Perl for System Administration

Acknowledgments

Writing a book turned out to be a lot like building one of those classical arches. It started with two pillars in my life that leaned towards each other, one technical, and the other personal.

On the technical side, I have the greatest appreciation for Larry Wall, who not only created Perl but imbued it and the Perl community with the spirit. I am thankful to the great Perl teachers, Tom Christiansen and Randal L. Schwartz, who have helped me and countless others learn all the twisty little passages of the language. Further up on this pillar are the kerjillions of programmers and hackers who poured countless hours and energy into the language and then chose to share their work with me and the rest of the Perl community. Wherever possible in this book I have tried to give these folks credit, but my thanks go to all of the named and unnamed folks who enrich the Perl culture with their efforts.

Moving further up the tech column past the Perl section, we come to the system administration section. Here we find another vibrant community that has helped to shape me, this book, and the whole computing field. The members of Usenix, SAGE, and the people who have contributed to the LISA conferences over the years deserve our thanks for cultivating and sharing the best the system administration field has to offer. In particular I’d like to acknowledge and thank Rémy Evard for being such a great influence on my professional and personal understanding of this field as a friend, ...