cmlterm

A command-line interface to CML devices.

Improvements to CML's built in SSH commandline

• Proper handling of home/end/delete/ctrl-left/right/etc keys
• Pipe commands into stdin, clean results from stdout
• Specifying device via commandline (via lab/device IDs or names)
  • Command-line completion (for bash only, see below)
• Sets the current terminal's title to the current device's prompt

Usage

Detailed help can be accessed with cmlterm --help

Line numbers are inferred to line 0, add /<line num> to the end of the device path, if needed.

Open a device by ID

cmlterm open /abcde/n2

Or, by name:

cmlterm open "/3-Site VPN/FW2"

Authentication

Uses three environment variables:

• CML_HOST: An IP address or hostname where the CML instance can be accessed.
• CML_USER: The username to sign into CML with
• CML_PASS64: A base-64'd version of the user's password (preferred, though should not be counted on for security)
• CML_PASS: A plaintext version of the user's password (not recommended)

Command-line completion

• Currently bash-only, though PRs are encouraged
• Supports plain and single-quoted strings (read: does not complete doubly-quoted strings)
• Needs a special installation step, see installation section below

Installation

Pre-built binaries are not currently provided on Github.

• If Rust is not yet installed, first install the Rust toolchain: https://rustup.rs/
• cmlterm can then be installed with:

cargo install cmlterm --git https://github.com/csm123199/cml-rs --branch main

For bash autocompletion, you can execute the completion wrapper in your shell. You can have it within any new user shells by adding it to your .profile:

echo 'source <(cmlterm --completions bash)' >> .profile

Basic scripting

Commands can be piped in (specifically, input is not an interactive tty), separated by lines. Each line is sent to the device sequentially, and by default, each line waits for the next prompt to show before executing, to prevent commands dissappearing. The script is considered to end after stdin is closed and the next prompt shows. Piped input supports the following prefixes to change this behavior: (use a backslash before them to use these as literal line prefixes)

• prefixing a line with a tilde ~ will not wait for the next prompt before sending. This may be helpful for automating interactive commands.
• prefixing a line with a grave-quoted string (`asd`) will wait for the quoted string to appear (specifically within the last 256 bytes of terminal output) before sending the line.
• (NOT YET IMPLEMENTED) a prefix to override the default prompt timeout

Scripting

These control commands can be stacked to interact with each other, each are put before the beginning of the line, sequentially. If you wish to start a line with one of these characters, escape it with a backslash. Backslashes without any of the below characters following them are sent literally. If a line starting with these control sequences does not parse properly, it will be sent literally.

• ~ - do not wait for the next prompt before sending the command. (Takes precedence over timeout behavior)

• ! - do not emit a newline at the end of the line

• `64:text` - within a rolling buffer of the last N bytes, wait until the specified text appears

• %20000% - change the default timeout to the specified number of milliseconds, for this command. If the timeout passes without either a prompt or expected text, the line will be send anyway.

Anything dynamic or more interesting than that may need to wrap cmlterm inputs/outputs to adjust the input script. If this is done, you may want to visit the (WIP) cmlscript binary within this same project for richer device information, and easier terminal multiplexing.