14 March 2026

Just had a couple of days chasing my tail, but the result is I've actually got much better control over the servers. The blog entry on the 11th was going on about the problems of yast being retired and a thread came up on openSUSE forums about a possible replacement. It looking interesting so I had a go at following it's instruction, only to find that they had mistakes. Long story short ... I was messing around with something that I simply did not need! Claude is actually proving useful even if it gets sidetracked too easily as happened on the SUSE thread, but this morning we have the following summary.

Cockpit Client vs Web UI

The client launcher makes sense for:

• Single-machine users who want a local GUI alternative to YaST
• Desktop/workstation users who prefer a native app over opening a browser

The web UI is perfect for:

• Headless/text-only servers (your case)
• Remote monitoring via ssh tunnel or direct access
• Users who are already comfortable with command-line and just want a dashboard
• Minimal resource overhead on the server itself

All that I actually needed to load was cockpit itself on the servers, and I now have a tab open in Firefox which allows me to toggle between the two servers and see information that is difficult to gather from the command line. It has thrown up a problem which I had probably spotted but which was a lot easier to debug given the concise log information cockpit returns, and although it does allow me to run updates, Claude agrees that that operation is tidier still using the command line. Perhaps sometime in the future?

The other job this week was dealing with 5 boxes of stamp material. Having been collecting the philatelic output of the Isle of Man since 1973, I finally stopped paying what was by then some £40 a quarter back in 2016 ... as we found when reviewing things. Phill at Phill-lately and Stamps had cringed when I said at least 3 of the boxes where Manx material and I already knew that there is simply no market for them with large lots going unsold in the auction houses even at a £20-30 valuation. So I was not going to recoop perhaps £3k's worth of investment. In the end I walked away with £80 and a couple of empty boxes and there is more space under the bed to bring stuff down from the loft! I'm still waiting on something from the housing ombudsman as just what I can and can't do in the loft and it's now nearly two weeks since the compliance officer made a second visit and promised something in writing ...