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I have used cockpit and like it. It allows me to quickly see the entirety of my system. But, it doesn't offer any way to review my incus containers. So, I tri

by xrd 7mo ago

I have used cockpit and like it. It allows me to quickly see the entirety of my system. But, it doesn't offer any way to review my incus containers. So, I tried wolfstack, which was recently listed on HN. It appears it only supports lxc. I'm surprised, isn't lxc and incus more or less 1:1 synonymous (unless you get into recent more complexities)? I'm feeling like it is hard to find a simple GUI to just review a system and manage a bunch of containers and VMs.

bookwar 7mo ago
We do have a cockpit-podman plugin and have added recently some features to simplify management of podman quadlets. (podman quadlets is like a systemd-friendly version of docker compose, which is a good fit for a single server use case) So if you get onboard with podman, you may get some benefits from the Cockpit UI for it. But you are right, there are many different container technologies and we haven't catched up with all of them.
- chucklenorris 7mo ago
  I recently moved from a docker-compose setup with portainer as a manager to podman+quadlets+cockpit . After the initial pain of migration i'm really happy! I can also manage VMs, volumes, and check systemd logs so it's a good all-in-one solution for managing standalone servers. Also i think it uses systemd activation so it's really light on resources. For someone who dislikes the proxmox approach of custom kernel/os this is a good alternative.
scorpioxy 7mo ago
Do you mean LXD and Incus? If so, sort of. Incus is a fork of LXD but it diverged quite a bit and due to the LXD licensing change, Incus can't take anything from LXD but LXD can from Incus. Incus is a community project and is a lot more active. They both use LXC under the hood. Finding a simple GUI is not going to be easy because everyone has a different definition of what "simple" means. It also depends on what you mean by "review" and "manage". There were a few web UIs for LXD containers and they were ported or used for Incus containers. Some are still maintained and active. I personally prefer the command line and find it easier and simpler than using graphical interfaces so don't have a recommendation. When the number of containers and servers becomes large enough to warrant anything else, then that's when automation starts.
- xrd 7mo ago
  Mostly I want a quick glance at the state. I don't really do much using cockpit. It is read only for me and I'm using command line to do anything. I like that cockpit is generally mobile friendly because I can use it remotely as all my machines are on tailscale/headscale.
  - willy_k 7mo ago
    If you haven’t tried this out yet, you can also download terminal apps that let you ssh from your phone, and that’ll be easy to get going with Tailscale already set up.
whalesalad 7mo ago
proxmox
the_real_cher 7mo ago
I use proxmox. I only use it for a home lab but it's pretty good and all I use are lxc containers.
- xrd 7mo ago
  Am I wrong that proxmox takes over the entire machine? I like cockpit because I can use the machine as a regular Linux machine. It happens to have some containers and VMs running in a very ad hoc way. It wasn't the plan to use it for hosting originally but now it is. And cockpit can be configured to use other machines as well, right? So it makes it easy to grow into a quick way to review all the machines without me planning out nodes and centralized control. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I assumed proxmox was better if you planned on using a machine solely for the purpose of running virtualized machines. LCD/incus seem like they would be a good fit for the way I used cockpit; because you can script them easily using CLI tools, so figured adding a cockpit plug-in would be easy. And you can migrate those containers and VMs to another host server easily. This is all my homelab and I'm not being very intentional about the way I run things. I love to spin up a new server and then if things get overloaded (like I run out of ram on the host) I can easily move that server to another machine. I have a bunch of host machines that are my kids gaming machines. They are basically unused during the day. ;)
  - ikidd 7mo ago
    Proxmox is just KVM/qemu with management modules running on Debian. I set up Plasma on a node for a while and used it for a workstation for a couple years, and it worked fine.
  - the_real_cher 7mo ago
    It's a full linux install but it is somewhat centered around VM's and Containers. But you can install anything on it since it's a regular machine. I just use it as a host for my containers and VM's though.
rrvsh 7mo ago
I've never used proxmox, but I've heard good things. Personally (and this is a bit crazy) the best bar none interface for containers I've used is the OpenMediaVault compose plugin - it's a NAS distro but I literally ran it on all my servers for years because of the UI
- mbreese 7mo ago
  TrueNAS is also a NAS distribution and it has pretty good support for containers and VMs, so I’m not that surprised. They generally expect to be individual all-in-one type of servers.
abrookewood 7mo ago
Curious if you have tried IncusOS or if you are just using Incus on linux? I'm doing the latter and have been considering moving to IncusOS.
- SahAssar 7mo ago
  > IncusOS or if you are just using Incus on linux I get what you mean, but IncusOS is running linux.
  - abrookewood 7mo ago
    Yes, you are right, but the end result is very different.
moondev 7mo ago
> I'm feeling like it is hard to find a simple GUI to just review a system and manage a bunch of containers and VMs. Incus does all three through the same web ui * OCI compatible "app" containers - with support for registries like docker.io and ghcr.io * LXC "system" containers * virtual machines with qemu + kvm
- xrd 7mo ago
  This is a built in UI? How do I access that? Edit: so, this is the incus-ui-canonical package? It feels a bit ironic that canonical ships this, because I thought the whole point of incus was to avoid canonical and the direction they were taking lxd. Thank you for this, I'll check it out.
  - moondev 7mo ago
    Yes that is the package. It's just like the canonical ui for lxd, but it also supports the incus enhancements like OCI containers. Very handy to generate yaml config for machines and viewing their console / terminal.
hnarn 7mo ago
There is an Incus GUI.

