As a system administrator, you run across numerous challenges and problems. Managing users, disk space, processes, devices, and backups can cause many system administrators to lose their hair, good humor, or sanity. Shell scripts can help, but they often have frustrating limitations. This is where a full-featured scripting language, such as Python, can turn a tedious task into an easy one. Python is a scripting language that looks like it was made for system administrators.
Why You Should Adopt Python to Manage UNIX Systems
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
the first time i ran across python as system scripts was in a fresh gentoo install. it crashed each time i tried to proceed….
gentoo is probably the worst advertisement for python. On anything but a very modern fast machine the portage operations are painfully, painfully slow and IMHO show exactly why scripting languages shouldn’t be used too ambitiously for things. They just don’t scale well.
gentoo is probably the worst advertisement for python. On anything but a very modern fast machine the portage operations are painfully, painfully slow and IMHO show exactly why scripting languages shouldn’t be used too ambitiously for things. They just don’t scale well.
I don’t think python is the real issue. Portage used to be very fast. Over the years though it has gotten bloated and inefficient. Extending it has been difficult and not without loss of efficiency. It really is time for a rewrite. People seem to be leaning towards a C++ solution but I would rather have Python so we can easily extend it and add new modules.
I think it is exacly the point of bnolsen
When portage was getting more complex, python wasn’t the language to do the job anymore. A static typing, compiled language would be better. more error checking and compiled validation.
If you tried to use python application for more than scripting (music player, IDE, etc.) you’ll see that as it become more complex, side effect make application unstable (they crash alot). Debuging start to make development no more productive than using compiled language (without pointer).
I develop mainly in python, but sometimes one need to face reality.
When portage was getting more complex, python wasn’t the language to do the job anymore. A static typing, compiled language would be better. more error checking and compiled validation.
I don’t agree. I don’t think it was complexity in general but instead portage just wasn’t designed well enough to be extended to the degree it has been. This isn’t a limitation of Python but a limitation of portage’s initial design.
If you tried to use python application for more than scripting (music player, IDE, etc.) you’ll see that as it become more complex, side effect make application unstable (they crash alot). Debuging start to make development no more productive than using compiled language (without pointer).
I use PIDA for Python development and it works very well for me. The latest version is very slick and hasn’t crashed on me yet. I’ve also experimented with a few Python music players, like Quod Libet, which haven’t caused me any stability issues although I find the interface lacking, which is hardly a complaint against Python.
“When portage was getting more complex, python wasn’t the language to do the job anymore. A static typing, compiled language would be better. more error checking and compiled validation.”
Wait, we are talking about a package manager here, aren’t we? Why on earth would a package manager require the extra effort of developing in a compiled language (C/C++) just to get a performance boost? I mean… how can a package manager be performance critical?
I don’t know portage, but I would bet the problem is in the design and not in the language… yum used to be _brutally_ slow too, and it is much faster now, even though it keeps being Python. Not downloading tons of crap every time it is invoked helps a lot…
And it’s just a package manager…
The problems with portage are more due to design than language. If you where to re-write portage in C using exactly the same design, algorithms and architecture it’s currently using, it wouldn’t be much faster. Conversly I you where to redesign it from the ground up, and still use python, it would be significantly faster.
the first time i ran across python as system scripts was in a fresh gentoo install. it crashed each time i tried to proceed….
You must have had a foobarred installation. I had an issue with python on Gentoo exactly once in the 4 years I have been using Gentoo. Otherwise it is a solid language and other than the slow syncs and slow dependency checking it works fine for portage.
Edited 2007-09-15 14:52
from my cold dead hands.
While I agree that Python is not a replacement for the shell, your post show the shell’s problem: first there is not one shell, but several and the ‘script shells’ depends on a bunch of tools, all of which have variants depending on the version, OS, etc.
Most script shells are *brittle*, use them on another shell, OS, on file with spaces or weird characters and they break.
What I would like to see is a bunch of tools written in Ruby/Python which would send struct/hash through the pipe: you would have the flexibility of shell and the robustness induced by passing structures/hash around instead of ‘hard to parse’ text (and if you have to take into account files with weird characters in them, it’s really not so easy).
