fedora – Page 27 – Sick Gaming

Posted on November 29, 2019 by — Leave a comment

A quick introduction to Toolbox on Fedora

Toolbox allows you to sort and manage your development environments in containers without requiring root privileges or manually attaching volumes. It creates a container where you can install your own CLI tools, without installing them on the base system itself. You can also utilize it when you do not have root access or cannot install programs directly. This article gives you an introduction to toolbox and what it does.

Installing Toolbox

Silverblue includes Toolbox by default. For the Workstation and Server editions, you can grab it from the default repositories using dnf install toolbox.

Creating Toolboxes

Open your terminal and run toolbox enter. The utility will automatically request permission to download the latest image, create your first container, and place your shell inside this container.

$ toolbox enter
No toolbox containers found. Create now? [y/N] y
Image required to create toolbox container.
Download registry.fedoraproject.org/f30/fedora-toolbox:30 (500MB)? [y/N]: y

Currently there is no difference between the toolbox and your base system. Your filesystems and packages appear unchanged. Here is an example using a repository that contains documentation source for a resume under a ~/src/resume folder. The resume is built using the pandoc tool.

$ pwd /home/rwaltr $ cd src/resume/ $ head -n 5 Makefile all: pdf html rtf text docx pdf: init pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.pdf markdown/* $ make pdf
bash: make: command not found
$ pandoc -v
bash: pandoc: command not found

This toolbox does not have the programs required to build the resume. You can remedy this by installing the tools with dnf. You will not be prompted for the root password, because you are running in a container.

$ sudo dnf groupinstall "Authoring and Publishing" -y && sudo dnf install pandoc make -y
... $ make all #Successful builds
mkdir -p BUILDS
pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.pdf markdown/*
pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.html markdown/*
pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.rtf markdown/*
pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.txt markdown/*
pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.docx markdown/*
$ ls BUILDS/
resume.docx resume.html resume.pdf resume.rtf resume.txt

Run exit at any time to exit the toolbox.

$ cd BUILDS/
$ pandoc --version || ls
pandoc 2.2.1
Compiled with pandoc-types 1.17.5.4, texmath 0.11.1.2, skylighting 0.7.5
...
for a particular purpose.
resume.docx resume.html resume.pdf resume.rtf resume.txt
$ exit logout
$ pandoc --version || ls
bash: pandoc: command not found...
resume.docx resume.html resume.pdf resume.rtf resume.txt

You retain the files created by your toolbox in your home directory. None of the programs installed in your toolbox will be available outside of it.

Tips and tricks

This introduction to toolbox only scratches the surface. Here are some additional tips, but you can also check out the official documentation.

Toolbox –help will show you the man page for Toolbox
You can have multiple toolboxes at once. Use toolbox create -c Toolboxname and toolbox enter -c Toolboxname
Toolbox uses Podman to do the heavy lifting. Use toolbox list to find the IDs of the containers Toolbox creates. Podman can use these IDs to perform actions such as rm and stop. (You can also read more about Podman in this Magazine article.)

Photo courtesy of Florian Richter from Flickr.

Posted on November 27, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Create virtual machines with Cockpit in Fedora

This article shows you how to install the software you need to use Cockpit to create and manage virtual machines on Fedora 31. Cockpit is an interactive admin interface that lets you access and manage systems from any supported web browser. With virt-manager being deprecated users are encouraged to use Cockpit instead, which is meant to replace it.

Cockpit is an actively developed project, with many plugins available that extend how it works. For example, one such plugin is “Machines,” which interacts with libvirtd and lets users create and manage virtual machines.

Installing software

The required software prerequisites are libvirt, cockpit and cockpit-machines. To install them on Fedora 31, run the following command from a terminal using sudo:

$ sudo dnf install libvirt cockpit cockpit-machines

Cockpit is also included as part of the “Headless Management” package group. This group is useful for a Fedora based server that you only access through a network. In that case, to install it, use this command:

$ sudo dnf groupinstall "Headless Management"

Setting up Cockpit services

After installing the necessary packages it’s time to enable the services. The libvirtd service runs the virtual machines, while Cockpit has a socket activated service to let you access the Web GUI:

$ sudo systemctl enable libvirtd --now
$ sudo systemctl enable cockpit.socket --now

