Pabawi

Classic Infrastructures Command & Control Awesomeness Pabawi is a web UI for infrastructure management, inventory, and remote execution. It integrates with Puppet, Bolt, Ansible, PuppetDB, Hiera, SSH, Proxmox, and AWS — supporting both Puppet Enterprise and Open Source Puppet / OpenVox. A single interface for executing commands, browsing inventory, viewing system facts, provisioning VMs, and tracking operations across your entire environment.

Who is this for?

• Sysadmins and DevOps teams using Puppet, Bolt, Ansible, or SSH to manage physical servers and VMs
• Puppet Open Source users who want a web UI without Puppet Enterprise
• Mixed-tool environments — if you use both Puppet and Ansible, Pabawi brings them together in one interface
• Homelabbers who just want a web frontend for their servers (SSH-only works fine)

If you manage "classic infrastructure" — bare metal, VMs, not Kubernetes — Pabawi is built for you.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Screenshots
• Prerequisites
• Installation
  • Quick Start
  • Manual Setup
  • Docker
• Configuration
• Project Structure
• Troubleshooting
• Development and Contributing
• Roadmap
• License
• Support
• Acknowledgments

Features

• Multi-Source Inventory — nodes from Bolt, PuppetDB, Ansible, SSH, Proxmox, AWS, with inventory groups
• Command Execution — ad-hoc commands on remote nodes with whitelist security
• Task Execution — Bolt tasks with automatic parameter discovery
• Package Management — install and manage packages across infrastructure
• Proxmox Provisioning — VM and container management alongside config management
• AWS EC2 Provisioning — cloud instance lifecycle management
• Execution History — track operations with re-execution capability
• RBAC Authentication — role-based access control, multiple users, audit trail
• Node Facts — system information from Puppet agents
• Puppet Reports — run reports with metrics and resource changes
• Catalog Inspection — compiled catalogs, resource relationships, cross-environment diff
• Event Tracking — resource changes and failures over time
• Hiera Data Browser — hierarchical configuration data and key usage analysis
• Node Journal — timeline of events, actions, and notes per node
• Global Journal — cross-node timeline with filtering by node, group, event type, source, and date range
• Real-time Streaming — live output for command and task execution
• Expert Mode — full command lines and debug output
• Graceful Degradation — continues operating when individual integrations are unavailable
• Request Deduplication — LRU-cached responses for identical API requests to reduce external calls
• Input Sanitization — automatic null byte removal, prototype pollution prevention, and deep nesting protection

Screenshots

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+ and npm 9+ (or a container engine for Docker deployment)
• Bolt CLI — for Bolt integration (setup)
• Ansible CLI — for Ansible integration (setup)
• Puppet/OpenVox agent — for PuppetDB and Puppetserver integrations; provides SSL certs
• Control repo — for Hiera integration (setup)

All integrations are optional — enable only what you use.

Installation

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/example42/pabawi
cd pabawi
./scripts/setup.sh

The interactive setup script will:

1. Check prerequisites — Node.js, npm, and optionally Bolt, Ansible, Puppet/OpenVox CLIs
2. Generate backend/.env — core settings and integrations with smart defaults based on detected tools and SSL certs
3. Install dependencies — npm run install:all
4. Start the application — development mode, full-stack build, or exit

Manual Setup

git clone https://github.com/example42/pabawi
cd pabawi

# Install dependencies
npm run install:all

# Create your configuration
cp backend/.env.example backend/.env
# Edit backend/.env with your settings

# Start in development mode
npm run dev:backend    # backend on port 3000
npm run dev:frontend   # frontend on port 5173

# Or build and serve everything from the backend
npm run dev:fullstack  # port 3000

Docker

# Create a working directory for persistent data, certs, and project files
mkdir pabawi && cd pabawi

# Create your configuration file (paths are relative to the container)
vi .env

# Run the image, mounting the current directory
docker run -d \
  --name pabawi \
  --user "$(id -u):1001" \
  -p 127.0.0.1:3000:3000 \
  -v "$(pwd)/pabawi:/pabawi" \
  --env-file ".env" \
  example42/pabawi:latest

The application starts at http://localhost:3000.

