1y ago

Your favorite web UI for your linux server?

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

64 comments

ssh?
- He wasn't speaking loudly at all.
- htop
  
  btop
- 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....
- 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...
- I also really love webmin!
- 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.

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?

+1 for cockpit. Easy to install, easy on the eyes and makes things done.

I'm headless and mostly use containers, so I run lazy docker
- How did you write this comment, Headless Horseman? 🎃
  
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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.

I used ArozOS before, but I have now no usecase anymore for UIs for the host OS

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

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.

Netdata is great for monitoring
- I tried it once the UI is very complicated.
  
  This person gives a good run down of how to integrate NetData + Prometheus + Grafana to create a nice dashboard:
  https://noted.lol/netdata-prometheus-and-grafana/
  I am not much into those, but got into Netdata, it's really just a nice information portal which provides way more data than one can use, but they pretty much expose it so you can use it for your purposes. I have it on a few of my systems and like looking at it when they seem slow.
  For what I have for my end though - I use Proxmox for my VM's and then use Portainer for a good rundown of what ports I have available to allocate. But then I also use docker compose files whenever I can so it's easier to update/deploy as needed.

Cockpit.

What you want is monitoring: how about looking for monitoring services? I found monit recently and would like to try it. Simple SNMP would do too I think

Cockpit as web UI, and SSH otherwise
- To be honest, Cockpit is the only (Web) one I know about.
  RPM slave here.

Do you have links to SartOS and Orb?
- Here you go: https://github.com/Start9Labs/start-os https://gitlab.com/hsleisink/orb

A bit off-topic, but why do many self hosting-related stuff tries to "reinvent the wheel" so to speak with things that exists even on smart tvs nowadays? Even then, who is gonna edit videos (for example) on a smart tv? "Oopsie, time to get my mouse and keyboard and do some heavy video editing on my TV!"
@ontopic, eh. btop is enough for me as well. Maybe glances if I'm feeling "haxxor" enough. :^)
- A lot of my motivation for starting random useless side projects is unfortunately “because I can” and the learning experience from using a new framework or library.
  
  Eh, I see your point.

I use Froxlor. But it's less about resources and more about webhosting. Just makes it easier for me to control domains, databases and e-mail addresses.
It's not as deep in the system like Webmin but still gives me enough control to do special stuff.

Portainer has been great. I almost don't need ssh

I just use ssh for management. Monitoring is handled by nagios.

lxc-ls -f
Shows me what is running and that's about it.

64 comments

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