Project Cockpit is a lightweight, web-based interface that lets you monitor and manage your servers with easy access to logs, services, networking, containers, virtual machines, storage, and more [Link].
INSTALLATION ON UBUNTU
It most likely will work the same way for most Debian-based distros.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y sudo apt install bridge-utils -y sudo apt install cockpit -y sudo systemctl enable cockpit.socket sudo ufw allow 9090
The following additions are very desirable for extended features.
sudo apt install cockpit-* libvirt-dbus -y sudo apt install -t noble-backports -y sudo usermod -a -G libvirt libvirtdbus
For managing Virtual Machines, the KVM+QEMU needs to be present.
sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-clients bridge-utils virt-manager -y sudo reboot
Read more about KVM and QEMU Cheat Sheet [Link].
INSTALLATION ON ROCKY / ALMA
It most likely will work the same way for most RHEL-based distros like Fedora.
sudo su - dnf update -y dnf install cockpit cockpit-machines libvirt wget nano -y firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=cockpit firewall-cmd --reload systemctl enable --now libvirtd cockpit.socket adduser admin && passwd admin && usermod -aG wheel admin && echo "admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL" | tee /etc/sudoers.d/admin
WEB-UI USAGE
Navigate to the address of your server https://<IP>:9090/.
Log in using a system account, preferably a service account with sudo privileges but avoid using root it as much as possible.
Elevate your privileges to an “administrator”.
A confirmation box might pop up.
Logs can be searched and filtered with ease.
Storage devices utilization and metrics.
Same for Network adapters (physical and virtual).
Virtual Machines can be deployed and managed with incredible sharpness on the graphical console.
Users and groups can be managed in Accounts.
Services allow to start sand top any daemon and other systems assets (targets, sockets, timers, or paths).
Software Updates. The security patches are shown in Red.
The process is visualized similarly to the CLI.
If necessary reboot to apply some of the updates it will prompt at the end.
No need for delay before rebooting.
Finally, it also has a web-based Terminal.
REFLECTIONS
Project Cockpit is much more than this, it was just an overview of its most evident capabilities and a quick reference guide.
