Cockpit: Issues after building Cockpit 226 from source and running CentOS 8.2.2004

[digitalformula]

Cockpit version: 226
OS: CentOS 8.2.2004
Page: Login

Can start cockpit.socket and open the home page, but can't login.

This doesn't seem to be an issue with cockpit-211 from the CentOS repos but that version is so far behind that I'd like to run the latest and haven't found an effective way of doing that via yum or dnf.

I guess I should ask first, before anyone reads any further - is Cockpit expected to run without issues on CentOS 8.2.2004?

Steps to reproduce/what I did.

• Downloaded cockpit-226.tar.xz from repo
• Installed dependencies for ./configure
• Ran ./configure --disable-pcp
• Ran make
• Ran make install
• Ran systemctl start cockpit.socket
• Installed my certificates to /usr/local/etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d and verified they're being used with remotectl certificate
• Browsed to port 9090 on my host (works fine)
• Tried to login but get Wrong user name or password no matter which account I use

Note: The problem is the same whether I use my certs or the system-generated self-signed certs.

sudo tail /var/log/messages shows:

Sep  2 22:26:39 centos-nas systemd[1]: Starting Socket for Cockpit Web Service https instance e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855.
Sep  2 22:26:39 centos-nas systemd[1]: Listening on Socket for Cockpit Web Service https instance e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855.
Sep  2 22:26:39 centos-nas systemd[1]: Started Cockpit Web Service https instance e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855.
Sep  2 22:26:40 centos-nas cockpit-ws[4031]: cockpit-ws: Failed to open certificate file /run/cockpit/tls/e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855: No such file or directory
Sep  2 22:26:44 centos-nas cockpit-ws[4031]: cockpit-ws: Failed to open certificate file /run/cockpit/tls/e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855: No such file or directory

Additional info:

• Have disabled firewalld (problem persists)
• Have disabled SELinux by setting it to both permissive and disabled then rebooting (problem persists)
• The installation steps above work perfectly on Ubuntu 20.04 (minus the cert install)

In issue 11521 I found this command:

env -u DISPLAY sudo G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all /usr/local/sbin/remotectl certificate --ensure --user=root --group=cockpit-ws --selinux-type=etc_t

Output:

[root@centos-nas ~]# env -u DISPLAY sudo G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all /usr/local/sbin/remotectl certificate --ensure --user=root --group=cockpit-ws --selinux-type=etc_t
** (remotectl:4318): DEBUG: 22:30:49.015: loaded separate cert /usr/local/etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d/custom.net.cert and key /usr/local/etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d/custom.net.key
** (remotectl:4318): DEBUG: 22:30:49.015: loaded 1 certificates from /usr/local/etc/cockpit/ws-certs.d/custom.net.cert
[root@centos-nas ~]#

Logs:

[root@centos-nas ~]# journalctl -u cockpit -b
-- Logs begin at Wed 2020-09-02 22:26:01 AEST, end at Thu 2020-09-03 11:40:49 AEST. --
<snip>
Sep 03 11:34:52 centos-nas.network.net systemd[1]: Starting Cockpit Web Service...
Sep 03 11:34:52 centos-nas.network.net systemd[1]: Started Cockpit Web Service.
Sep 03 11:34:56 centos-nas.network.net systemd[1]: Stopping Cockpit Web Service...
Sep 03 11:34:56 centos-nas.network.net systemd[1]: Stopped Cockpit Web Service.
Sep 03 11:34:56 centos-nas.network.net systemd[1]: Starting Cockpit Web Service...
Sep 03 11:34:56 centos-nas.network.net systemd[1]: Started Cockpit Web Service.

Screenshots:

(Yes, I know I'm using root here but the issue persists no matter which account I use).

Chrome dev tools showing HTTP 401:

[digitalformula]

For what it's worth, the same issue occurs with Cockpit 226 on CentOS 8 Stream, where only 211 is available via dnf.

[martinpitt]

@digitalformula : did you install an appropriate /etc/pam.d/cockpit ? This is the one that the RPM installs for Fedora/RHEL. I also urgently recommend to not do sudo make install, but build RPMs and install these.

Our COPR has CentOS 8 packages, these are by far the easiest and safest way to get current Cockpit versions on CentOS 8.

[digitalformula]

@digitalformula : did you install an appropriate /etc/pam.d/cockpit ? This is the one that the RPM installs for Fedora/RHEL. I also urgently recommend to not do sudo make install, but build RPMs and install these.

Our COPR has CentOS 8 packages, these are by far the easiest and safest way to get current Cockpit versions on CentOS 8.

Thanks so much @martinpitt - the advice is much appreciated. Apologies for the n00b behaviour - your direction to use the COPR packages has worked perfectly. Thanks again for this and for your work on Cockpit - it really is great.