Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 20.04/18.04/19.04 & Debian 10/9

Welcome to our guide on How to Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 20.04/18.04/16.04 & Debian 10/9. Linux Cockpit is an Open Source, lightweight, web-based Server/system administration tool originally written for RHEL family Linux distributions. Cockpit interacts directly with the operating system from a real Linux session in a browser with easy to use interface.

Features of Cockpit

Cockpit allows you to perform:

• Service Management – Start, stop, restart, reload, disable, enable, mask e.t.c
• User Account Management – Add users, delete, Lock, assign Administrator role, set password, force password change, Add Public SSH keys e.t.c.
• Firewall Management
• Cockpit Container management
• SELinux Policy management
• Journal v2
• iSCSI Initiator configurations
• SOS-reporting
• NFS Client setup
• Configure OpenConnect VPN Server
• Privileged Actions – Shutdown, Restart system
• Join Machine to Domain
• Hardware Device Management
• System Updates for dnf, yum, apt hosts
• Manage the Kubernetes Node

Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 20.04/18.04

Cockpit is available on Ubuntu official repositories. The installation is as simple as running a one-liner set of commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install cockpit

Install Cockpit on Debian 10 / Debian 9

Install Cockpit on Debian 10:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install cockpit

Install Cockpit on Debian 9:

Cockpit is included in Debian 9 (Stretch) backports. Enable backports repository on Debian 9 by running the command:

echo 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list

Then update your package list and install cockpit:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install cockpit

Accessing  cockpit web interface

Cockpit service should be automatically started after the installation. You can confirm if service is running using:

$ systemctl status cockpit

If the service is not running, start it by running the following command in your terminal:

sudo systemctl start cockpit

Cockpit service binds to port 9090 once it is started. Access its web interface by opening http://[ServerIP|Hostname]:9090.

If you have a running UFW firewall service, allow port 9090.

sudo ufw allow 9090

Ignore Invalid Certificate Warning.

Ubuntu Login Page:

Debian 9 Login Page

Login with your username and password for the server. You should get to the dashboard after Logging in.

You can also open a terminal session for running Linux commands

I hope this guide was helpful. Thank you for using our article to Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 20.04/18.04 & Debian 10/9. Read more on Cockpit Documentation.

Also check how to manage CentOS/RHEL 8 Linux with Cockpit