit-packagekit)

4. Supported Operating Systems for Cockpit:Red Hat Series

CentOS 7 and higher<br/>RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 7 and higher<br/>Fedora 21 and higher

Debian Series

Debian 10 and higher<br/>Ubuntu 18.04 and higher

Other Distributions

openEuler (requires adaptation)<br/>KeyarchOS (Inspur KOS)<br/>UnionTech OS (UOS)<br/>SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)<br/>Arch Linux (install via AUR)

Other Notes: Cockpit can also be manually installed and configured on other Linux distributions. Some domestic operating systems (such as Kylin V10) need to verify compatibility. Cockpit is designed to be lightweight and easy to integrate, thus it has good support for most modern Linux distributions.

Specific Installation and Deployment

Operating System: We are using Rocky Linux 10.0

Rocky Linux 10.x Installation Configuration Illustrated Tutorial1. Install Cockpit

# Install cockpit, core components, providing basic web management interface functionality<br/>yum install cockpit<br/># Enable KVM virtual machine functionality, requires installation of cockpit-machines package<br/># After installing cockpit-machines plugin, you can manage KVM virtual machines directly through the web interface<br/>yum install cockpit-machines<br/># Start cockpit and set it to start on boot<br/>systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket<br/># Verify status should be "active (running)"<br/>systemctl status cockpit.socket

# Firewall Configuration<br/># The cockpit web interface will call the system's default firewalld firewall<br/># The default port is 9090, this port must be allowed or the cockpit service cannot be accessed remotely<br/>firewall-cmd --add-service=cockpit --permanent  # Permanently allow the service<br/>firewall-cmd --reload  # Reload configuration

2. Edit the file to remove root login restrictions Installation and Usage of the Linux System Visualization Management Tool Cockpit

# By default, root login may be prohibited<br/># After modification, restart to take effect<br/>vi /etc/cockpit/disallowed-users  # Delete the "root" line<br/>root:wq! # Save and exit<br/>systemctl restart cockpit.socket  # Restart the service

3. Modify the defaultcockpitservice port

vi  /lib/systemd/system/cockpit.socket<br/>ListenStream=9090 # Default is 9090, can be changed to another port<br/>:wq! # Save and exit<br/>systemctl restart cockpit.socket  # Restart the service

4. Access the web page

Installation and Usage of the Linux System Visualization Management Tool Cockpit