Setup

5 MINUTE EXERCISE

1. Introduction to Code Server

You will have received a login page like below to register for the workshop. Once registered you will receive username and password where you have been given access to a RHEL 8 virtual machine.

login!

Your access to the machine will be mediated by code-server: a browser based community version of Visual Studio Code.

Let’s take a moment to familiarize yourself with the environment

2. Open code server

Once you have entered your password, you will be greeted with the code-server UI with your RHEL user’s (%USER%) home directory.

codeserver2
Figure 1. Code-server UI

3. Open Terminal

Among other things, your code-server gives you command line access to your RHEL instance. You can open the terminal by using CTRL+J (or CMD+J on a Mac)

The first time you open it, you will find your terminal at the bottom (right) of the screen.

code server terminal
Figure 2. CodeServer Terminal

At some points during the exercises you will need two screens and from the dropdown menu you can elect to have split terminals.

4. Issuing Terminal Commands

Just to see that you are logged into the server, issue the following command

The first time you try to copy and paste the commands below your browser may prompt you with a window like this:

Popup
Figure 3. Chrome alert pop-up

Please click on Allow so that you can copy and paste within your code-server instance

 
whoami
%USER%

Next check the distribution of Linux that is being run:

cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
VERSION="8.1 (Ootpa)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.1"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 (Ootpa)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8.1:GA"
HOME_URL="https://www.redhat.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"

REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=8.1
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="8.1"

5. Local Browser

Your code-server instance also has a chromium based browser installed (as a VSCode extension). This will allow us to view html files and connect to VM local services that are not otherwise exposed to the internet at large.

Note: This is not a full browser and sometimes closing and re-opening may be needed to refresh or change URLs.

  1. To open the Browser Preview, click the browser preview button on the panel on the left

    browser preview

  2. This will open a nested browser on the right side of the screen.

    browser preview window
    Figure 4. Just your average web browser

  3. Feel free to type in the address of your favorite website to show that it’s just a typical (chrome-based) web browser

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RHEL Web Console (Cockpit)

The RHEL web console is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 web-based interface designed for managing and monitoring your local system, as well as Linux servers located in your network environment. In today’s lab you may also like to examine containers with the console.

To enable cockpit you simply enable it as a service then open the local browser to localhost:9090, and log in as your (non-root) user by providing the username and password. For example if you are student10 then login with student10 and your password that you have been assigned.

sudo systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket

The video below gives you an introduction as to how you can work with containers through the console.