For full Docker and Kubernetes deployment instructions, see the Docker Deployment Guide and Kubernetes Guide.

Configuration

All configuration is in backend/.env. The setup script generates this file, or use backend/.env.example as a template.

The web UI also includes per-integration setup wizards that generate .env snippets you can paste into your configuration file.

Key configuration areas:

Area	Variables
Core	PORT, HOST, LOG_LEVEL
Auth	JWT_SECRET, AUTH_ENABLED
Bolt	BOLT_*
PuppetDB / Puppetserver	PUPPETDB_*, PUPPETSERVER_*
Hiera	HIERA_*
Ansible	ANSIBLE_*
SSH	SSH_*
Proxmox	PROXMOX_*
AWS	AWS_*
Security	COMMAND_WHITELIST*, CONCURRENT_EXECUTION_LIMIT

Full reference: Configuration Guide.

Project Structure

pabawi/
├── frontend/                  # Svelte 5 + Vite SPA
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/        # UI components
│       ├── pages/             # Page components
│       └── lib/               # Utilities and rune-based state
├── backend/                   # Node.js + Express + TypeScript
│   └── src/
│       ├── integrations/      # Plugin system (Bolt, PuppetDB, SSH, ...)
│       ├── services/          # ExecutionQueue, RBAC, streaming, auth
│       ├── routes/            # Express route handlers
│       ├── middleware/        # JWT, RBAC, rate limiting, security headers
│       ├── database/          # SQLite + migrations
│       ├── errors/            # Typed error classes
│       └── validation/        # Zod request schemas
├── docs/                      # Documentation
│   ├── integrations/          # Per-integration setup guides
│   └── deployment/            # Docker and Kubernetes guides
├── e2e/                       # Playwright E2E tests
└── package.json               # Root workspace configuration

See Architecture for a detailed description of the plugin system and data flows.

Troubleshooting

See the Troubleshooting Guide for common issues with installation, configuration, and integrations.

Development and Contributing

See the Development Guide for setup, testing, and contribution guidelines.

Roadmap

Planned integrations

• Icinga / CheckMK — monitoring context in the same interface
• Terraform / OpenTofu — infrastructure provisioning alongside configuration management

Also planned

Scheduled executions, custom dashboards, CLI tool, audit logging, Tiny Puppet integration.

Version History

• v1.1.0: Global Journal with cross-node timeline, security hardening, docs rewrite
• v1.0.0: Configuration refactor (.env as single source of truth), Proxmox and AWS provisioning, Node Journal, setup wizard .env snippet generators, Integration Status Dashboard
• v0.10.0: AWS EC2 integration, integration configuration management
• v0.9.0: Proxmox integration, Node Journal
• v0.8.0: RBAC authentication, SSH integration, inventory groups
• v0.7.0: Ansible integration, class-aware Hiera lookups
• v0.6.0: Code consolidation and fixes
• v0.5.0: Report filtering, Puppet run history visualization, enhanced expert mode
• v0.4.0: Hiera integration, enhanced plugin architecture
• v0.3.0: Puppetserver integration, interface enhancements
• v0.2.0: PuppetDB integration, re-execution, expert mode
• v0.1.0: Initial release with Bolt integration

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.

Support

Documentation

• Architecture | Configuration | User Guide | API Reference
• Permissions & RBAC | Troubleshooting | Development

Integrations

• Bolt | Ansible | SSH
• PuppetDB | Puppetserver | Hiera
• Proxmox | AWS

Deployment

• Docker | Kubernetes

For help: enable expert mode for diagnostics, or open a GitHub issue with version info, sanitized config, reproduction steps, and error messages.

Acknowledgments

Pabawi builds on: Puppet/OpenVox, Bolt, PuppetDB, Svelte 5, Node.js, TypeScript, SQLite. Thanks to all contributors and the Puppet community.