Automating UNIX and Linux Administration will focus on automating the tedious daily tasks of system administration. It will provide real-world examples and explore the existing tools that will help with this task. Although the book will provide brief overviews of tools and technologies that are covered, the author will assume the reader knows how to edit a configuration file or mount a file system. The book will focus on putting these tools to use in the real world, such as how to use a set of Perl scripts to manage your user accounts across 1000 machines. It will not show you how to write a basic "Hello World" program in Perl nor contain a Perl function reference or summary.
The techniques, methods and tools covered in this book will help on a single system, but will be much more useful across multiple systems. Whether you are managing 2 or 5,000 systems, whether they are desktops, servers, or a Beowulf cluster, you will benefit from this type of automation. Although some of the book will be Linux-specific, most of it will apply to any UNIX system. The book will also focus on automating tasks across multiple variants of UNIX.
