What is the Cockpit?
 

The cockpit is a  server administration S/w which allows us to monitor and administer the Linux servers easily via a web browser. Cockpit helps admins to do the simple admin tasks, such as starting docker containers, administrating storage, configuring networks, inspecting logs and so on.

We can fly between a terminal and a web interface at any time. There’s even an embedded Linux terminal in Cockpit UI.

Why Cockpit?
 

Because it includes the ability to handle administrative tasks such as:

• Connect and manage multiple machines
• Manage containers via Docker        
• Modify network settings    
• Manage user accounts    
• Access a web-based shell    
• View system performance information in the form of graphs.
• View system services and log files

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04

Start and enable the Cockpit.

Access Cockpit’s Dashboard
 

Once installed, open https://localhost:9090 (or the hostname/IP where you have installed it) in a web browser. You will get Cockpit’s login screen. Enter the credentials and you will get forward to Dashboard

This is how the Cockpit’s dashboard will look like.

System

Cockpit’s System information tab shows server details, and graphs for CPU, Memory, Disk and network traffic.

Logs

Logs tab displays the list of errors, warnings, and other log details of the server.

Storage

This tab will show the hard disk details of the server.

Networking

This is where we will configure all the network settings such as adding network bonding, network bridge configuring etc. Here we can also see the networking logs and incoming/outgoing traffic of the network interface card and the sending & receiving visual graphs.

Containers

With this, we can manage, start/stop and view the docker containers.

Terminal

Cockpit web console has a built-in Terminal, which allows us to perform all types of command-line operations. We don’t need to SSH server or don’t need to install any remote communication tools.