This should be enough to run virtual machines and manage them through Cockpit. Optionally, if you want to access and manage your machine from another device on your network, you need to expose the service to the network. To do this, add a new rule in your firewall configuration:

$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=cockpit --permanent
$ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

To confirm the services are running and no issues occurred, check the status of the services:

$ sudo systemctl status libvirtd
$ sudo systemctl status cockpit.socket

At this point everything should be working. The Cockpit web GUI should be available at https://localhost:9090 or https://127.0.0.1:9090. Or, enter the local network IP in a web browser on any other device connected to the same network. (Without SSL certificates setup, you may need to allow a connection from your browser.)

Creating and installing a machine

Log into the interface using the user name and password for that system. You can also choose whether to allow your password to be used for administrative tasks in this session.

Select Virtual Machines and then select Create VM to build a new box. The console gives you several options:

Download an OS using Cockpit’s built in library
Use install media already downloaded on the system you’re managing
Point to a URL for an OS installation tree
Boot media over the network via the PXE protocol

Enter all the necessary parameters. Then select Create to power up the new virtual machine.

At this point, a graphical console appears. Most modern web browsers let you use your keyboard and mouse to interact with the VM console. Now you can complete your installation and use your new VM, just as you would via virt-manager in the past.

Photo by Miguel Teixeira on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Posted on November 25, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Welcoming our new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator

Good news, everybody! I’m pleased to announce that we have completed our search for a new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator, and she’ll be joining the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) team to work with Fedora as of today. Please give a warm welcome to Marie Nordin.

If you’ve been involved in Fedora, you may have already been working with Marie. She’s a member of the Fedora Design and Badges teams. Her latest contribution to the Design Team is the wallpaper for F31, a collaboration with Máirín Duffy. Marie has made considerable contributions to the Badges project. She has designed over 150 badge designs, created documentation and a style guide, and mentored new design contributors for years. Most recently she has been spear-heading a bunch of work related to bringing badges up to date on both the development and UI/UX of the web app.

Marie is new to Red Hat, joining us after 5 years of involvement with the Fedora community. She was first introduced to Fedora through an Outreachy internship in 2013 working on Fedora Badges. Marie’s most current full time position was in the distribution industry as a purchasing agent, bid coordinator, and manager. She also has a strong background in design outside of her efforts for Fedora, working as a freelance graphic designer for the past 8 years.

I believe that Marie’s varied background in business and administration, her experience with design, and her long term involvement with and passion for Fedora makes her an excellent fit for this position. I’m excited to work with her as both a colleague on her team at Red Hat and as a Fedora contributor.

Feel free to reach out with congratulations, but give her a bit to get fully engaged with Fedora duties.

Congratulations, Marie!

Posted on November 22, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Sharing Fedora

After being a Fedora user for a while, you may have come to enjoy it. And in fact you might want to encourage others to try Fedora. You don’t need any special privileges or to become a Fedora Ambassador to do that. As it turns out, anyone can help others get started with Fedora just by sharing information about it.

Having the conversation

For example, if you go out to lunch with a group of colleagues periodically, you might find it natural to talk about Fedora with them. If someone shows interest, you can suggest to get together with them for a Fedora show and tell. There isn’t any need for formal presentations or prepared talks. This is just having lunch and sharing information with people you know.

When you’re with friends, relatives, colleagues, or neighbors, conversation often turns to things computer related, and you can bring up Fedora. There are usually opportunities to point out how Fedora would partially if not completely address their concerns or provide something they want.

These are people you know so talking with them is easy and natural. You probably know the kind of things they use PCs for, so you know the features of Fedora that will be attractive to them. Such conversations can start anytime you see someone you know. You don’t need to steer conversations toward Fedora — that might be impolite, depending on the situation. But if they bring up computer related issues, you might find an opportunity to talk about Fedora.

Taking action

If a friend or colleague has an unused laptop, you could offer to show them how easy it is to load Fedora. You can also point out that there’s no charge and that the licenses are friendly to users. Sharing a USB key or a DVD is almost always helpful.

When you have someone setup to use Fedora, make sure they have the URLs for discussions, questions, and other related websites. Also, from time to time, let them know if you’ve seen an application they might find useful. (Hint: You might want to point them at a certain online magazine, too!)

