COCKPIT-DESKTOP(1)

📦
version 370 · 15 versions
, in arch rolling, centos-stream 10, centos-stream 9, fedora 43, fedora 44

💅 COCKPIT-DESKTOP — the manual page, bestie edition

okay so this is cockpit-desktop, from the cockpit manual (section 1, the user commands one, iykyk) 💖

✨ NAME ✨

cockpit-desktop — Cockpit Desktop integration 🖥️🌸

🫶 SYNOPSIS 🫶

cockpit-desktop URLPATH [SSH_HOST]

that's it. two args, one of them optional. we love a low-maintenance icon 👑

🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

so like, cockpit-desktop gives you secure access to Cockpit pages inside a desktop session that's already running. no big dramatic setup, no "let me log in first". it just goes ✨

here's the whole little ecosystem it spins up:

  • a web server (cockpit-ws)
  • a web browser
  • and both of those live together in an isolated network namespace 🛡️
  • plus a cockpit-bridge(1) running in your actual user session

the point of all that? it means you don't have to log into Cockpit, and you don't have to enable cockpit.socket system-wide. periodt. 🙅‍♀️

and the network isolation is doing real work here, not just vibes: it makes sure no other user — and honestly not even other processes in your own user session — can reach this local web server. it's giving private party, you're the only one on the list 🎀

💫 about URLPATH 💫

URLPATH is the Cockpit page you want to open, i.e. the path component of Cockpit URLs. 📎

highly recommended: only open a particular page frame — like, the embedding-style one — and not the entire Cockpit navigation and menu. keep it cute, keep it scoped ✂️

for example, this path:

/cockpit/@localhost/storage/index.html

opens the Storage page. slay. 🌸

you can also use abbreviated forms of urls, like "/storage" or "/network/firewall". shorthand queen 👑

🦋 about SSH_HOST 🦋

SSH_HOST is an optional SSH remote host specification — either hostname or username@hostname. 🛰️

if you give it, cockpit-bridge gets started on the remote host through ssh(1) instead. translation? the Cockpit web browser will show you that remote host. 💻➡️🌍

heads up tho: this one is more of an experimental/demo feature. it works, it's fun, it's not the main character of this manpage 🧪✨

🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

  • BROWSER — this environment variable specifies the browser command (and possibly options) used to open the requested Cockpit page 🧚 if it's not set, cockpit-desktop attempts to use an internal minimalistic WebKit browser, and if that doesn't pan out, it will attempt to detect some reasonable alternatives. very "we'll figure it out" energy 💅

💀 BUGS 💀

found a bug? please send bug reports to either the distribution bug tracker or the upstream bug tracker 🐛

(the upstream one lives at https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/issues/new — go tell them, they wanna know 🫶)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Cockpit has been written by many contributors ✨

(https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit — it takes a village, fr fr 🌈)

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 this was cockpit's cockpit-desktop(1), dated 2026-10-22, from the cockpit source. go open a page frame, stay in your network namespace, and be safe out there 💖✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from