3 Cockpit is primarily known as a graphical, browser-based, reactive, and non-intrusive interface for configuring and troubleshooting your servers. But it also makes these accessible from a lot more places like computers with Windows or mobile devices. You can log into Cockpit using classic passwords, single-sign on in an Identity Management domain, seamlessly from Foreman/Satellite, through SSH keys, or even a local smart card. This talk explains how all these standard Linux authentication schemas transcend through a web browser while keeping them trustworthy. It also shows briefly how you can write your own authentication plugin tailored to your environment.
8 + Cockpit as graphical UI to interact with your server, complementing ssh
9 + Configure LVM or RAID once a year? Simpler and safer to do it like this
10 (Storage page demo) than this (shell commands) → add PV, resize partition
11 + Makes server accessible from a lot more places
12 + Integrates into authentication setups beyond simple user/password login page
15 + Win10 VM, Edge browser (./vm-run windows-10, [[https://10.0.2.2:9090]], preload that)
16 + Firefox mobile emulation ([[http://localhost:9090/storage]])
17 + So far zero configuration except for enabling cockpit.socket
19 - Anatomy of a Cockpit session
21 + ws: http+WebSocket on TCP ←→ cockpit JSON protocol (auth and session) on a pipe;
22 ask for/collect credentials (password, oauth token, krb negotiation, client
24 + session/auth: use creds from ws to start a login session, connect pipe to
25 it; standard is cockpit-session (suid root helper) that starts PAM (password, krb)
26 but it doesn't have to be: ssh or custom plugins
27 + cockpit-bridge: session leader, role of bash; JSON protocol on stdio ←→ system
28 APIs (exec programs, call D-Bus, use files or sockets); runs as target user
30 - Alternative session launcher: ssh
31 + ws and session do not need to run on the same machine
33 + ssh key login with dashboard to older RHEL machine
35 + bastion host (no ws on critical machines, don't trust cockpit-session, even to localhost)
36 config option to only use this mode, can be run from container
38 - Alternative authentication: smart card
39 + most interesting mechanism as it's rather browser specific; moral equivalent of ssh with key
44 + SSO with Identity Management
45 + OAuth (for Kubernetes/OpenShift integration)
52 - foreman demo (custom auth plugin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua3b79UG9JM 5:35 ~ 10s
53 - [ManageIQ](https://github.com/ManageIQ/manageiq/blob/master/lib/miq_cockpit.rb)
57 * [authentication protocol](https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/blob/master/doc/authentication.md)
58 * [Authentication configuration](https://cockpit-project.org/guide/latest/authentication.html)