That was pretty much the motivation for creating Perl back in the 80s. The situation has improved quite a lot since then. The end of the Unix wars brought a good deal of industry consolidation and the standardization of all those tools. Nowadays it’s quite feasible to create shell scripts devoid of this kind of problems.
Even the shell is standardized. POSIX 1003.2 made /bin/sh a KornShell lookalike rather than the historical Bourne shell. That’s the only shell you should use for scripts.
But the one true reason to prefer shell scripts is that way you can leverage your knowledge of the command line. Conversely, writing shell scripts will improve your skills in all the standard Unix utilities. Once you start using Perl, Python, etc. you’ll have to learn two ways of doing the same thing: One way to do it interactively and one to script it.
Using bash/ksh/nawk/grep etc. is fine for some things. And of course, that’s where it should be used.
We have a guy at work who has pretty much the same attitude as you and he insists on doing EVERYTHING in ksh/nawk. He wrote things like XML parsers in nawk (not fully functional, of course, but they almost work for what he needs it for)
In the end, he manages to create slow, error-
prone incomprehensible stuff that would have been fairly simple, fast and easier to make correct in for example python.
So hold on to your bash, but just don’t take it too far.
Heh, reminds me of a place I used to work. Their reporting system was kinda like this:
* The server gets a request for report X.
* Server grabs list of environment variables for report X from the DB
* Server sets the environment variables with values passed in the request.
* Server spawns ksh with the appropriate reporting script.
* Shell script uses IO redirection to send SQL to Oracle
* Shell script parses the data and stores it to a temp file.
* The server reads the temp file and sends it back to the client.
The great part is, the guy who actually “designed” that part, left for some other job and nobody else there knew Korn shell.
I think that’s exactly what the articles suggests. There’s no implying that Python should replace Bash, but complement it for those scripts that are too much for Bash. If anything, it attempts to replace Perl, not Bash.
The great thing about using shell scripts to their maximum capacity is that there are no modules. With perl and python, the suggestion for common use involves a module, which may or may _not_ be on the system.
You will find that once you go down the path of attempting to install a module for an interpreted language, your systems can become out of sync with one another. Not so with shell scripts. A Bourne shell function works as well on one system as it certainly will another.
Even when programming to capture missing modules, have you found that exception use of import (python) or require (perl) involves a lot of alarm bells and whistles. And you do this so that you catch the exception to be able to begin the installation of the module dependencies and module rather than actually getting on with better things to do?
About using perl for system administration. It comes down to a matter of skill and comfort level with a particular language, and what you are trying to accomplish.
I perfer scripts that run with native shells that do not require an interpreter (sh/ksh/csh) so I can use them in any system as opposed to something I have to install on every box I want to use the script on. The examples shown aren’t all that sophisticated, I have seen scripts that do far more freely available from BigAdmin and shelldorado.com.
>>I perfer scripts that run with native shells that do not require an interpreter (sh/ksh/csh) so I can use them in any systemz<<
But, other than sh, you can’t always count on those shells being on any particular system. Especially if it’s a windows box.
I used to have the same philosophy, until I started writing 10 line elegant Python scripts, that do more than I could do with 100 lines of clunky shell scripts.
Try Python with easygui, it’s amazing. Within minutes you can be writing fairly powerful scripts with a gui interface. The learning curve is nothing.
I have a few Windows boxes and they host for the most part well behaved applications, our interaction with them is minimal. Our challenges are working with Solaris and Linux using CLI only (no X allowed), but thanks for the tip though! It reminds me of using TCL/Tk.
I recently rediscovered Rebol (http://www.rebol.com) and giving it a good look over. It’s not only able to run on multiple OSes but apps built with it also run on multiple OSes (a ton of them) without recoding.
It’s as easy to work with as Python (or arguably moreso) for the beginner (but I’m still evaluating it from that standpoint). It also features built-in GUI (amazingly simple to implement and use) – so there’s little need for external help.
The EasyGUI info you provided is great help – thanks! I’m trying to make a decision on a cross-platform scripting language after many years on Win-machines using single-OS only script languages (batches, 4dos, kixtart, Autohotkey, etc..). I’m still leaning heavily toward Python because I know just how easy to use and powerful this language is but this “new” Rebol kid is making it tough:-)
Many old skool sys admins use perl. I’ve used ruby for years to tie together both *nix & Windows systems (in addition to using wscript/jscript). It’s not surprising that python is well suited to sys admin tasks as well.
