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

1. Wide ranging and in depth coverage

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2010

   If you are someone who is:
   * an active system administrator, and
   * comfortable with Perl, and
   * looking for ways to simplify your live by automating some tasks using Perl, and
   * up for learning something new, and having some rather geeky fun while you're about it,
   then this book could be right up your street.
   
   You are assumed to be reasonably competent with the language: the
   author says "if you know a little Perl, and you need to perform system
   administration tasks, this is the book for you", but the code examples
   do jump in at a realistic - though very comprehensible - level. The
   code is presented with the assumption that the reader is comfortable
   with the basics of objects, modules, anonymous hashes/arrays, slices,
   use of 'map', regular expressions and references for example.
   
   This book is reassuring from the first time you open it. It feels
   reliable and trustworthy. We are told in the Preface that the code
   samples are "use strict"-friendly, and the code examples are
   comprehensible and thoroughly explained. I found the writing style
   both authoritative and accessible. Every chapter ends with a list of
   the CPAN modules used in the chapter (with version numbers) and a set
   of references for further information, reinforcing the impression that
   care has gone into the book.
   
   Further, you get the impression that this guy knows what he is
   doing. This is reinforced by the fact that this is a second edition,
   and the first was ten years ago; the references to well-respected CPAN
   Perl modules and their authors; and the general air of
   professionalism.
   
   
   The book includes a collection of highly useful 'N Minute
   Tutorial' Appendices on XML, XPath, LDAP, SQL, RCS, 'VBScript to
   Perl', and SNMP.
   
   The final chapter, with its subtext "Remember to play", is a
   delightful celebration of why sytem administrators enjoy their
   job. Let's make a time-line out of our crontab! Let's geocode the IP
   addresses in our server logs! Just because we can! (And, which is the
   point of the chapter: let's see what we can learn from it!)
   
   Any active and Perl-literate system administrator should find this
   book stimulating and rewarding, and be able to take things from it
   that they can apply to their work.