Automating System Administration with Perl, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. Introduction

In my town, several of our local bus lines are powered by cables strung high above the street. One day, when going to an unfamiliar destination, I asked the driver to let me know when a particular street was approaching. He said, “I’m sorry, I can’t. I just follow the wires.”

These are words you will never hear from good system administrators asked to describe their jobs. System administration is a craft. It’s not about following wires. System and network administration is about deciding what wires to put in place and where to put them, getting them deployed, keeping watch over them, and then eventually ripping them out and starting all over again. Good system administration is hardly ever rote, especially in multiplatform environments where the challenges come fast and furious. As in any other craft, there are better and worse ways to meet these challenges. Whether you’re a full-time system administrator or a part-time tinkerer, this book will help you along that path.

Automation Is a Must

Any solution that involves fiddling with every one of your machines by hand is almost always the wrong one. This book will make that approach a thing of the past for you.

Even in the best of economic climates, system administrators always have too much to do. This is true both for the people who do this work by choice and for those who had a boss walk into their office and say, “Hey, you know about computers. We can’t hire anyone else. Why don’t you be in charge of the servers?” ...