webconsole.adoc

Web Console

Table of Contents

• 1. Overview
• 2. Getting Started
• 3. Installation and Configuration
• 4. Webconsole Login
• 5. Webconsole Overview
• 6. Enable Persistent Metrics
• 7. Change Performance Profile
• 8. View Logs
• 9. Network Management
• 10. Firewall Management
• 11. Service Management
• 12. Remote Node Management
• 13. Conclusion
• 14. Additional Resources

1. Overview

Web Console is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 web-based graphical user interface designed for managing and monitoring your local system. The Web Console can also be extended to manage multiple servers located in your network.

Features of the Web Console include:

• Managing user accounts

• Managing and monitoring system services

• Configuring network interfaces

• Configuring firewall rules

• Reviewing system logs

• Managing virtual machines

• Creating diagnostic reports

• Setting kernel dump configuration

• Configuring SELinux

• Installing and Updating software

• Managing System Subscriptions

• more…​

The following exercises will cover some of the capabilities of the Web Console on RHEL 8, as well as basic installation and set up.

2. Getting Started

For these exercises, you will be using the host bastion as user root.

Use sudo to elevate your priviledges.

$ sudo -i

Verify that you are on the right host for these exercises.

# workshop-cockpit-checkhost.sh

You are now ready to proceed with these exercises.

3. Installation and Configuration

3.1. Packages and Services

For your convenience, the webconsole has already been installed and configured on bastion host. The steps for installation and setup are pretty simple and outlined below. Remember that this is provided as reference only.

ℹ️	Native command(s) to install and enable the Web Console yum install -y cockpit cockpit-dashboard firewalld systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket firewall-cmd --add-service=cockpit --permanent firewall-cmd --reload

3.2. Custom Ports

By default, the Web Console listens on port 9090 of a host. To make the system more accessible to students, an additional port of 443 was added to the configuration. This was done by creating a systemd drop-in config:

/etc/systemd/system/cockpit.socket.d/listen.conf

[Socket]
ListenStream=443

This configuration change required a systemctl daemon-reload, selinux update and a firewall rule addition. Remember that this is provided as reference only.

ℹ️	Native command(s) to enable the Web Console on port 443 systemctl daemon-reload systemctl restart cockpit.socket semanage port -m -t websm_port_t -p tcp 443 firewall-cmd --add-port=443/tcp firewall-cmd --add-port=443/tcp --permanent

That completes the installation and configuration of the Web Console.

4. Webconsole Login

Your instructors (or workshop portal) may provide you with a unique link and special instructions to access the web-console on the bastion. It is PREFERRED that you use your local web browser.

Accept the various notifications about insecure ceritificates, and then login in.

Use the following URL:

• https://<Provided-By-Instructor>/

And the following UserID and Password:

%ssh_username%

%ssh_password%

5. Webconsole Overview

After you successfully sign-on, you will land on the overview page which presents various artifacts about your system including:

• CPU utilization

• Memory Utilization

• Disk I/O

• Network traffic

Also make note that your userid has "Administrative Access", meaning that your userid is configured on the host as part of the "wheel" security group.

6. Enable Persistent Metrics

It’s nice that certain statistics about your system are available for inspection, but by default the webconsole does NOT store statistics long term. For this, you need to install “Performance Co-pilot (pcp)”, the cockpit-pcp plugin and lastly enable "persistent metrics collection" in the webconsole.

Start by clicking on the link "Enable stored metrics".

If your system has not already had the Performance Copilot packages installed, a dialog box should have appeared to confirm the automatic install. In our case, the software is already installed and you can proceed to view some performance data by selecting "View Details" on the "Usage" card.

Take a moment to review the available performance information. Since the workshop likely has not be up for very long, there is probably nothing interesting to see yet. Towards the end of the workshop, return to this page and see your performance data.

To configure and enable stored metrics by hand, you can use follow the commands below.

ℹ️	Native command(s) to enable stored metrics yum install -y cockpit-pcp systemctl restart cockpit.socket

7. Change Performance Profile

RHEL 8 comes with several pre-canned performance tuning profiles from Tuned. Since this is a virtual machine, the default profile “virtual-guest” was selected. You can easily switch profile via the Web Console web UI. In this exercise, we will change the profile to “throughput-performance”

A dialog box will appear. Scroll and find "throughput-performance" and select.

8. View Logs

Under the log section, you can inspect the system’s logs.

Have a look at the search capabilities and notice that you can set criteria by:

• Date

• Severity

• Service

9. Network Management

Under the networking section, you can monitor and manage current networking activities and devices. You can create a network bond, team, bridge, and vlan all driven by the webconsle GUI.

Due to the nature of workshops, we refrain from making and saving changes to the network at this time but feel free to explore.

10. Firewall Management

Also under the networking section, you can configure your firewall rules.

For the next exercise, let’s enable a rule for NTP (Network Time Protocol). Begin by selecting the Networking category and "Edit rules and zones".

Now you should see a list of active services and ports. Proceed to select "Add services"

In the dialog box enter 'ntp' as the filter, select 'ntp' and hit "Add services".

11. Service Management

Now that you enabled a NTP firewall rule, let’s make sure an NTP service provider is enabled and running under the Web Console Services section.

Remember that RHEL 8 uses a provider called 'chrony' for ntp. So you can search for either 'chrony' or 'ntp'.

Turns out, chronyd is already enabled and active. Nothing to do here…​

12. Remote Node Management

As of RHEL 8.4, the "Web Console Dashboard" plug-in has been deprecated. The core functionality of being able to manage multiple nodes from a single interface has been intergrated into the webconsole base. Now adding additional nodes and selecting one to manage is simple and intuitive.

We begin by selecting the pull-down in the top-left corner.

Now it is only a matter of selecting 'Add new host' and entering a few data points.

Add the additional systems from your workshop cluster.

node1.example.com

node2.example.com

node3.example.com

Now when you hit the pull-down, you have complete access and managibility of the additional nodes.

Go ahead and select node1 and then access a terminal session. Very handy!

13. Conclusion

This concludes a short exercise with Web Console. Feel free to click through and explore other sections:

• Under Accounts section, you can manage user accounts on your RHEL 8 server

• Diagnostic Reports allows you to create sosreport for Red Hat support

• Under Kernel Dump, you can enable/disable kdump

You will get an opportunity to manager Virtual Machines and Build System Images in later exercises.

14. Additional Resources

Red Hat Documentation

• Managing Systems Using the Web Console

End of Unit

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