Front Seat
Keep All Your Linux Servers in Check
Photo by Kent Pilcher on Unsplash
Use the browser-based Cockpit tool to monitor and administer multiple Linux servers without leaving your desk.
Special Thanks: This article was made possible by support from Linux Professional Institute
Managing a herd of computers is no small feat, which is why a system administrator is only as good as his or her tools. Keeping an eye on the different computers in the network requires a lot of work. You can spend a lot of time configuring various components and setting up scripts to ease some aspects of monitoring and administration. If you are short of time, though, there’s nothing better than Cockpit. Cockpit is easy to deploy, and you can use it to connect and manage machines across the network, start and stop services, inspect logs, manage storage, visualize system performance, and even deploy and control containers via Docker. Although designed for administrators, Cockpit’s lightweight and intuitive interface makes it ideal for home servers and small businesses.
Cockpit doesn’t take over or lock the administration duties at any time; if you tweak certain networking settings using the web-based interface, you can undo these settings from your server’s command line or vice versa. Also, Cockpit dynamically updates itself (Figure 1), so any changes you make to the server will be reflected on the browser interface within a few seconds. For instance, if you were to add a new Logical Virtual Manager (LVM) to the server, it would be available to the Cockpit interface for manipulation almost immediately.
[...]
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.