Actually “Many old skool sys admins” use C, and wonder why people like program run by other programs
I was once a Pythonista, until I discovered Ruby. I’ve never looked back. If Haskell had better library support, that’s what I’d use.
mzscheme makes a better scripting language than you might think.
After using Python for a few years I decided to check out Ruby, and I did look back. Not that Ruby is not a good tool, but I just can’t shake that feeling of unease around anything with a syntax that reminds me of perl.
There is 1 problem with Python as a language for a “Systems Administrator”. That problem is that perl is installed by default on ever unix variant under the sun and python isn’t.
*nix Administrators use perl. If you are only managing Linux systems or are able to install python on everything, it is certainly easier to develop and debug.
If only pprint was a better equivalent to Data::Dumper, if only.
at least as i know, perl is not default in a FreeBSD install.
I believe perl was at one time included as part of the FBSD base installation, but it was removed as it began to bloat (and some other issues).
It’s now available as a port.
The last time perl was included by default was 4.x – much of the system scripts that used perl were rewritten in bourne shell..
Subjectively, I disagree with that style of thinking. As a system administrator, you should know how to work in a minimal environment, yes. But to suggest that you shouldn’t avail yourself of a good tool because some vendor doesn’t put it in a default install sounds either too narrowly focused on barebones without acknowledging that not everyone wants such a thing, or stagnant. I want neither.
Use the best tool for the job. In text processing, perl beats python.
In python, a regexp is a second class object. In perl, a regexp is a first class object. Anyone with proficiency in *both* languages will agree with you.
I love python, but it doesn’t make sense for managing “Unix” systems. If the title of the article was, “Why You Should Adopt Python to Manage Linux Systems”, I would agree.
You can’t always install something as large as python due to business processes or technical requirements. When your company has been managing systems a similar way for 10 years, they might not like to change. (Not reflective of my current job, but true for my previous one.)
Edited 2007-09-15 02:30
“In python, a regexp is a second class object. In perl, a regexp is a first class object. Anyone with proficiency in *both* languages will agree with you.”
Well, if you consider regexp build into the syntax a better solution, then I guess perl is ahead. I don’t find Pythons regexp hard to use and I like the design where you don’t cram things like regexp into the language, but keep it in a module.
It will make me type a little bit more, but it also means I usually understand my code better than in perl anyway.
Having said that, I’m not using Python for system administration much. The simple things that I need to do can be done in shell scripts just as well as in Python. The times I use Python is when things should run automatically and a “Permission denied” printed to stderr just isn’t enough error handling.
Python has exception handling and perl doesn’t. You have just hit on an area that Python tromps perl about a millionfold. Python’s OO is also not a pain to deal with as it is truly integrated into the language.
That said, Linux systems administration is mostly just dealing with text files and text streams. For that alone, perl will always beat python.
“””
That said, Linux systems administration is mostly just dealing with text files and text streams. For that alone, perl will always beat python.
“””
And shell script will almost always beat them both.
We aren’t disagreeing here
Yes, it’s true. But also is true that some machines doesn’t haven’t some programs (any program or for a multiple reasons), because customer instructions, environment necessities.
Many years ago back, I used the “joe” editor, until a day said my boss to me; “you would have to be learning to use “vi”, because you are going it to have in any UNIX with which you work, whereas the “joe” editor, or a cc (gcc) environment no.
No it isn’t. The idea that Perl is some sort of standard is what drives me (and I suspect quite a few other sysadmins and developers) up the wall.
What !! I should get a python for my Unix System !! Last time when the world was sane, humans used to manage unix systems. and now we need a python..seems like unix systems are getting wild..
hehe..just kidding
Dude, that’s so lame…
Plus it’s harder to write one-liners with Python, with the whitespace requirement and all.
Plus there’s no support for writing setuid scripts with Python.
Maybe Python has an edge compared to shell scripts. But I think Perl is much more suited for sysadmins. Its syntax is closer to C and shell, there are more easily available and readily usable modules (i.e. CPAN) than any other languages, setuid support (suidperl, tainted mode), great for one-liners, available by default on most systems, etc.
Unless you’re one of the younger ones and have learnt Python and Ruby instead of Perl, then perhaps use that instead of Perl.