The next time you’re with someone you know and they start talking about a computer related issue, tell them about Fedora and how it works for you. If they seem interested, give them some ideas on how Fedora could be helpful for them.

Open source may be big business nowadays, but it also remains a strong grassroots movement. You too can help grow open source through awareness and sharing!

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Unsplash.

Posted on November 20, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Set up single sign-on for Fedora Project services

In addition to an operating system, the Fedora Project provides services for users and developers. Services such as Ask Fedora, the Fedora Project wiki and the Fedora Project mailing lists help users learn how to best take advantage of Fedora. For developers of Fedora, there are many other services such as dist-git, Pagure, Bodhi, COPR and Bugzilla for the packaging and release process.

These services are available with a free account from the Fedora Accounts System (FAS). This account is the passport to all things Fedora! This article covers how to get set up with an account and configure Fedora Workstation for browser single sign-on.

Signing up for a Fedora account

To create a FAS account, browse to the account creation page. Here, you will fill out your basic identity data:

Once you enter your data, the account system sends an email to the address you provided, with a temporary password. Pick a strong password and use it.

Next, the account details page appears. If you want to contribute to the Fedora Project, you should complete the Contributor Agreement now. Otherwise, you are done and you can use your account to log into the various Fedora services.

Configuring Fedora Workstation for single sign-On

Now that you have your account, you can sign into any of the Fedora Project services. Most of these services support single sign-on (SSO), so you can sign in without re-entering your username and password.

Fedora Workstation provides an easy workflow to add your Fedora credentials. The GNOME Online Accounts tool helps you quickly set up your system to access many popular services. To access it, go to the Settings menu.

Click on the option labeled Fedora. A prompt opens for you to provide your username and password for your Fedora Account.

GNOME Online Accounts stores your password in GNOME Keyring and automatically acquires your single-sign-on credentials for you when you log in.

Single sign-on with a web browser

Today, Fedora Workstation supports three web browsers out of the box with support for single sign-on with the Fedora Project services. These are Mozilla Firefox, GNOME Web, and Google Chrome.

Due to a bug in Chromium, single sign-on doesn’t work currently if you have more than one set of Kerberos (SSO) credentials active on your session. As a result, Fedora doesn’t enable this function out of the box for Chromium in Fedora.

To sign on to a service, browse to it and select the login option for that service. For most Fedora services, this is all you need to do; the browser handles the rest. Some services such as the Fedora mailing lists and Bugzilla support multiple login types. For them, select the Fedora or Fedora Account System login type.

That’s it! You can now log into any of the Fedora Project services without re-entering your password.

Special consideration for Google Chrome

To enable single sign-on out of the box for Google Chrome, Fedora takes advantage of certain features in Chrome that are intended for use in “managed” environments. A managed environment is traditionally a corporate or other organization that sets certain security and/or monitoring requirements on the browser.

Recently, Google Chrome changed its behavior and it now reports Managed by your organization or possibly Managed by fedoraproject.org under the ⋮ menu in Google Chrome. That link leads to a page that says, “If your Chrome browser is managed, your administrator can set up or restrict certain features, install extensions, monitor activity, and control how you use Chrome.” However, Fedora will never monitor your browser activity or restrict your actions.

Enter chrome://policy in the address bar to see exactly what settings Fedora has enabled in the browser. The AuthNegotiateDelegateWhitelist and AuthServerWhitelist options will be set to *.fedoraproject.org. These are the only changes Fedora makes.

Posted on November 18, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Fedora shirts and sweatshirts from HELLOTUX

Linux clothes specialist HELLOTUX from Europe recently signed an agreement with Red Hat to make embroidered Fedora t-shirts, polo shirts and sweatshirts. They have been making Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and other Linux shirts for more than a decade and now the collection is extended to Fedora.

Instead of printing, they use programmable embroidery machines to make the Fedora embroidery. All of the design work is made exclusively with Linux; this is a matter of principle.

Some photos of the embroidering process for a Fedora sweatshirt:

You can get Fedora polos and t-shirts in blue or black and the sweatshirt in gray here.

Oh, “just one more thing,” as Columbo used to say: Now, HELLOTUX pays the shipping fee for the purchase of two or more items, worldwide, if you order within a week from now. Order on the HELLOTUX website.

