This sounds exactly like what Cockpit was made to do...
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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100%, Cockpit is what you're looking for OP.
Too many features. I should have mentioned that I want it very limited. For example, to give to clients to restart game servers.
Edit: Cockpit is great! But to give remote access to full user-level shell access is not something I want. It might have access to other features I would want to avoid like installing software. Instead I want strictly it to commands like,
- Backup,
- Restore,
- Restart
- Update,
- Modify config files,
- File download,
- File upload
You're better off telling us the problem you're trying to solve than come to us with a solution to something we have no idea about.
If you describe the problem first, we might have a better idea than a web shell, which in all honesty is a bad idea.
You don't have to use all the features. Restarting a service is a pretty broad feature. If it's too broad, You will likely have to code something yourself.
Too many features
What does that even mean? Are you looking for a bespoke system that does exactly what you want and nothing else?
Just host a webpage with 7 buttons triggering off your shell scripts.
Cockpit
Pterodactyl or Pelican if what you might want if you are looking to give tenants access to game servers on your own infrastructure.
Does https://www.olivetin.app/ look like what you have in mind?
+1 for OliveTin
+1 for OliveTin also
Don't do that lmao
I'm going to do it
Maybe something like Guacamole with multiple users configured to ssh into a terminal. You can lock down permissions so users can only SSH automatically where they're supposed to go.
Sorry, not an answer to your exact question... Dockge might be the answer if you need a web UI to manage Docker containers.
~~If you need something more specific, like a button dashboard to run custom commands, perhaps you could build your own with Vite (Node.js). You will need to understand basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript.~~ (EDIT: OliveTin makes more sense.)
As for authentication, you could configure a basic authentication on your favourite reverse proxy (such as Nginx), or look for something more advanced such as OIDC/OAuth2 through Keycloak.
OliveTin is exactly what I wanted (tbh, was heard to read with your crammed together text, thanks as well @bonenode@piefed.social for helping me spot it! )
Keycloak, Pocket ID, Authentik, anything of the sort does sort great as well! Thanks for the recommendation for the follow-up step! :-)
Ah! Sorry for the textdump, and thanks for the feedback. I'll keep it in mind in the future.
In the same(?) category: Portainer
I started using Dockhand for container administration. It is pretty new, but works well.
You can view container logs, update/restart containers, and run a terminal inside of the containers, but not the host system.
You can create a new socket proxy just for the containers that you want to give them access to maybe.