Do you use any web ui’s for your Linux server? I’m comfortable managing my server using the command line, but I also want a graphical interface that shows an overview of what is running on the server, the way the resources are being used what containers are running and so on. Also file download uploads would be great to have.
What do you recommend which is light and resources and is suitable for less powerful servers with low ram?
So far these are the more interstating tools I’ve found: (they vary in functionality their provide)
CasaOS Cockpit SartOS Orb Kasm
ssh?
He wasn’t speaking loudly at all.
htop
btop
btop
ctop
stop
oktop
Way too cumbersome to use with a touchscreen
You administer your servers with a touch screen.
No hate as I sometimes use my phone to ssh in to things
Ummm Webmin? Can’t believe it hasn’t been mentioned…
If you don’t mind the UI out of the 90s webmin probably is the most comprehensive solution. I haven’t used it in a few years, does it handle containers?
Yes! And the interface can be customized. You can even design and use your own… Basically, it can be tweaked to your hearts content.
I also really love webmin!
Webmin is great. Especially when you would like shit to just work and not faf about wasting your weekend text editing configuration files
Exactly. I’ve been using it for 6 years or so. I’ve tried every other supposed alternative and nothing has even close to the functionality of it…
Btop tells me everything I need to know, and it does it with style.
I mainly need this when i don’t have access to my own laptop and ssh keys.
You could use a hardware key for ssh with a passphrase protected key. I use a solo key v1 myself. There are even keys that let you enter a pin on the device instead of the computer, so you don’t have to worry about key loggers. And you can set up Sudo to work with a key too.
Wait, wait, wait. If you want something publicly accessible most of the solutions in this thread would be a Bad Idea™️. Don’t expose anything that could possibly make changes to the system to the Internet.
Just SSH. Every public facing piece of software (I.e. a web interface) adds more complexity for misconfiguration or security vulnerabilities.
You can mount you remote filesystem locally and use your local file manager and text editors to manage most tasks. If you use ansible you can make changes to a local configuration and deploy the state to the server without needing to run anything special on the server side. It is especially effective if you also run docker.
And for monitoring I usually just have a tmux with btop running. Which is fine if you don’t need long term time series data, then you might want to look at influxdb/grafana - but even those I would run locally behind a firewall, with the server reporting the data to the database.
I’m not sure why you’re assuming public facing. I don’t see that anywhere in Op’s post.
Cockpit has been my go too, very quick to just get up and working plus including a web terminal for the rest of what you need.
Have a look at Netdata, Alerta and Prometheus.
Of all the things you mentioned Cockpit is the only sane one.
I want to view multiple endpoints at once though.
They had that feature but they discontinued it.Cockpit can still.connect to multiple machines: https://cockpit-project.org/guide/latest/feature-machines
Where did you see that they discontinued it? Or do you mean netdata, who hid this behind a paywall?
It can connect singly. It used to have the ability to stack graphs and details of multiple machines at a time. Not just a dropdown that switches you fully.
Here’s the feature introduction: Multi-Server Dashboard
The removal announcement was buried in the release notes which is why I say it was quietly discontinued, but I sure spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to enable it before finding that.I’ll try to find it later once I’m not on mobile, but you can tell from the above link that nothing like that exists in Cockpit today.
Thank you for the explanation. That sucks.
If it’s only the monitoring you want, you can set up something with Grafana and Prometheus very quickly.
I’m headless and mostly use containers, so I run lazy docker
How did you write this comment, Headless Horseman? 🎃
Mardown formatting
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What I meant is that how could you use Lemmy without a head, but thanks anyway.
Ok well
+1 for cockpit. Easy to install, easy on the eyes and makes things done.
The web UI of Proxmox is really good
Second to that. It’s very rare I need to do anything in cli in proxmox
I tried to install Cockpit on Debian, and it just downloaded an entire Linux Desktop? Really weird, had the configs and open port all but still the UI was not showing.
Might give it another try but would prefer something less resource heavy
“Hey you wanted NetworkManager, right? We’ve decided everyone wants NetworkManager.”
Last time I didn’t use --no-install-recommends
Ooh right! I hate Debian that it does this.
It makes sense in a lot of cases, just not all of them.
Huh, it’s got to be the maintainers who make that list, right? Not the developers?
Either way, that must be an awkward philosophical snarl. “Oh I see we’re running Gnome again.”It was a hyperbole so not really a complete desktop, but a lot of tools that where duplicating others in purpose
I’ve had it cascade and install an entire desktop.
I have found Nginx Proxy Manager to be a huge time-saver for configuring nginx and certbot.
Ooooh I’m gonna have to take a look at that
I used ArozOS before, but I have now no usecase anymore for UIs for the host OS
Glances
I tried out some of these today. Umbrel, CapRover and Tipi aren’t on your list yet.
They look beautiful and have some nice prebuilt installations but it gets really ugly soon as you need a custom component. I just deleted it all and switched over to portainer.
I tried installing gnome to rdp into my oracle free tier server and it wasn’t remotely (hehehe) worth it. Very laggy and direct interfaces are just far superior so no to that as well. Plus it takes up precious space and resources.
I think the best option is a dashboard like dashy or homepage to keep your service interfaces together. Portainer is excellent for container management.
These weird “OS” style container platforms are really bizarre and I don’t think too well thought out. They’re kinda toys really. Looked really amazing but they show their limitations really quickly.
Cockpit.
