Cockpit on CentOS 8: Installation, Configuration, and Feature Overview

Cockpit Overview

Cockpit is a web‑based visual management tool bundled with CentOS 8 that provides graphical interfaces for common command‑line tasks such as user management, firewall configuration, and resource monitoring, aiming to be an easy‑to‑use Linux administration console.

CentOS 8 Installation

The installation process for CentOS 8 is similar to CentOS 7. The article recommends using the latest 8.5.2111 ISO (download from https://vault.centos.org/8.5.2111/isos/x86_64/ ) and points to a separate guide for VM installation.

Because the default yum repositories may fail to download packages, the article suggests switching to the Alibaba Cloud mirror by replacing the original repo file with Centos-vault-8.5.2111.repo and updating the configuration:

# Backup original BaseOS repo
mv /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-BaseOS.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-BaseOS.repo.bak
# Download new repo from Alibaba Cloud
sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-BaseOS.repo http://mirrors.aliyun.com/repo/Centos-vault-8.5.2111.repo

After editing /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-AppStream.repo to point to the new base URL, run:

sudo yum clean all
sudo yum makecache

Package queries now work correctly.

Cockpit Installation and Startup

On CentOS 8, Cockpit is pre‑installed; you only need to enable and start the service:

# Enable Cockpit to start on boot and start it now
systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
# Start the service explicitly (optional)
systemctl start cockpit

On CentOS 7, Cockpit must be installed manually and the firewall opened:

# Install Cockpit
yum install cockpit
# Open firewall port
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=cockpit
firewall-cmd --reload

After installation, access the UI via http:// server‑ip :9090/ using any Linux user account (e.g., root).

Using Cockpit

Overview : Shows CPU, memory, system information, and hardware details.

Resources : Provides detailed monitoring similar to the top command for CPU, memory, disk, and network.

Storage : Displays filesystem information, allows LVM management and NFS mounting.

Network : Shows firewall status, lets you enable/disable services, and edit firewall rules.

Firewall : Lists open ports and enables adding services via the firewalld backend.

Podman Containers : Manage containers like Docker; you can pull an Nginx image and run it on port 80 .

Accounts : Manage Linux users through a GUI, eliminating the need for useradd .

Software Updates : Cockpit notifies about pending updates and provides a one‑click update interface.

Applications : Allows installation of a limited set of server applications directly from the UI.

Terminal : Offers an integrated shell for command‑line operations when the GUI is insufficient.

SELinux : Provides toggles to enable or disable SELinux enforcement.

Conclusion

Cockpit, as the official visual management tool of CentOS 8, covers many routine server‑administration tasks with an attractive interface, making it a convenient alternative to pure command‑line workflows for users upgrading to CentOS 8.

References

Official documentation: https://cockpit-project.org/documentation.html