So, install it.
Seriously, how many times per year do you use a PERL one-liner from the command line? 4? Maybe 5 times?
This is not a safe practice in any interpreted language. Better to write those sections using a compiled language, take your choice.
… and about a dozen other languages and tools. Its syntax is certainly the most expansive syntax of any programming language in history. You might think that’s a good thing, but try picking up a piece of code someone else wrote in Perl, and maintaining it.
We have been installing Python on all our Unix boxes for about 5 years now, and I think it was a great move.
ksh93, Python, C. That’s all you need for every Unix administrative programming project. And the C is only needed when you need to wrapper a system call into a Python function. They’re used in descending order of frequency: ksh93 – 70%, Python – 25%, C – 5%.
bash,sed/awk,perl,C fits my bill 🙂
“bash,sed/awk,perl,C fits my bill :-)”
Sidenote: Don’t declare bash as long as you’re not using special bash features that are not present in standard sh. sh is the most basal common sense in UNIX scripting. bas isn’t (allthough it’s very famous in Linux).
Furthermore, I agree to the command set above for most administration tasks that need to be automated. sed and awk are very powerfull, especially when you want to implement “small” tasks with few commands. On the other hand, I like using Python and Ruby for several tasks, but I never thought seriously about using them intensively for administrative tasks. I’ll go out and correct my attitude. 🙂
I tried to take that route when converting a major system from Unix to Linux. The Unix system used Posix shell, and I thought the best approach would be to use bash with the Posix compliant switch turned on. Unfortunately, that was too limiting. There were several key features that were not present in the bash sh mode but did have an analogue in plain bash. Plus the fact that most Linux stuff was set to run bash by default, it meant I was continually having to be very sure what I was mixing. I finally bit the bullet and converted every script to bash. I guess I could have taken another approach, but this was more direct and made me happier in the long run.
(Not to mention that there are all sorts of other incompatibilities between Unix and Linux utilities that had to taken care of.)
I used C when required for speed or library calls, but no other scripting language. I did not want to introduce another tool unless absolutely necesary. Shell script can be verbose, but it can also be very nicely formatted and readable if you take the time.
If had to do it over again without the time constraints, maybe I would have chosen a scripting language to make it more portable in the future. But time always forces a less than ideal solution!
Regarding your explaination, I surely would have taken the same way because bash (as /bin/bash) is the standard shell in Linux.
“(Not to mention that there are all sorts of other incompatibilities between Unix and Linux utilities that had to taken care of.)”
Good to see some UNIXes having a GNU userland. 🙂
“I used C when required for speed or library calls, but no other scripting language. I did not want to introduce another tool unless absolutely necesary. “
I completely agree with the last sentence. While using additional scripting languages for system purposes may be a great learning approach with a massive gain of knowledge, it can lead to problems while you begin to assume the presence of a particular scripting interpreter on a system. And when you rely on it at startup time, you may fall back to maintenance mode and start searching for the reason of the interruption inside the startup procedures…
Use the right tool for every task. First, use the tools that you have at the most minimal level, and when you cross their border, then introduce other tools.
“Shell script can be verbose, but it can also be very nicely formatted and readable if you take the time.”
Just have a look at the startup mechanisms of the BSDs available for x86 (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). Here, you will see sh scripts that are a joy to read (meaningful identifiers, well formatted text, comments etc.).
“Sidenote: Don’t declare bash as long as you’re not using special bash features that are not present in standard sh. sh is the most basal common sense in UNIX scripting. bas isn’t (allthough it’s very famous in Linux).”
That doesn’t work if you are developing your scripts in Linux (where “/bin/sh” is usually just a symlink to “/bin/bash”). You end up thinking your scripts can run in the standard bourne shell when they actually don’t.
If you want portability, just use “/bin/ksh”. It’s mostly compatible with bash (so you can use advanced features without having to relearn syntax) and it’s available by default in most other unixes. In Linux, if it isn’t installed by default it’s usually an “apt-get install” or “yum install” away, so not a big deal.
If I remember correctly, it bash is called as sh, it restricts itself to sh compatibility mode.
Have to check again on that.
“If I remember correctly, it bash is called as sh, it restricts itself to sh compatibility mode.”
It doesn’t. At least not in the way you mean it.
