Installing Cockpit instead of a Proxmox

1. Installing KVM

1.1 Check if Host machine supports Virtualization

egrep -c '(vmx|SVM)' /proc/cpuinfo

lscpu | grep Virtualization:

expect :

Virtualization:                  VT-x

This means the server CPU supports virtualization

1.2 Install KVM

sudo su -
apt update -y

apt install qemu-kvm qemu-kvm virt-viewer virt-manager bridge-utils -y
# libvirt virt-install
reboot

log in again

sudo useradd -g $USER libvert

sudo su -

1.3 Validate Virtualization Host

apt install libvirt-clients

virt-host-validate

Expect to get 2 warnings one we can Fix

  QEMU: Checking if IOMMU is enabled by kernel  : WARN (IOMMU appears to be disabled in kernel. Add intel_iommu=on to kernel cmdline arguments)
  QEMU: Checking for secure guest support       : WARN (Unknown if this platform has Secure Guest support)

1.4 # WARN (Enable ‘devices’ in kernel Kconfig file or mount/enable cgroup controller in your system)

sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="cgroup_enable=cpuset cgroup_enable=cpu cgroup_enable=devices cgroup_enable=freezer cgroup_enable=blkio"

We did this and fixed the Intel CPU | Secure guest support warning we can ignore

#edit grub bootloader
#vi /etc/default/grub # add add parameter values

nano /etc/default/grub

# add to the end of GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="
intel_iommu=on iommu=pt

1.5 Confugure grub

Run this command

#grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg  # 
#grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
cp /boot/grub/grub.cfg /boot/grub/grub.cfg.backup

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
sudo grub-mkconfig
# reboot machine
reboot

When machine starts again

sudo su -
# Validate Virtualization Host again
virt-host-validate

2. Installing Cockpit

sudo su -
sudo apt-get install cockpit cockpit-machines pcp cockpit-pcp -y

# optionally packagekit virt-viewer


systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
systemctl start --now cockpit.socket

systemctl enable --now pmcd
systemctl enable --now pmlogger

systemctl start --now pmcd
systemctl start --now pmlogger

sudo ufw allow 9090/tcp

3. Create a non root cockpit user

# create the user 
sudo adduser mycockpituser
passwd mycockpituser

# make user member of the libvert  group
sudo usermod -aG libvirt mycockpituser
sudo usermod -aG libvirt $USER

4. Opening the Cockpit Control Panel

# get the server IP
ip a

Now open the browser to:

https://YOUR-VPS-IP-ADDRESS:9090

in my case:
http://10.154.2.89:9090