Perl for System Administration

Rating:
Summary: The Art of System Administration...revealed!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Buy the cookbook or the Camel instead.
Review: I was hoping for lots of short practical Unix scripts. Nope.

Rating:
Summary: The Art of System Administration...revealed!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Buy the camel and the sheep, not this....
Review: I was very dissapointed with this book. The author flaunts a lot of vague generalities around and never proceeds to anything remotely useful on any of the platforms discussed in the book. The examples are childlike and so badly formed that one could not possibly use them as a framework, or even a thought-framework to design a real administration tool in perl.

All the way through the book, I kept wondering when the author would get to something concrete. I was sorely disappointed.

--joe

Rating:
Summary: suitable for beginner level
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Superbly written and presented for beginners.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Multiplatform SysAdmin Perl Tools
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: System administration with CPAN modules
Review: 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.