Exercise 1.0 - Intro to Cockpit | Red Hat

Exercise Description

In this workshop, you will learn to navigate Cockpit and examine its features and capabilities.

What is Cockpit?

A remote manager for GNU/Linux servers

Cockpit is a server manager that makes it easy to administer your GNU/Linux servers via a web browser.

Cockpit makes it easy for any sysadmin to perform simple tasks, such as administering storage, inspecting journals and starting and stopping services.

Jumping between the terminal and the web tool is no problem. A service started via Cockpit can be stopped via the terminal. Likewise, if an error occurs in the terminal, it can be seen in the Cockpit journal interface.

You can monitor and administer several servers at the same time. Just add them with a single click and your machines will look after its buddies.

Cockpit and Docker are compatible

Cockpit makes it easy to monitor and administer Docker containers running on Cockpit-managed servers such as Project Atomic hosts. Some of the capabilities include:

Monitoring resources consumed by containers
Adjusting resources available to containers (Resource limits are enforced by the CGroup subsystem in the Linux kernel.)
Adjusting CPU shares
Assigning memory limits
More CGroup policy controls to come
Stopping, Starting, Deleting and Committing container instances
Running and Deleting container images

Section 1: Accessing the Cockpit web UI

Step 1. Use the following URL to access the Cockpit console on your node. Your instructor will provide a workshop name and student number. Enter this information in the appropriate space, within the URL.

https://example.0.redhatgov.io:9090

Step 2. Log in to Cockpit

Username: ec2-user

Password: <to be provided>

After logging in, you should see the Cockpit web UI.

Section 2: Navigate the Cockpit tool and examine its capabilities

Step 1. Examine the System display. Navigate using the left-side menu.

System: Shows information about the system that Cockpit is running on. This includes CPU usage, memory usage, disk I/O, and network traffic, as well as hardware and operating system details.

Click:  Show Fingerprints | System Time | Power Options | Performance Profile

Step 2. Examine Services by clicking the System Services tab at the top of the display.

System Services: Shows the systemd services running on the Cockpit server. You can see which are active/enabled or inactive. You can also see other systemd features: Targets, sockets, timers, and paths.

Click:  Targets | System Services | Sockets | Timers | Paths

Step 3. Examine the Containers and images. Navigate to "Containers" using the left-side menu.

Containers: Lists all images available on the system, all running and non-running containers, combined CPU & memory usage graphs, and a storage usage bar.

Click to Launch an image

Click: Get new image

Step 4. Search For & Download Fedora

Use the following commandline to search for and download Fedora. Type in "docker.io/fedora" in order to search the online Docker registry.

Search: fedora -> download

Step 5. Run the Fedora image simply by clicking 'Run'.

Click: Run

Then, add a command to run the image. ("Sleep" is a generic enough command.)

Command: sleep 999

Step 6. View metadata

Click on the newly created container to view all of the metadata about the container. Shows the state, the command executed, the container and image IDs, a timestamp, as well as the container’s own terminal.

Click on the newly created container [>]

Expand the view and see all of the metadata about the container. Shows the state, the command executed, the container’s and image’s IDs, a timestamp, as well as the container’s own terminal:

Step 7. Navigate to 'Tools' via the left-side menu, to examine subscriptions, accounts, diagnostics, and terminal features.

Features and Capabilities

Tools: (Terminal)
Subscriptions: Displays what Red Hat products are installed and subscribed.
Accounts: Shows which administrative (root) and other users have accounts on the system.
Diagnostic report: Collects system configuration and diagnostics information and prepares a report, in an XZ format.
Terminal: Opens a Terminal (command line) session to the Cockpit system. From there, you can run any commands available to the user you are logged in as.

Command:  sudo ps -a

Step 8. Delete the Container

When you’ve completed examining Cockpit, stop and delete the container using the following command.

Click:  Stop

Drop Down: Select Everything to Refresh the page and display the exited container image

Select the [Trash] icon to remove the image

Confirm the delete

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Workshop Details

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