Customer Reviews

Automating System Administration with Perl: Tools to Make You More Efficient

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Perl occupies the sweet spot between shell scripting and C programming, with the ability to lean as far as you'd like in either direction. As a sysadmin, Perl is better than a tool -- its the perfect tool for building tools, and this book is at the top of a very short list of texts which help bring to bear the full power of the best language for cutting down complex tasks down to size.

I've read a lot of Perl books and I own most of the O'Reilly books on the topic. The Otter Book, however, is the one which I cart around with me in my laptop bag wherever I go and is the first place I look for hints on how to attack problems that I face at work or home. It's chocked full of working examples and hints and tips on how to customize them, as well as plenty of context as to why these suggestions work the way they do.

The book is very well written and I highly recommend it to anyone, whether they are a professional admin or just want to cut out some of the repetitive tasks of managing their own workstation.

On times I think that having books on Unix or current computing topics in general is an oddity at best. Isn't all the information we need readily available via Google, some blogs and for Perl CPAN? But then again as I was reviewing the second installment of Davids Otter book I found my self quite often amazed at all the little gotchas and tricks David added in. There are so many tools available today that this book severs as an invaluable guide through the jungle of possibilities in doing efficient System Administration. David does not praise a single solution to all problems. He rather gives detailed advice on succeeding in various scenarios. Yes the book is also about doing sysadmining with perl, but it comes natural and is in no way a language advocacy piece on the finer points of perl programming. It is both wide and deep by providing detailed examples in actual working code. I can highly recommend this book for both seasoned as well aspiring master craftsmen.

Definitively this book will learn you about how to use greatful cpan modules, and how to make administrative tasks automatically with perl. I love it much more than python related book

Very completed, talking about logging, network diagnostic, monitoring, advanced perl topics like pack/unpack ...

Very recommendable

This book has a lot of good tidbits that you'll find useful as a System Administrator. There are a ton of tools out there for any job in Perl, but this book helps point out some of the better ones and the best way to go about using them. The author has a good style of writing that makes it a lot easier to read.

The original Otter book was published in 2000, and had a place on just about every sysadmin's shelf as well as most anyone who regularly used Perl. I expect this new 2009 edition will likewise be a "must have" for anyone serious about System Administration and Perl (and any Perl coder, really, given the wide range of topics). While it will likely serve as an excellent reference, I'd also recommend this edition to newcomers to Perl (up there with Llama, Camel and Perl Cookbook) due to the "real world" nature of the tasks covered and the author's obvious depth of knowledge and wealth of experience.

This edition is much updated from the 2000 original, with four new chapters ("Working with Configuration Files" and "Experiential Learning" being two favorites of mine) and two new appendices (including the "10 minute XPath tutorial). Some of what I like best about the book is the exploration of "best of breed" CPAN modules and "Pros and Cons" sections that compare modules for particular tasks. All-in-all very highly recommended!

AUTOMATING SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION WITH PERL by David N. Blank-Edelman appears in its second updated edition for any systems administrator working with Perl. It's been updated and expanded to include the latest operating systems and technologies and replaces an outdated version, so is key for any serious Perl computing collection. Topics include spam control, analyzing log files, working with different configuration file formats, and more.

Automating System Administration with Perl presents many relevant use cases for using Perl in a modern systems environment. Edelmann brings Perl up to speed with modern system administration use cases that are applicable to modern system infrastructures.

Advanced use cases for using Perl to automate tasks for Email, SQL Databases, Networking, and Security, while backing them up with general best practices for writing Perl scripts, something often overlooked.

The examples coupled with the principles for Automating System Administration with Perl offers a value which cannot be achieved only with code examples or a pre-made application.

As one of the reviewers for Automating System Administration with Perl,
I can only rabidly recommend the work as some of the best I have seen
lately on both subjects (Perl and System Administration).