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By David N. Blank-Edelman
July 2000
Pages: 444
ISBN 10: 1-56592-609-9 |
ISBN 13: 9781565926097
(Average of 4 Customer Reviews)
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
- 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
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Cover | Table of Contents | Index | Sample Chapter | Colophon
Book details
First Edition: July 2000
ISBN: 1-56592-609-9
Pages: 444
Average Customer Reviews: (Based on 4 Reviews)
Featured customer reviews
Essential for SysAdmins, May 08 2005
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
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
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
Perl for System Administration Review, August 14 2000
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
"This readable, self-help type book about Perl language and its uses is directed at non-specialists who know some Perl and work in system administration."-Book News, August 2000
"Another excellent book on Perl, published by O'Reilly! Perl is fun to use, and this book helps make it so. I recommend it highly for both the system administrator and the student of Perl." --Nelson Bigelow, Jr, Kennebec Valley Computer Society Newsletter, May 2001
"One mark of a good writer is the ability to make an arcane, difficult and potentially dull topic interesting. David Blank-Edelman has this ability. The author's expertise is clear from the fact that explanations are easy to follow, even when the issues are deeply technical. To add interest, Blank-Edelman uses solutions to the problems he tackles to introduce the reader to new programming techniques. Once again, O'Reilly has lived up to its reputation of excellence, and I cannot find any major points to criticize without being unnecessarily churlish. One can only hope that every computing text were as packed with usefulness as this book. --Robert Scovell-Lightfoot, firstmonday.org, May 2001
"A royal buffet of ideas to stimulate system administrators. Anything that saves a beleagured sysadmin time is very good. Any one chapter read in isolation will yield at least one new idiom, if not many ideas on improving efficiency and accuracy. The central theme of the book ('make things better by using a database to store all of your information') is an excellent and timely idea. It's not essential to the presented examples, but has the potential to simplify your work dramatically. The sample code is clean and understandable, taking full advantage of many [6]CPAN modules. When competing modules exist, Blank-Edelman demonstrates each, with an eye to advantages and disadvantages. If you're left wondering where to go to learn more, it will be your own fault. Perl for System Administration is packed with useful tips, making the most of Perl's ecological niche. Whether you're a junior administrator venturing out into the wild world for the first time, or a seasoned BOFH, you'll find something to digest here. You might even get some free time out of it. Rating: 9" --Chromatic, slashdot.org, Dec 2000
"The drawback of this book is that just about everything in the book uses pre-existing Perl modules. The Perl community's embrace of Perl modules belies how fragile and difficult modules are to use. My experiences with modules have been catastrophic, and have led me to write them off..The bottom line for administrators who are trying to get real work done instead of playing with Perl modules all day is that this book assumes that you'll get all the modules installed and working with no problems. If that's true, you'll find this book incredibly useful."--Scott McMahon, UnixReview Oct 30, 2000
"Blank-Edelman writes as someone who not only does this stuff every day but likes getting his hands dirty, and--unlike the famous fictional sysadmin, BOFH--enjoys explaining how it all works. His approach is especially valuable when dealing with the complexities of database management, e-mail and security. Blank-Edelman assumes you already know Perl, but once you've read Perl for System Administrators you'll know enough about the glistening innards of network OSs to use it reliably and securely for network admininstration. It helps that it's also a great read."--Steve Patient, amazon.com, July 2000
"Superbly written and presented, Perl For System Administration will enable the beginner to launch confidently into Perl for administrative tasks, and has much to offer even the more experienced manager." --James Cox, Midwest Book Review, September 2000
"a wonderful new book" --Brett Glass, Boardwatch, Sept 2000
