Chapter 18. The web console

Packages for the RHEL 8 web console, also known as Cockpit, are now part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux default repositories, and can therefore be immediately installed on a registered RHEL 8 system.

In addition, on a non-minimal installation of RHEL 8, the web console is automatically installed and firewall ports required by the console are automatically open.

A system message has also been added prior to login that provides information about how to enable or access the web console.

The Networking tab in the RHEL 8 web console now includes the Firewall settings. In this section, users can:

For details, see Managing firewall using the web console.

The RHEL 8 web console provides an interface for using Red Hat Subscription Manager installed on your local system. The Subscription Manager connects to the Red Hat Customer Portal and verifies all available:

If you want to renew the subscription or get a different one in Red Hat Customer Portal, you do not have to update the Subscription Manager data manually. The Subscription Manager synchronizes data with Red Hat Customer Portal automatically.

For details, see Managing subscriptions in the web console.

If your system is enrolled in an Identity Management (IdM) domain, the RHEL 8 web console now uses the domain’s centrally managed IdM resources by default. This includes the following benefits:

Note that for IdM integration with the web console to work properly, the user first needs to run the ipa-advise utility with the enable-admins-sudo option in the IdM server.

With this update, the web console menus and pages can be navigated on mobile browser variants. This makes it possible to manage systems using the RHEL 8 web console from a mobile device.

If a system managed by the RHEL 8 web console has outdated packages or a lapsed subscription, a warning is now displayed on the web console front page of the system.

With this update, you can use the RHEL 8 web console interface to apply Policy-Based Decryption (PBD) rules to disks on managed systems. This uses the Clevis decryption client to facilitate a variety of security management functions in the web console, such as automatic unlocking of LUKS-encrypted disk partitions.

In the web console’s Storage tab, you can now create, lock, unlock, resize, and otherwise configure encrypted devices using the LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) version 2 format.

This new version of LUKS offers:

The Virtual Machines page can now be added to the RHEL 8 web console interface, which enables the user to create and manage libvirt-based virtual machines.

For information about the differences in virtual management features between the web console and the Virtual Machine Manager, see Differences in virtualization features in Virtual Machine Manager and the web console.

Support for the Internet Explorer browser has been removed from the RHEL 8 web console. Attempting to open the web console in Internet Explorer now displays an error screen with a list of recommended browsers that can be used instead.