by xrd 7mo ago

bookwar 7mo ago

We do have a cockpit-podman plugin and have added recently some features to simplify management of podman quadlets. (podman quadlets is like a systemd-friendly version of docker compose, which is a good fit for a single server use case) So if you get onboard with podman, you may get some benefits from the Cockpit UI for it. But you are right, there are many different container technologies and we haven't catched up with all of them.

chucklenorris 7mo ago
I recently moved from a docker-compose setup with portainer as a manager to podman+quadlets+cockpit . After the initial pain of migration i'm really happy! I can also manage VMs, volumes, and check systemd logs so it's a good all-in-one solution for managing standalone servers. Also i think it uses systemd activation so it's really light on resources. For someone who dislikes the proxmox approach of custom kernel/os this is a good alternative.

scorpioxy 7mo ago

Do you mean LXD and Incus? If so, sort of. Incus is a fork of LXD but it diverged quite a bit and due to the LXD licensing change, Incus can't take anything from LXD but LXD can from Incus. Incus is a community project and is a lot more active. They both use LXC under the hood. Finding a simple GUI is not going to be easy because everyone has a different definition of what "simple" means. It also depends on what you mean by "review" and "manage". There were a few web UIs for LXD containers and they were ported or used for Incus containers. Some are still maintained and active. I personally prefer the command line and find it easier and simpler than using graphical interfaces so don't have a recommendation. When the number of containers and servers becomes large enough to warrant anything else, then that's when automation starts.

xrd 7mo ago
Mostly I want a quick glance at the state. I don't really do much using cockpit. It is read only for me and I'm using command line to do anything. I like that cockpit is generally mobile friendly because I can use it remotely as all my machines are on tailscale/headscale.
- willy_k 7mo ago
  If you haven’t tried this out yet, you can also download terminal apps that let you ssh from your phone, and that’ll be easy to get going with Tailscale already set up.

whalesalad 7mo ago

proxmox

the_real_cher 7mo ago

I use proxmox. I only use it for a home lab but it's pretty good and all I use are lxc containers.

xrd 7mo ago
Am I wrong that proxmox takes over the entire machine? I like cockpit because I can use the machine as a regular Linux machine. It happens to have some containers and VMs running in a very ad hoc way. It wasn't the plan to use it for hosting originally but now it is. And cockpit can be configured to use other machines as well, right? So it makes it easy to grow into a quick way to review all the machines without me planning out nodes and centralized control. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I assumed proxmox was better if you planned on using a machine solely for the purpose of running virtualized machines. LCD/incus seem like they would be a good fit for the way I used cockpit; because you can script them easily using CLI tools, so figured adding a cockpit plug-in would be easy. And you can migrate those containers and VMs to another host server easily. This is all my homelab and I'm not being very intentional about the way I run things. I love to spin up a new server and then if things get overloaded (like I run out of ram on the host) I can easily move that server to another machine. I have a bunch of host machines that are my kids gaming machines. They are basically unused during the day. ;)
- ikidd 7mo ago
  Proxmox is just KVM/qemu with management modules running on Debian. I set up Plasma on a node for a while and used it for a workstation for a couple years, and it worked fine.
- the_real_cher 7mo ago
  It's a full linux install but it is somewhat centered around VM's and Containers. But you can install anything on it since it's a regular machine. I just use it as a host for my containers and VM's though.

rrvsh 7mo ago

I've never used proxmox, but I've heard good things. Personally (and this is a bit crazy) the best bar none interface for containers I've used is the OpenMediaVault compose plugin - it's a NAS distro but I literally ran it on all my servers for years because of the UI

mbreese 7mo ago
TrueNAS is also a NAS distribution and it has pretty good support for containers and VMs, so I’m not that surprised. They generally expect to be individual all-in-one type of servers.

abrookewood 7mo ago

Curious if you have tried IncusOS or if you are just using Incus on linux? I'm doing the latter and have been considering moving to IncusOS.

SahAssar 7mo ago
> IncusOS or if you are just using Incus on linux I get what you mean, but IncusOS is running linux.
- abrookewood 7mo ago
  Yes, you are right, but the end result is very different.

moondev 7mo ago

> I'm feeling like it is hard to find a simple GUI to just review a system and manage a bunch of containers and VMs. Incus does all three through the same web ui * OCI compatible "app" containers - with support for registries like docker.io and ghcr.io * LXC "system" containers * virtual machines with qemu + kvm

xrd 7mo ago
This is a built in UI? How do I access that? Edit: so, this is the incus-ui-canonical package? It feels a bit ironic that canonical ships this, because I thought the whole point of incus was to avoid canonical and the direction they were taking lxd. Thank you for this, I'll check it out.
- moondev 7mo ago
  Yes that is the package. It's just like the canonical ui for lxd, but it also supports the incus enhancements like OCI containers. Very handy to generate yaml config for machines and viewing their console / terminal.

hnarn 7mo ago

There is an Incus GUI.