Customer Reviews

Perl for System Administration: Managing multi-platform environments with Perl

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

 

 

This book focuses on using CPAN modules for system administration. This is not always done in practice, because one has to deal with systems behind firewalls and at most a halfway new perl installation. But once one has the choice, it's good to go for the CPAN modules. The book selects a few of those to demonstrate the case. The author is meticulous in explaining the examples. But he is not a perl hacker, so he does things of the sort: $x = $x ? $x : $y; where one would use: $x ||= $y; and many other things which twist a perl hackers brain. But by the choice of the topics including SQL and LDAP etc. he will help a lot of sysadmins.

Heck, i haven't even looked at the main part of this book, but the appendicies are priceless. A fifteen minute crash course on SQL? An 8 minute crash course on XML? Like treatment is given to RCS, LDAP, and SNMP. I've used this book for less than an hour of my life, and it's been a terriffic investment.

The biggest asset of this book is the author's expert knowledge of the three platforms (Unix, Windows NT/2000, Mac) and the in-depth coverage he gives to each. With almost every Perl sysadmin tool he covers, he outlines the OS-specific Perl modules necessary to make the tool work on any of the platforms. This book is truly unique in that regard.

If you already use Perl for system administration you don't need this book.

If you understand Perl, but are interested in learning more about system administration you might enjoy this book.

If you're a sysadmin who doesn't know Perl (is there such an animal?), you should read this book.

Fairly even coverage of Unix and Windows. Even a few Mac items thrown in. I was disappointed that this book didn't cover more advanced subjects.

I've been wondering what programming language I wanted to get involved with. At first I decided that it was going to be C since I could do a lot more stuff with it, or so I thought. I had been reading up on Perl and how it is basically the scripting language that ends all scripting languages. So I decided to get this book before actually getting a How-To Perl book to see if it was as usefull as I thought it might be. Oh yes, was it ever. Needless to say I promptly went and bought Learning Perl 2nd Edition from my favorite publisher O'Reilly and am about to dive into it. Highly recommended book for anyone who's not sure if they want to get into Perl or not.

I happened to read this book from a friend of mine, David has really done a wonderful job. He has tried to clearly guide the Systems Administrators. The book explains the essential components of using perl for writing programs to perform day-to-day task and some crucial tasks. This is purely my opinion and am planning to buy a copy for my use. I feel it needs to be in the personal collection of every budding System Administrator.

This book is very uncanny in that it is able to cover advanced administration procedural concepts (such as log rotation) and networking technologies (like SNMP), and the automation that applies to these areas. The coverage is from a platform neutral perspective, but does delve into platform specific solutions where needed, e.g. Windows events vs. UNIX syslogs, Active Directory vs. LDAP, etc. What is nice is that these system or network administration chores, is that the coverage uses generic cross-platform libraries (Mozilla's LDAP modules for example), but where needed delves into platform specific libraries such as ADSI (for Active Directory LDAP OLE-DB provider).

I highly recommend this book as supplementary material for existing scripting books and system administration books. I would note that the material is advanced and would be suited for those already familar with intermediate Perl programming (map, grep, array slicing, split, etc.) and advanced system administration and network administration concepts (or ability and eagerness to learn)

I was surprised to find a disclaimer at the beginning of the book on the places where it might NOT be a good idea to use Perl. Typically people take an all-or-nothing approach to toolsets like Perl. This might save some work where a small ksh script works ok - it's not always necessary to build a Perl program.

The best part of the book is highlighting the art and craft of system administration, possibly better than most attempts at it that I've previously read. Even disregarding the excellent examples and specific code for same, this is good as another resource of the harried sysadmin. Somewhat less so for the Perl junkies, however.

The biggest downside to this book is the inclusion of NT-specific constructs and concepts. Most system administrators won't touch NT, and most network administrators maintaining NT server farms probably won't touch Perl. This may be a bias of mine, of course.

Perl For System Administration is designed for all levels of administrators, from novice single-box Linux users to seasoned SAGE members. While covering several different platforms including Unix, Windows NT, and Mac OS, Perl For System Administration also covers such core issues as filesystem management, user administration, directory services, database administration, log files, security, and network monitoring. 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.

It's a book for programmers who occasionally like to play with their Linux box at home. There is little of anything of practical use to the professional systems admin who wants to know the art of keeping an installation of Perl working, installing or maintaining modules, or how to recognize good code from bad when stealing other peoples code to hack for your own purposes.

Also, not one script uses -T or -w. Buy the cookbook instead.