I was using webmin, but since my last server died and I’m making a new one, I decided I’d look into something different, personally I liked webmin but didn’t use most of its functionality and felt a little clunky for my basic use. I’ve also testran casaos but felt weirdly limited and couldn’t smoothly migrate docker containers to interact with its interface.
I can do with just the terminal, but it’s nice having a gui that I can glance at my phone and quickly do stuff like update and reboot.
I personally haven’t seen or found much conversation into the topic so I figured I’d ask and see what you peeps use and why.
The cli.
I have used management interfaces like coxkpit in the last but i do not really like it that much. I have E-Mail Notifications setup for updates via aptitude and monitor using prometheus and grafana and get additional notifications via prometheus alarm manager.
For an easy to use docker interface i use dockge, since i found it in this use case to be faster with a good, working, independend Interface.
But for the Linux underneath, for all 10-20 servers i managae, CLI.
Does proxmox count? Then I run lots of docker containers in lxcs
Virtualmin and cockpit
ssh
🤔 yeah, that and I guess docker?
- Portainer for Docker containers
- ssh for most real administration tasks
- Olive Tin for repetitive tasks like sudo apt update
- Netdata for server metrics and ntopng for metrics on standalone pFsense box
ssh
Power button
Opentofu for all the looking after the config on my proxmox boxes and networking gear. Ansible for everything else.
I don’t currently have any monitoring set up but it’s in the to do list when I feel like it.
Check out gatus. Super easy to get up and running depending on what type of monitoring you want to do.
Check out gatus.
It doesn’t do SNMP. That’s … bold.
SSH and Ansible using SSH
Ansible using SSH
The moment you discover anything else, you’re gonna be so pleased. It’ll seem so modern! So fast!
Hey, you’re the “Ansible is toxic” guy.
What do you use?
So many things. Mostly Kubernetes and FluxCD, but also doco-cd for managing a few deployments on my NAS with GitOps.
NixOS and SSH I guess?
Cockpit is nice for that. The Podman integration of it is also useful.
+1 to cockpit. My entire network is domain managed and cockpit makes managing everything so much easier
I use tugtainer for managing updates to containers (not automatic). and aside from that, I just
apt upgradeevery so often.ssh and portainer.
- Proxmox GUI for restarting hosts or vms
- Komodo for restarting containers
- Forgejo for configuring and updating containers (deployed by komodo)
- Ansible for OS updates
- Prometheus + Grafana for monitoring
Those for basic stuff, ssh for everything else.
Ansible or ssh
Exactly this! Oh, and gatus for the nice view (mostly own php talking to gatus api)







