Cockpit 164
Cockpit is the modern Linux admin interface. We release regularly. Here are the release notes from version 164.
Storage: Usability improvements
We recently ran a usability study targeting the storage area. Based on the findings, we redesigned and adjusted the NFS, VDO, and RAID storage devices.
Previously, Cockpit used checkbox “arming” and drop-down buttons to reveal available actions. Usability tests indicated these interface elements were too hard and unintuitive to discover. Cockpit now expresses these concepts in a more straightforward way.
Available RAID and VDO actions are now directly shown next to the corresponding device:
NFS mounts are now clickable:
Clicking an NFS mount now shows a new details page with directly available actions:
System: Show available package updates and missing registration
The System overview page now shows pending enhancements, bug fixes, and security updates when they are available:
As unregistered RHEL systems cannot receive updates they now display a warning:
System: Fix inconsistent tooltips
Before this release, the System page had three different styles of tool tips. Thee have been unified to use the standard Bootstrap tooltips like other Cockpit pages. Relatedly, the performance profile used a static blue “i” for additional information. We removed the icon and attached the tooltip directly to the profile name.
The navigation redesign in Cockpit 156 increased the width of host navigation items. As the navigation labels are no longer truncated, their corresponding tooltips have been removed.
Logs: Change severities
On the Logs page, the severity filter now displays the officially defined syslog(3) levels instead of the previous Cockpit-specific names:
Thanks to Kirill Glebov for this improvement!
Machines: Add error notifications
The Machines page now shows individual and dismissable error notifications for all virtual machines:
Thanks to suomiy for this improvement!
Accessibility improvements
This Cockpit release includes several accessibility fixes. Notably, ARIA markers, role tags, tabindex fixes, and several other improvements should help with keyboard navigation and screen reader support.
There’s still more accessibility related work to do, but these changes are a step in the right direction.
Reloading the page in the browser now reloads Cockpit package manifests
Cockpit now refreshes the navigation menu on a browser reload. Installing, removing, or updating Cockpit-related packages previously required logging out and back in to see the changes.
Try it out
Cockpit 164 is available now: