cm-dashboard/CLAUDE.md

CM Dashboard - Infrastructure Monitoring TUI

Overview

A high-performance Rust-based TUI dashboard for monitoring CMTEC infrastructure. Built to replace Glance with a custom solution tailored for our specific monitoring needs and ZMQ-based metric collection.

Implementation Strategy

Current Implementation Status

System Panel Enhancement - COMPLETED ✅

All system panel features successfully implemented:

• ✅ NixOS Collector: Created collector for version and active users
• ✅ System Widget: Unified widget combining NixOS, CPU, RAM, and Storage
• ✅ Build Display: Shows NixOS build information without codename
• ✅ Active Users: Displays currently logged in users
• ✅ Tmpfs Monitoring: Added /tmp usage to RAM section
• ✅ Agent Deployment: NixOS collector working in production

Keyboard Navigation and Service Management - COMPLETED ✅

All keyboard navigation and service selection features successfully implemented:

• ✅ Panel Navigation: Shift+Tab cycles through visible panels only (System → Services → Backup)
• ✅ Service Selection: Up/Down arrows navigate through parent services with visual cursor
• ✅ Focus Management: Selection highlighting only visible when Services panel focused
• ✅ Status Preservation: Service health colors maintained during selection (green/red icons)
• ✅ Smart Panel Switching: Only cycles through panels with data (backup panel conditional)
• ✅ Scroll Support: All panels support content scrolling with proper overflow indicators

Current Status - October 23, 2025:

• All keyboard navigation features working correctly ✅
• Service selection cursor implemented with focus-aware highlighting ✅
• Panel scrolling fixed for System, Services, and Backup panels ✅
• Build display working: "Build: 25.05.20251004.3bcc93c" ✅

Layout Achieved:

NixOS:
Build: 25.05.20251004.3bcc93c  # Target (currently shows "unknown")
Active users: cm, simon
CPU:
● Load: 0.02 0.31 0.86 • 3000MHz
RAM:
● Usage: 33% 2.6GB/7.6GB  
● /tmp: 0% 0B/2.0GB  
Storage:  
● root (Single):  
 ├─ ● nvme0n1 W: 1%
 └─ ● 18% 167.4GB/928.2GB

Current Status - October 23, 2025:

• System panel layout fully implemented with blue tree symbols ✅
• Backup panel layout restructured per specification ✅
• Tree symbols now use consistent blue theming across all panels ✅
• Overflow handling restored for all widgets ("... and X more") ✅
• Agent hash display working correctly ✅

Current Keyboard Navigation Implementation

Navigation Controls:

• Tab: Switch between hosts (cmbox, srv01, srv02, steambox, etc.)
• Shift+Tab: Cycle through visible panels (System → Services → Backup → System)
• Up/Down (System/Backup): Scroll through panel content
• Up/Down (Services): Move service selection cursor between parent services
• q: Quit dashboard

Panel-Specific Features:

• System Panel: Scrollable content with CPU, RAM, Storage details
• Services Panel: Service selection cursor for parent services only (docker, nginx, postgresql, etc.)
• Backup Panel: Scrollable repository list with proper overflow handling

Visual Feedback:

• Focused Panel: Blue border and title highlighting
• Service Selection: Blue background with preserved status icon colors (green ● for active, red ● for failed)
• Focus-Aware Selection: Selection highlighting only visible when Services panel focused
• Dynamic Statusbar: Context-aware shortcuts based on focused panel

Current Priority: Visual Feedback Implementation

Remote Command Execution - PARTIALLY WORKING ⚠️

Core infrastructure implemented but issues remain:

• ✅ ZMQ Command Protocol: Extended with ServiceControl and SystemRebuild variants
• ✅ Agent Handlers: systemctl and nixos-rebuild execution with maintenance mode
• ✅ Dashboard Integration: Existing keyboard shortcuts now execute commands
• ⚠️ Service Control: systemctl commands work but Space key toggle needs fixing
• ❌ System Rebuild: nixos-rebuild still failing with permission denied

Current Issues (as of 2025-10-23):

1. Service Toggle Bug: Space key always sends "Start" instead of toggling start/stop
2. nixos-rebuild Permissions: Still getting permission denied despite sudo config updates
3. No Command Completion: Visual feedback shows ⏳ but never completes (missing response protocol)

Keyboard Controls Status:

• Services Panel:
  • R (restart) ✅ Working
  • Space (start/stop) ❌ Always starts, doesn't toggle
• System Panel: R (nixos-rebuild) ❌ Permission denied
• Backup Panel: B (trigger backup) ❓ Not tested

Visual Feedback Implementation - IN PROGRESS:

Context-appropriate progress indicators for each panel:

Services Panel (Service status transitions):

● nginx          active    →  ⏳ nginx      restarting  →  ● nginx          active
● docker         active    →  ⏳ docker     stopping    →  ● docker         inactive  

System Panel (Build progress in NixOS section):

NixOS:
Build: 25.05.20251004.3bcc93c    →    Build: [████████████     ] 65%
Active users: cm, simon               Active users: cm, simon

Backup Panel (OnGoing status with progress):

Latest backup:              →    Latest backup:
● 2024-10-23 14:32:15            ● OnGoing  
└─ Duration: 1.3m                 └─ [██████       ] 60%

Next Session Priority Tasks:

Critical Fixes Needed:

1. Fix Service Toggle Logic: Debug why Space key service status detection isn't working

   • Check systemd metric format (systemd_{service}_status)
   • Test service status parsing logic
   • Ensure toggle detects active vs inactive correctly

2. Resolve nixos-rebuild Permissions:

   • Verify sudo rules are actually applied after NixOS rebuild
   • Test sudo -u cm-agent sudo nixos-rebuild --help manually
   • May need different approach for nixos-rebuild access

3. Implement Command Response Protocol:

   • Agent sends command completion/failure back to dashboard via ZMQ
   • Dashboard updates UI status from ⏳ to ● when commands complete
   • Clear success/failure status after timeout

Secondary Tasks:

• Add confirmation dialogs for destructive actions (stop/restart/rebuild)
• Complete visual feedback for System and Backup panels
• Test backup trigger functionality

Future Enhanced Navigation:

• Add Page Up/Down for faster scrolling through long service lists
• Implement search/filter functionality for services
• Add jump-to-service shortcuts (first letter navigation)

Future Advanced Features:

• Service dependency visualization
• Historical service status tracking
• Backup trigger functionality with progress indication

Core Architecture Principles - CRITICAL

Individual Metrics Philosophy

NEW ARCHITECTURE: Agent collects individual metrics, dashboard composes widgets from those metrics.

Maintenance Mode

Purpose:

• Suppress email notifications during planned maintenance or backups
• Prevents false alerts when services are intentionally stopped

Implementation:

• Agent checks for /tmp/cm-maintenance file before sending notifications
• File presence suppresses all email notifications while continuing monitoring
• Dashboard continues to show real status, only notifications are blocked

Usage:

# Enable maintenance mode
touch /tmp/cm-maintenance

# Run maintenance tasks (backups, service restarts, etc.)
systemctl stop service
# ... maintenance work ...
systemctl start service

# Disable maintenance mode
rm /tmp/cm-maintenance

NixOS Integration:

• Borgbackup script automatically creates/removes maintenance file
• Automatic cleanup via trap ensures maintenance mode doesn't stick
• All cinfiguration are shall be done from nixos config

ARCHITECTURE ENFORCEMENT:

• ZERO legacy code reuse - Fresh implementation following ARCHITECT.md exactly
• Individual metrics only - NO grouped metric structures
• Reference-only legacy - Study old functionality, implement new architecture
• Clean slate mindset - Build as if legacy codebase never existed

Implementation Rules:

1. Individual Metrics: Each metric is collected, transmitted, and stored individually
2. Agent Status Authority: Agent calculates status for each metric using thresholds
3. Dashboard Composition: Dashboard widgets subscribe to specific metrics by name
4. Status Aggregation: Dashboard aggregates individual metric statuses for widget status Testing & Building:

• Workspace builds: cargo build --workspace for all testing
• Clean compilation: Remove target/ between architecture changes
• ZMQ testing: Test agent-dashboard communication independently
• Widget testing: Verify UI layout matches legacy appearance exactly

NEVER in New Implementation:

• Copy/paste ANY code from legacy backup
• Calculate status in dashboard widgets
• Hardcode metric names in widgets (use const arrays)

Important Communication Guidelines

NEVER write that you have "successfully implemented" something or generate extensive summary text without first verifying with the user that the implementation is correct. This wastes tokens. Keep responses concise.

NEVER implement code without first getting explicit user agreement on the approach. Always ask for confirmation before proceeding with implementation.

Commit Message Guidelines

NEVER mention:

• Claude or any AI assistant names
• Automation or AI-generated content
• Any reference to automated code generation

ALWAYS:

• Focus purely on technical changes and their purpose
• Use standard software development commit message format
• Describe what was changed and why, not how it was created
• Write from the perspective of a human developer

Examples:

• ❌ "Generated with Claude Code"
• ❌ "AI-assisted implementation"
• ❌ "Automated refactoring"
• ✅ "Implement maintenance mode for backup operations"
• ✅ "Restructure storage widget with improved layout"
• ✅ "Update CPU thresholds to production values"

NixOS Configuration Updates

When code changes are made to cm-dashboard, the NixOS configuration at ~/nixosbox must be updated to deploy the changes.

Update Process

1. Get Latest Commit Hash

   git log -1 --format="%H"
   

2. Update NixOS Configuration Edit ~/nixosbox/hosts/common/cm-dashboard.nix:

   src = pkgs.fetchgit {
     url = "https://gitea.cmtec.se/cm/cm-dashboard.git";
     rev = "NEW_COMMIT_HASH_HERE";
     sha256 = "sha256-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA="; # Placeholder
   };
   

3. Get Correct Source Hash Build with placeholder hash to get the actual hash:

   cd ~/nixosbox
   nix-build --no-out-link -E 'with import <nixpkgs> {}; fetchgit {
     url = "https://gitea.cmtec.se/cm/cm-dashboard.git";
     rev = "NEW_COMMIT_HASH";
     sha256 = "sha256-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=";
   }' 2>&1 | grep "got:"
   

   Example output:

   error: hash mismatch in fixed-output derivation '/nix/store/...':
            specified: sha256-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=
               got:    sha256-x8crxNusOUYRrkP9mYEOG+Ga3JCPIdJLkEAc5P1ZxdQ=
   

4. Update Configuration with Correct Hash Replace the placeholder with the hash from the error message (the "got:" line).

5. Commit NixOS Configuration

   cd ~/nixosbox
   git add hosts/common/cm-dashboard.nix
   git commit -m "Update cm-dashboard to latest version (SHORT_HASH)"
   git push
   

6. Rebuild System The user handles the system rebuild step - this cannot be automated.