Perl for System Administration

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Perl for System Administration Managing multi-platform environments with Perl

By David N. Blank-Edelman
First Edition July 2000
Pages: 444
ISBN 10: 1-56592-609-9 | ISBN 13: 9781565926097
(Average of 4 Customer Reviews)

Book description

Perl for System Administration is aimed at all levels of administrators on the Unix, Windows NT, or MacOS platforms. Assuming only a little familiarity with Perl, it explores the pockets of administration where Perl can be most useful, including filesystem management, user administration, directory services, database administration, log files, and security and network monitoring. Perl for System Administration is for anyone who needs to use Perl for administrative tasks and needs to hit the ground running.
Full Description

Some people plan to become administrators. The rest of us are thrust into it: we are webmasters, hobbyists, or just the default "technical people" on staff who are expected to keep things running. After some stumbling around repeating the same steps over and over again (and occasionally paying the price when we forget one), we realize that we must automate these tasks, or suffer endless frustration. Thus enters Perl. The Perl programming language is ideal for writing quick yet powerful scripts that automate many administrative tasks. It's modular, it's powerful, and it's perfect for managing systems and services on many platforms. Perl for System Administration is designed for all levels of administrators--from hobbyists to card-carrying SAGE members--sysadmins on multi-platform sites. Written for several different platforms (Unix, Windows NT, and Mac OS), it's a guide to the pockets of administration where Perl can be most useful for sites large and small, including:

Filesystem management
User administration with a dash of XML
DNS and other network name services
Database administration using DBI and ODBC
Directory services and frameworks like LDAP and ADSI
Using email for system administration
Working with log files of all kinds

Each chapter concentrates on a single administrative area, discusses the possible pitfalls, and then shows how Perl comes to the rescue. Along the way we encounter interesting Perl features and tricks, with many extended examples and complete programs. The scripts included in the book can simply be used as written or with minimal adaptation. But it's likely that readers will also get a taste of what Perl can do, and start extending those scripts for tasks that we haven't dreamed of. Perl for System Adminstration doesn't attempt to teach the Perl language, but it is an excellent introduction to the power and flexibility of Perl, and it whets the appetite to learn more. It's for anyone who needs to use Perl for system administration and needs to hit the ground running.

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Featured customer reviews

Essential for SysAdmins, May 08 2005

Rating:

Submitted by Ed Mansky [Respond | View]

This is a terrific book! Full of good code examples for all sys admin tasks. The examples in Chaps 8-10 are real gems. I especially appreciated the multi-platform non-bias the author brings to the subject. I hadn't read a book on SysAdmin before, having learned much over the years from the man pages and on-line resources. Blank-Edelman really brings together a wealth of info on a variety of topics. I'll definitely use the scripts in the book.
Topics like Lists-of-Lists and anonymous subroutines made me learn a-new topics I thought I knew already.

Perl for System Administration Review, December 29 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Lou Moran [Respond | View]

Ok I bought the original publishing of 07.01 and I hated this book. It sat festering on my pile of blue ORAs and every day I cursed the 35USD I spent on it. I could not understand how I was supposed to wade through Windows. W2K, Mac and *nix administration scripts....

Then I got a job where all of those OSes were used interchangably.

WOW!

Now this book is tattered -- filled with newspaper scraps, napkins, french fries and whatever else I could find to bookmark pages. Absolutely indipensible. More useful than Programming Perl for me, Lou Moran Sys Admin!

If you are a WIN Admin this book might be a bit much for you and possibly a book by Dave Roth might be a beter choice but if you are multi platform... good grief this is a GREAT BOOK.

(Lou Has Spoken)

Perl for System Administration Review, September 28 2000

Rating:

Submitted by Adam Lobaugh [Respond | View]

Great!

Once again, you chaps have created an enjoyable read. I am fairly new to perl,

but found this text easy to follow, concise, and covering topics sometimes ignored by others. Good job.

Respectfully,

Adam Lobaugh

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Perl for System Administration Review, August 14 2000

Rating:

Submitted by Hutch [Respond | View]

Another pearl of a Perl book from O'Reilly
As the administrator of 3 web servers, I need to automate admin as much as possible. This book really helped me to script common admin tasks, and introduced me to some really useful concepts I hadn't considered (like using XML and LDAP for example). Bristling with readable code examples, and serving the Unix and NT communities alike,
this book fills a gap on my Perl book shelf.

Media reviews "...an excellent resource for Windows and UNIX system administrators alike.. there is more than enough information presented here to keep you thinking of your own custom Perl solutions far into the future."
--Dustin Puryear, Linux Gazette, May 15, 2003
http://linuxgazette.com/issue90/puryear.html

"When I first opened this book, I was afraid that it would fall into a trap all too common among programming books: 90% technique and 10% usage. I was pleasantly surprised to find this book to be exactly as the title implies: Perl, applied to the day-to-day tasks of the system administrator. Rather than write fourteen chapters on Perl programming with sidebars about system administration, Blank-Edelman has written a quality text on using Perl to make the task of system administration more efficient. This is not a Perl-how-to, nor should it be. The reader is assumed to have a basic knowledge of Perl and programming techniques. Blank-Edelman tackles the formidable task of writing a cross-platform system administration book with ease...This book should be on the bookshelf, if open on the desk, of any cross-platform system administrator."
--Wayne Graham, Williamsburg Macromedia User's Group, Feb 2003

"one of the clearest explanations of LDAP's role in the enterprise that I have found." --Adam Thornton, Technical Support, July 2001

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