In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Cockpit on your Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, a Cockpit is free software that delivers a web-based interface for your system admin to do tasks, such as launching containers, storage management, network setup, inspecting logs, and so forth. The Cockpit web console utilizes the same system APIs as you would in a terminal, and tasks performed in a terminal are quickly reflected in the web console. In addition, you can configure the settings directly in the web console or through the terminal.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation Cockpit on a Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Cockpit on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing Cockpit on Ubuntu 20.04.
The cockpit is available on Ubuntu’s official repositories. Run the following command to install Cockpit:
sudo apt install cockpit
Then, start the service and finally, check the service status:
sudo systemctl start cockpit sudo systemctl status cockpit
Step 3. Configure Firewall.
If you have a running UFW firewall service, allow port 9090:
sudo ufw allow 9090
Step 4. Accessing to Cockpit.
The cockpit will be available on HTTP port 9090 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com:9090 or http://server-ip-address:9090 and complete the required steps to finish the installation. We’ll be asked to enter the login details in order to enter them into the dashboard. Here, the username and password are the same as the login details we use to log in to our Linux server.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed the Cockpit. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Cockpit in Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Cockpit website.