Posted on November 15, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Fedora pastebin and fpaste updates

Fedora and EPEL users who use fpaste to paste and share snippets of text might have noticed some changes recently. Recently, an update went out which sends pastes made by fpaste to the CentOS Pastebin instead of the Modern Paste instance that Fedora was running. Don’t fear — this was an intentional change, and is part of the effort to lower the workload within the Fedora Infrastructure and Community Platform Engineering teams. Keep reading to learn more about what’s happening with pastebin and your pastes.

About the service

A pastebin lets you save text on a website for a length of time. This helps you exchange data easily with other users. For example, you can post error messages for help with a bug or other issue.

The CentOS Pastebin is a community-maintained service that keeps pastes around for up to 24 hours. It also offers syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup languages.

As before, you can paste files:

$ fpaste sql/010.add_owner_ip_index.sql Uploading (0.1KiB)...
https://paste.centos.org/view/6ee941cc

…or command output…

$ rpm -ql python3 | fpaste
Uploading (0.7KiB)...
https://paste.centos.org/view/44945a99

…or system information:

$ fpaste --sysinfo Gathering system info .............Uploading (8.1KiB)...
https://paste.centos.org/view/8d5bb827

What to expect from Pastebin

On December 1st, 2019, Fedora Infrastructure will turn off its Modern Paste servers. It will then redirect fpaste.org, www.fpaste.org, and paste.fedoraproject.org to paste.centos.org.

If you notice any issues with fpaste, first try updating your fpaste package. On Fedora use this command:

$ dnf update fpaste

Or, on machines that use the EPEL repository, use this command:

$ yum update fpaste

If you still run into issues, please file a bug on the fpaste issue tracker, and please be as detailed as possible. Happy pasting!

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Posted on November 13, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Edit images on Fedora easily with GIMP

GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program) is free and open-source image manipulation software. With many capabilities ranging from simple image editing to complex filters, scripting and even animation, it is a good alternative to popular commercial options.

Read on to learn how to install and use GIMP on Fedora. This article covers basic daily image editing.

Installing GIMP

GIMP is available in the official Fedora repository. To install it run:

sudo dnf install gimp

Single window mode

Once you open the application, it shows you the dark theme window with toolbox and the main editing area. Note that it has two window modes that you can switch between by selecting Windows -> Single Window Mode. By checking this option all components of the UI are displayed in a single window. Otherwise, they will be separate.

Loading an image

To load an image, go to File -> Open and choose your file and choose your image file.

Resizing an image

To resize the image, you have the option to resize based on a couple of parameters, including pixel and percentage — the two parameters which are often handy in editing images.

Let’s say we need to scale down the Fedora 30 background image to 75% of its current size. To do that, select Image -> Scale and then on the scale dialog, select percentage in the unit drop down. Next, enter 75 as width or height and press the Tab key. By default, the other dimension will automatically resize in correspondence with the changed dimension to preserve aspect ratio. For now, leave other options unchanged and press Scale.

The image scales to 0.75 percent of its original size.

Rotating images

Rotating is a transform operation, so you find it under Image -> Transform from the main menu, where there are options to rotate the image by 90 or 180 degrees. There are also options for flipping the image vertically or horizontally under the mentioned option.

Let’s say we need to rotate the image 90 degrees. After applying a 90-degree clockwise rotation and horizontal flip, our image will look like this:

Adding text

Adding text is very easy. Just select the A icon from the toolbox, and click on a point on your image where you want to add the text. If the toolbox is not visible, open it from Windows->New Toolbox.

As you edit the text, you might notice that the text dialog has font customization options including font family, font size, etc.

Add Text To Images — Adding text to image in GIMP

Saving and exporting

You can save your edit as as a GIMP project with the xcf extension from File -> Save or by pressing Ctrl+S. Or you can export your image in formats such as PNG or JPEG. To export, go to File -> Export As or hit Ctrl+Shift+E and you will be presented with a dialog where you can select the output image and name.

Posted on November 11, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Understanding “disk space math”

Everything in a PC, laptop, or server is represented as binary digits (a.k.a. bits, where each bit can only be 1 or 0). There are no characters like we use for writing or numbers as we write them anywhere in a computer’s memory or secondary storage such as disk drives. For general purposes, the unit of measure for groups of binary bits is the byte — eight bits. Bytes are an agreed-upon measure that helped standardize computer memory, storage, and how computers handled data.

