Installing the Fedora Server Edition as a virtual machine using Cockpit

Fedora Server is designed as a "headless" system, i.e. it comes without an elaborate graphical user interface and corresponding hardware. Only a simple text console is available. A system administrator has to perform all work on the machine using the command line.

Cockpit offers an alternative "remote" graphical interface. It operates in the web browser of the system administrator’s desktop and executes the required commands on the server on behalf of them.

First hand, Cockpit saves the memorization of the complex parameter zoo of virt-install, the CLI installation tool. It saves long typing on the keyboard including the correction of accidental typos. But even those who 'speak virt-install' fluently, can benefit from Cockpit. It automatically provides a lot of status information about configuration and resource usage, which you would otherwise have to collect manually. And this information is always present, no need to keep this information in mind.

Therefore, Cockpit is useful for a beginner in server administration, for the part-time administrator as well as for experienced administrators. Particularly impressive is, that Cockpit does not require its own specific configuration organization, but strictly uses the standard configuration methods. So you can mix and match Cockpit based and CLI based administration work. This makes it pleasantly different from the popular NAS devices or even professional interfaces such as the old Sun Cobalt appliances or ISP Config.

We assume a complete installation of virtualization support according to the Adding Virtualization Support guide.

Open your browser and connect to the Cockpit instance of your host server. Consult the post-installation guide to find out the possible connection paths. Log in as root or with your administrative account. In the overview (start) page select Virtual Machines in the left navigation column.

If there is no entry Virtual Machines follow the before mentioned guide for completion.

To start a VM installation, connect your desktop browser to the Cockpit instance of your host server. Consult the post-installation guide to find out the possible connection paths. Log in as root or with your administrative account. In the overview (start) page select Virtual Machines in the left navigation column and then Create VM (the button Import VM next to it refers to the other alternative, using disk images) and fill in the form that opens..

First, specify a name for the virtual machine to be created. It must be unique in the host server’s name space. Select an connection type, usually system. See explanation in the Adding Virtualization Support guide.

Then select the installation type to be used. The drop down menu offers several alternatives:

As mentioned above choose Local install media and select in the drop down menu of the following row the fully qualified file name. In our example of Fedora Server 41 it is /var/lib/libvirt/boot/Fedora-Server-dvd-x86_64-41-1.3.iso. The drop down menu works a bit unfamiliar. You have to select the target file step by step from subdirectory to subdirectory up to the file name.

In the next line, "Operating system", Cockpit should display the correct OS "Fedora" and release, in this example "41". Otherwise use the drop down menu to select the correct operating system. Use (unkown) or Fedora (unkown) as fallback, if the exact version and edition is not included in the selection list.

In the next fields, leave Storage at the default value Create new volume, and select an appropriate size of virtual hard disk and memory.

Finally, check all entries again and then select Create and edit option. This allows us to perform further configurations, especially the network connections. This saves additional administration work later on.

It takes a short time and then the virtual machine’s details page is displayed.

The upper part offers the opportunity to configure a number of general properties of the virtual hardware, including the size of the memory and the number of CPUs. The Autostart option defines whether the server should start the virtual machine automatically at system startup - important for reliable everyday operation.

Adjust the options according to your need.

Select Install at the top of the form. After a short time you see the well known initial screen of the install procedure.

After a test of the installation media the installation program, Anaconda, shows up and displays the familiar overview screen. You may select Expand at the right top to increase readability. There is no collapse button, you have to click on the VM name in the breadcrumb displayed at the top.

Start with installation as usual. You may basically follow the Server installation guide.

The installation process will take some time.

If you want to save the disk image for future VM creation, select shutdown, copy the image to ~/libvirt/boot/, and then start the VM anew for post-installation steps. Otherwise restart according the installation program’s advise and procede with post-install.

There are some post-install task that are specific for a virtual machine. Otherwise, it is the same tasks that are performed after a bare-metal installation.

If you have not already done so, start the virtual machine and log in with the administrator account. You can select expand at a top of the terminal window to increase readability. Selecting "Serial console" on the left above the terminal window instead of "VNC console" further improves readability in some cases. However, on some devices this does not work at all.

All subsequent tasks must be executed with ROOT privileges. If the root account is locked, ROOT privileges should generally be acquired for the sake of simplicity.