Cockpit on smaller sysems (OpenWRT, QNAP, and other embedded Linux systems)

[Bernd Wechner]

I see cockpit is available on all the major Linux distros. And I love having the overview
in a cokjpit of all my systems.

That set does include an OpenWRT router and a QNAP NAS, both of which are smaller stripped
down embedded Linux systems if you will which use the opkg package manager:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opkg

These systems have web interfaces already (OPenWRT typically under lighttpd and QNAP use
Apache) but methinks cockpit is independent of these running it's own web service
(cockpit-ws).

Like the Pi these are typically ARM based machines and it's even plausible that the Pi
build runs on them, but they don't typically have developement tools on them by
default for building (compiling and linking) software locally.

Anyhow, I thought I'd ask if anyone has considered this, as it would rock to see the
gateway router on the list of servers overseen and the NAS.

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Bernd,

Bernd Wechner [2020-05-14  7:34 -0000]:
>  That set does include an OpenWRT router and a QNAP NAS, both of which
> are smaller stripped down embedded Linux systems if you will which use the opkg package
> manager:
>  
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opkg 
There are no cockpit opkgs available that are known to me, so on that platform
you'd probably need to build yourself. I assume that there's some development
environment that cross-compiles to OpenWRT, as one surely doesn't want to build
software *on* the router itself :)

>  These systems have web interfaces already (OPenWRT typically under
> lighttpd and QNAP use Apache) but methinks cockpit is independent of these running
> it's own web service (cockpit-ws). 
That's correct. It needs to have cockpit-ws, as it's more than "just" a
HTTP
server. The main work happens through a websocket.

>  Like the Pi these are typically ARM based machines and it's even
> plausible that the Pi build runs on them, but they don't typically have developement
> tools on them by default for building (compiling and linking) software locally. 
Yes, the Raspbian/Debian/Ubuntu armhf/arm64 packages should work just fine on a
Pi. We don't test the page functionality on a Pi, though -- i. e. usually one
doesn't run NetworkManager or storaged on a Pi (unless it's actually configured
as a desktop), and there's no VMs either, so some pages probably won't be that
useful. But Overview, Logs, Services, Terminal, performance graphs etc. should
all be fine.

Martin

[Bernd Wechner]

Cool. It works fine on the Pi/ Provides great overview of resource use which is actually
quite handy for such small units. I have one running as a NextCloud server (NextCloudPi)
and it's nice to see it on a single view in my cockpit. I've come across Pi's
though used as servers fairly often either as a NAS or a Mailserver too or I know one guy
runs one as a Firewall/DNS etc. Ttheir spread is quite large I suspect because of the low
price point and well for that price point kick ass performance. Low end performance yes,
but for 10s of dollars and such low per consumption, like wow. They find a load of self
hosting DIY applications. And because they are low on on resourcing all the more
interesting to have an overview of them especially if you have a few in service and to be
able to manage them form one place. There are a good few phone apps that manage Pis quite
well too. Left me wonderig if cockpit built a phone app, but turns out the name is taken
by an app for prosthesis adjustment
 s ;-)

Re: opkg yes indeed there is fairly good community support for building them:

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-developer/using_the_sdk

My guess it's basically similar to the Debian ARM build, just packaged for opkg rather
than apt.