There are various terms in use to specify the capacity of a disk drive (either magnetic or electronic). The same measures are applied to a computers random access memory (RAM) and other memory devices that inhabit your computer. So now let’s see how the numbers are made up.

Suffixes are used with the number that specifies the capacity of the device. The suffixes designate a multiplier that is to be applied to the number that preceded the suffix. Commonly used suffixes are:

Kilo = 10³ = 1,000 (one thousand)
Mega = 10⁶ = 1,000,000 (one million)
Giga = 10⁹ = 1000,000,000 (one billion)
Tera = 10¹² = 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion)

As an example 500 GB (gigabytes) is 500,000,000,000 bytes.

The units that memory and storage are specified in advertisements, on boxes in the store, and so on are in the decimal system as shown above. However since computers only use binary bits, the actual capacity of these devices is different than the advertised capacity.

You saw that the decimal numbers above were shown with their equivalent powers of ten. In the binary system numbers can be represented as powers of two. The table below shows how bits are used to represent powers of two in an 8 bit Byte. At the bottom of the table there is an example of how the decimal number 109 can be represented as a binary number that can be held in a single byte of 8 bits (01101101).

Eight bit binary number
	Bit 7	Bit 6	Bit 5	Bit 4	Bit 3	Bit 2	Bit 1	Bit 0
Power of 2	2⁷	2⁶	2⁵	2⁴	2³	2²	2¹	2⁰
Decimal Value	128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
Example Number	0	1	1	0	1	1	0	1

The example bit values comprise the binary number 01101101. To get the equivalent decimal value just add the decimal values from the table where the bit is set to 1. That is 64 + 32 + 8 + 4 + 1 = 109.

By the time you get out to 2³⁰you have decimal 1,073,741,824 with just 31 bits (don’t forget the 2⁰) You’ve got a large enough number to start specifying memory and storage sizes.

Now comes what you have been waiting for. The table below lists common designations as they are used for labeling decimal and binary values.

Decimal

Binary

KB (Kilobyte)

1KB = 1,000 bytes

KiB (Kibibyte)

1KiB = 1,024 bytes

MB (Megabyte)

1MB = 1,000,000 bytes

MiB (Mebibyte)

1MiB = 1,048,576 bytes

GB (Gigabyte)

1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes

GiB (Gibibyte)

1 GiB (Gibibyte) = 1,073,741,824 bytes

TB (Terabyte)

1TB = 1,000,000,000,000

TiB (Tebibyte)

1TiB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

Note that all of the quantities of bytes in the table above are expressed as decimal numbers. They are not shown as binary numbers because those numbers would be more than 30 characters long.

Most users and programmers need not be concerned with the small differences between the binary and decimal storage size numbers. If you’re developing software or hardware that deals with data at the binary level you may need the binary numbers.

As for what this means to your PC: Your PC will make use of the full capacity of your storage and memory devices. If you want to see the capacity of your disk drives, thumb drives, etc, the Disks utility in Fedora will show you the actual capacity of the storage device in number of bytes as a decimal number.

There are also command line tools that can provide you with more flexibility in seeing how your storage bytes are being used. Two such command line tools are du (for files and directories) and df (for file systems). You can read about these by typing man du or man df at the command line in a terminal window.

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash.

Posted on November 8, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Managing software and services with Cockpit

The Cockpit series continues to focus on some of the tools users and administrators can use to perform everyday tasks within the web user-interface. So far we’ve covered introducing the user-interface, storage and network management, and user accounts. Hence, this article will highlight how Cockpit handles software and services.

The menu options for Applications and Software Updates are available through Cockpit’s PackageKit feature. To install it from the command-line, run:

 sudo dnf install cockpit-packagekit

For Fedora Silverblue, Fedora CoreOS, and other ostree-based operating systems, install the cockpit-ostree package and reboot the system:

sudo rpm-ostree install cockpit-ostree; sudo systemctl reboot

Software updates

On the main screen, Cockpit notifies the user whether the system is updated, or if any updates are available. Click the Updates Available link on the main screen, or Software Updates in the menu options, to open the updates page.

