How to upgrade Docker Cockpit on Ubuntu 18.04

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I run Docker for all of my Smart Home related servers.  My docker-compose file is on my GitHub repository and that is primarily how I start and stop all the containers on my Ubuntu system.  For management and overview though of the Docker images and containers, I use the open source project Cockpit.  The software is built-in to the newer versions of Ubuntu but that version is not the latest.

Normally, I would just do an apt-get update on my system to grab the latest files but for some reason Cockpit was not upgrading.  It was staying on version 164.  From the website, I could see that 198 was the latest version (at the time of writing this) so I wasn’t sure why it was not being updated.

Some quick googling around and looking through the issues on the GitHub repository and I came across an issue that explained that backports would need to be used to upgrade.  Backporting allowed new parts of the code to be installed/patched against the older mainline version included in the Ubuntu installation.  Enabling backporting was as easy as executing the following command.

sudo apt install cockpit/bionic-backports

Once the backports were enabled, the software updated fine and I was able to see the new features of the software.

You can see the quick video on the process below including the new screens available in version 198:

Happy Upgrading!

Carlo

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