CCFE is a simple tool to quickly supply an interactive screen-oriented interface to command line scripts and commands: it prompts users for the informations needed to run them, and can be programmed with your preferred shell to provide predefined selections and/or run-time defaults.
It provides:- A generic curses form-based interface to enter options and arguments required by scripts/commands;
- A menu system to hierarchically organize them;
- A viewer to browse the standard output and standard error of invoked script/command.
In its simplest usage, you only have to describe the data type requested by the command and specify the command itself: user interaction and screen layout are automatically adapted so you don't have to care about it, but for complex situations, CCFE is programmable with your preferred shell command language interpreter and can propose lists of admitted values selectable by user for parameters to enter.
CCFE don't need changes to called scripts or commands, so they can indifferently be executed with CCFE interface or CLI interface, as preferred by users.
CCFE may be useful for:
- Add a frontend to your bash scripts;
- Consolidate all your system administration scripts in an organized menu tree; this is very useful to access immediately to not often used scripts, and to not forget that they exists(!) and their location in the filesystem;
- Assist the Sysadmin/Operation team when they run critical commands for system operation, minimizing errors by the selection of verifiyed command options and arguments value;
- Create menus for Operation team for stopping and starting jobs;
- Create forms for the Operations team to simply reconfigure systems or applications, without directly editing text files and manually restart services;
- Provide the same administration interface to Operation team of data centers with mixed O.S. (for example Linux and FreeBSD). Note that in case of Linux (or FreeBSD) and AIX hosts, CCFE can be configured to appears very similar to the System Management Information Tool (SMIT) of the IBM AIX Operating System.
- Hide the CLI shell to not skilled end users or occasional users who must have restricted system access.
- Provide a user friendly interface on Linux-based appliances.