FatController

FatController is a versatile daemon management and automation framework designed to give system administrators power and flexibility in managing tasks across heterogeneous systems. It provides a unique "GUI-CLI" interface, blending the visual feedback of a graphical interface with the efficiency and scriptability of a command line.

📖 Overview

At its core, FatController allows you to:

• Manage Entities: Interact with Local, SSH, Telnet, and other systems as unified objects.
• Schedule Daemons: Create internal schedulers to run tasks periodically.
• Automate Workflows: Write scripts to chain commands across multiple entities.
• Monitor & Alert: Collect data from command output and trigger alerts based on defined thresholds.

Whether you are managing a single server or orchestrating complex tasks across a network, FatController acts as your central command hub.

🚀 Quickstart

Prerequisites

• Python 3.13 or higher
• tkinter (usually included with Python)
• paramiko (for SSH support)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/mattjwarren/fatcontroler.git
   cd fatcontroler/fatcontroler

2. Install dependencies:

   pip install paramiko

3. Run the application:

   python FatController.py

Basic Usage

Once FatController is running, you can use the command bar at the bottom to define entities and run commands.

1. Define a Local Entity:

   define entity LOCAL MyPC
   

2. Run a command:

   MyPC dir
   

3. Define an SSH Entity:

   define entity SSH MyServer 192.168.1.100 user pass None
   MyServer ls -la
   

4. Get Help: Type help to see a full list of commands or read TheManual.md for detailed documentation.

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🕰️ A Note from the Developer

"This was my first main Python program, started 25 years ago."

FatController (originally v0.0.1a) was born in an era where Python 2 emerged into the world and I was just starting my journey into software development. For years, it served as a trusty tool in my day job, helping manage complex system administration tasks with a quirky but effective custom interface. The code was crappy, but it worked, and that was good enough...

Like many passion projects, it sat dormant for a (looong) while... until now.

🤖 Resurrected with AI

With the help of Google Antigravity (+ others tbh, but mostly AntiGravity so far), FatController is being brought back to life and modernized. We are:

• 🐍 Migrating from Python 2 to Python 3.13.
• 🖼️ Replacing the legacy wxPython GUI with a native tkinter interface.
• 🔐 Implementing modern security practices (goodbye eval(), hello paramiko!).
• 🧪 Adding comprehensive unit tests and CI/CD workflows.
• And all the things I always imagined it should do. Like update all your documentation for you on the fly (oh look, LLM's have appeared ...)

🔮 The Future: AI Agents

The most exciting part of this resurrection is the potential for LLM Agent Entities. Imagine defining an entity not just for a server, but for an AI Agent that can reason, plan, and execute tasks autonomously within the FatController framework.

The tool that automated my job 25 years ago is evolving to automate the jobs of the future.

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