Book Image

Ubuntu 20.04 Essentials

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Ubuntu 20.04 Essentials

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

Ubuntu is undeniably one of the most highly regarded and widely used Debian-based Linux distributions available today. Thanks to its ease of use and reliability, Ubuntu has a loyal following of Linux users and an active community of developers. Ubuntu 20.04 Essentials is designed to take you through the installation, use, and administration of the Ubuntu 20.04 distribution in detail. For beginners, the book covers topics such as operating system installation, the basics of the GNOME desktop environment, configuring email and web servers, and installing packages and system updates. Additional installation topics such as dual booting with Microsoft Windows are also covered along with crucial security topics such as configuring a firewall and user and group administration. For the experienced user, the book delves into topics such as remote desktop access, the Cockpit web interface, logical volume management (LVM), disk partitioning, and swap management. Further, it also explores KVM virtualization, Secure Shell (SSH), Linux containers, and file sharing using both Samba and NFS to provide a thorough overview of this enterprise-class operating system.
Table of Contents (38 chapters)
38
Index

8.1 An Overview of Cockpit

Cockpit is a light-weight, web-based interface that allows general system administrative tasks to be performed remotely. When installed and configured, the system administrator simply opens a local browser window and navigates to the Cockpit port on the remote server. After loading the Cockpit interface into the browser and logging in, a wide range of tasks can be performed visually using administration and monitoring tools.

Behind the scenes, Cockpit uses the same tools to perform tasks as would normally be used when working at the command-line, and updates automatically to reflect changes occurring elsewhere on the system. This allows Cockpit to be used in conjunction with other administration tools and techniques without the risk of one approach overriding another. Cockpit can also be configured to access more than one server, allowing multiple servers to be administered and monitored simultaneously through a single browser session.

Cockpit is installed...