RPM-based updates

The top of the screen displays general information such as the number of updates and the number of security-only updates. It also shows when the system was last checked for updates, and a button to perform the check. Likewise, this button is equivalent to the command sudo dnf check-update.

Below is the Available Updates section, which lists the packages requiring updates. Furthermore, each package displays the name, version, and best of all, the severity of the update. Clicking a package in the list provides additional information such as the CVE, the Bugzilla ID, and a brief description of the update. For details about the CVE and related bugs, click their respective links.

Also, one of the best features about Software Updates is the option to only install security updates. Distinguishing which updates to perform makes it simple for those who may not need, or want, the latest and greatest software installed. Of course, one can always use Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS for machines requiring long-term support.

The example below demonstrates how Cockpit applies RPM-based updates.

Running system updates with RPM-based operating systems in Cockpit.

OSTree-based updates

The popular article What is Silverblue states:

OSTree is used by rpm-ostree, a hybrid package/image based system… It atomically replicates a base OS and allows the user to “layer” the traditional RPM on top of the base OS if needed.

Because of this setup, Cockpit uses a snapshot-like layout for these operating systems. As seen in the demo below, the top of the screen displays the repository (fedora), the base OS image, and a button to Check for Updates.

Clicking the repository name (fedora in the demo below) opens the Change Repository screen. From here one can Add New Repository, or click the pencil icon to edit an existing repository. Editing provides the option to delete the repository, or Add Another Key. To add a new repository, enter the name and URL. Also, select whether or not to Use trusted GPG key.

There are three categories that provide details of its respective image: Tree, Packages, and Signature. Tree displays basic information such as the operating system, version of the image, how long ago it was released, and the origin of the image. Packages displays a list of installed packages within that image. Signature verifies the integrity of the image such as the author, date, RSA key ID, and status.

The current, or running, image displays a green check-mark beside it. If something happens, or an update causes an issue, click the Roll Back and Reboot button. This restores the system to a previous image.

Running system updates with OSTree-based operating systems in Cockpit.

Applications

The Applications screen displays a list of add-ons available for Cockpit. This makes it easy to find and install the plugins required by the user. At the time of this article, some of the options include the 389 Directory Service, Fleet Commander, and Subscription Manager. The demo below shows a complete list of available Cockpit add-ons.

Also, each item displays the name, a brief description, and a button to install, or remove, the add-on. Furthermore, clicking the item displays more information (if available). To refresh the list, click the icon at the top-right corner.

Managing Cockpit application add-ons and features

Subscription Management

Subscription managers allow admins to attach subscriptions to the machine. Even more, subscriptions give admins control over user access to content and packages. One example of this is the famous Red Hat subscription model. This feature works in relation to the subscription-manager command

The Subscriptions add-on can be installed via Cockpit’s Applications menu option. It can also be installed from the command-line with:

sudo dnf install cockpit-subscriptions

To begin, click Subscriptions in the main menu. If the machine is currently unregistered, it opens the Register System screen. Next, select the URL. You can choose Default, which uses Red Hat’s subscription server, or enter a Custom URL. Enter the Login, Password, Activation Key, and Organization ID. Finally, to complete the process, click the Register button.

The main page for Subscriptions show if the machine is registered, the System Purpose, and a list of installed products.

Services

To start, click the Services menu option. Because Cockpit uses systemd, we get the options to view System Services, Targets, Sockets, Timers, and Paths. Cockpit also provides an intuitive interface to help users search and find the service they want to configure. Services can also be filtered by it’s state: All, Enabled, Disabled, or Static. Below this is the list of services. Each row displays the service name, description, state, and automatic startup behavior.

For example, let’s take bluetooth.service. Typing bluetooth in the search bar automatically displays the service. Now, select the service to view the details of that service. The page displays the status and path of the service file. It also displays information in the service file such as the requirements and conflicts. Finally, at the bottom of the page, are the logs pertaining to that service.

Also, users can quickly start and stop the service by toggling the switch beside the service name. The three-dots to the right of that switch expands those options to Enable, Disable, Mask/Unmask the service

To learn more about systemd, check out the series in the Fedora Magazine starting with What is an init system?

In the next article we’ll explore the security features available in Cockpit.