I don‘t like the whole idea because it is less secure to have a web browser instead of a standard client. Think what an attacker could do if they take control of the server.
Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
61–70 of 188 posts
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#62I have used cockpit and like it. It allows me to quickly see the entirety of my system. But, it doesn't offer any way to review my incus containers. So, I tried wolfstack, which was recently listed on HN. It appears it only supports lxc. I'm surprised, isn't lxc and incus more or less 1:1 synonymous (unless you get into recent more complexities)? I'm feeling like it is hard to find a simple GUI to just review a syste…
We do have a cockpit-podman plugin and have added recently some features to simplify management of podman quadlets. (podman quadlets is like a systemd-friendly version of docker compose, which is a good fit for a single server use case)
So if you get onboard with podman, you may get some benefits from the Cockpit UI for it.
But you are right, there are many different container technologies and we haven't catched up with all of them.
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#63I tried using this to handle my 10-ish Docker containers, but I ended up using Portainer. Sure, not the same thing, but if someone (like me) thought Cockpit might be nice for managing a small Docker host, this didn't work for me
What you're looking for is Dokploy. It's much better than it's predecessors like Dokku, CapRover, etc.
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#64Does anyone else remember when someone ported kill to the DOOM engine? So you could fire up DOOM and kill processes using different guns for different kill levels?
I don't know why but this reminded me of that.
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#65I had a bad experience with it. We hired a contractor and he 1. insisted on a pre-war version of ubuntu 2. insisted on the cockpit. So you no longer can modify the NFS exports over ssh, you need to connect to this HTTP abomination. Very nice. Always wanted to open more ports on my servers
> 1. insisted on a pre-war version of ubuntu
Which war?
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#66Does anyone else remember when someone ported kill to the DOOM engine? So you could fire up DOOM and kill processes using different guns for different kill levels? I don't know why but this reminded me of that.
I need to know more about this.
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#67Reminds me of cpanel, from the late 1900s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPanel
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#68I don't mind UI, but I think it's a bad approach. Instead of hiding all those complexities of the server behind UI, I would like to see each part of the application teach me how to achieve the same result in CLI. That would be useful for people to teach themselves, because UI comes and goes but basic linux commands - will stay
Comes and goes? Webmin would like a word
I have been using Webmin/Virtualmin for all of my 15-years as a web host. I love it, although it can be a little idiosyncratic in places, once you know how to operate with it, you won’t ever need anything else. It’s never been the most bleeding-edge or fully-featured, but it’s also never fallen behind with security and compatibility updates, and it’s had a surge in new development lately, which is exciting. On a Debian system, it’s always been rock solid for me.
Virtualmin in particular is more targeted towards production web servers, but I think they’re both something of a happy medium between a GUI and the terminal; The interfaces are all pretty explicit about the components you’re interfacing with, and nearly all of them include the ability to pop open the conf files to edit them directly.
The extensive UI isn’t the most flashy or polished, but it’s functional and if you get bored enough (as I did) you can theme the entire thing with a single CSS file (be prepared for a lot of ‘!important’ and other things that will drive UI/X folks nuts), and make it look rather stylish.
The only downside (and this isn’t really a downside for production servers) is it’s opinionated on how some things “should” be configured. It’s not restrictive, per se, but it’s not very tolerant for “coloring outside the lines”. You can run an Apache or Nginx reverse proxy, but if you want to use Caddy or Traefik or something similar, this may not be the admin panel for you.
Myself, I just run Webmin/Virtualmin on my production servers, and use a separate server for Docker and apps, where I’ve used both Cockpit and Portainer, but generally tend to stick with the CLI. The command line will always be the best, most efficient way of interfacing with Linux. Once I’d learned enough to be comfortable, I found it becomes increasingly preferable for most common tasks.
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the technical assessment I have for hiring new platform engineers involves troubleshooting a service hosted in a headless Linux vm. Troubleshooting and fluency on the command line are among what I consider core skills. Being able to dig through abstraction layers is not just essential for when things go wrong, they are essential for building infrastructure, and really tells you whether an architecture is fit…
One of my favorite interview questions: "Here are some SSH credentials. What does this system do?" Sometimes there aren't any docs. Sometimes the docs are wrong. It's important to be able to establish what the actual running situation is.
Gathering and mapping unfamiliar systems is part of that skillset. I’m also looking at being able to think laterally, being able descend abstraction layers, and understanding architectural characteristics and constraints (Roy Fielding’s Dissertation), which will recur at each level of abstraction.
Re: Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers
#70Does anyone else remember when someone ported kill to the DOOM engine? So you could fire up DOOM and kill processes using different guns for different kill levels? I don't know why but this reminded me of that.
I need to know more about this.
Probably [1], [2]
[1] https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/ [2] https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html