It may enter some sort of compatibility mode to assure scripts developed for the bourne shell run correctly, but it doesn’t disable bash specific features.
Just try it with the following code to check:
#!/bin/sh
SOMEVAR=”sometext”
echo “{$SOMEVAR/some/this}”
I can’t test with the real bourne shell now, but pattern substitution is bash-only (the latest AT&T Korn shell as provided by Debian also supports this syntax) though. But dash, which is closer to sh, doesn’t support this syntax.
“That doesn’t work if you are developing your scripts in Linux (where “/bin/sh” is usually just a symlink to “/bin/bash”). You end up thinking your scripts can run in the standard bourne shell when they actually don’t.”
You are right. Compatibility does not only require the correct call of the interpreter, such as
#!/bin/sh
#!/bin/bash
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
but the way of interpretation also has to follow certain standards in order call a script “sh script” or “bash script”
“If you want portability, just use “/bin/ksh”. It’s mostly compatible with bash (so you can use advanced features without having to relearn syntax) and it’s available by default in most other unixes. In Linux, if it isn’t installed by default it’s usually an “apt-get install” or “yum install” away, so not a big deal.”
This may be a viable solution in Linux, but surely won’t work in many of the BSDs (available for x86). There, every additional shell will appear in /usr/local/bin, while the shells provided by the OS itself reside in /bin. In Linux, adding additional shells to the system may work as intended (to get (/bin/ksh), but in other UNIX systems that intendedly force a strict division between OS and additionally installed applications, this won’t work by default. As long as the Korn shell is part of the OS (or the distribution), the solution is okay.
Many UNIX and Linux OSes provide /etc/shells, a file that lists the shells available on the system. For example, FreeBSD, a BSD style UNIX, just provides sh and (t)csh by default. bash and ksh would have to be installed (e. g. pkg_add -r bash). The calling convention of the interpreter (see above) would be different from the Linux style, of course.
“Seriously, how many times per year do you use a PERL one-liner from the command line? 4? Maybe 5 times?”
And the fact that 99.9% of perl one-liners result from people not knowing how to use “sed” and “grep”.
Actually I find 99.9% of perl one-liners result from perl nerds trying to show off, and prove that it can be done.
There’s a prime benefit to working with shell scripts over a dedicated scripting language.
Basically, at their core, shell scripts can be little more than “watch me” macros ala Excel or Word.
You take the stuff you normally type in to the shell, and instead put them in a file.
That means you can easily incrementally develop your tasks through the rich Unix command set, and, over time, record those tasks in the form of a shell script for posterity and easier automation.
Frankly, pipes are just terribly handy and easy to use. And the rich command set simply empowers the capabilities given to us by pipes.
Dropping down in to a scripting language (Whether python, perl, or anything else), means that you have to completely rethink the process. You’re now working with very fine bits of data (like lines and characters) rather than big chunks (like files and directories).
The closest thing I’ve seen to a decent combination of scripting language and shell environment is scsh, the Scheme shell.
It’s essentially a full boat scheme interpreter but built and designed to be used as a full time shell. So, it interacts well with generic unix command line programs, has pipes, background jobs, command line editing and history, etc.
But you also have all the power of Scheme to dance with at the same time, so you don’t have to sacrifice power or expressibility while working with and knitting together command line programs to get stuff done.
If you happen to use Python or Perl as your shell, then that makes scripting your daily tasks that much easier, for the same reason that shell scripts work. That’s what make scsh nice, because you are supposed to live in the shell day to day, not pop in and out like you would with a normal scripting language.
But I don’t think that Python or Perl make particularly good shells.
if you work at my place, you have to know how to sysadmin _ancient_ hpux unix boxes, no way would python ever pass clearence to be installed, certification is a nightmare. no perl no nothing.
modern unix would be a wet dream. my industry doesnt move fast enough, when something is in production, its frozen.
Why you should worship KISS as administrator would be an far better article.
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/
Why is he getting modded down? It’s a good Python tutorial.
I’m modded down by the OSNews system by default because I’m considered a troll (even if most of the times my input is valuable). Telling the truth or not thinking like the mainstream is not a good thing.
Here is the start to a series of six articles about “Python in Systems Administration.”
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=8964/sam0312a/0312a.htm
Fairly informative, worth reading.
Also, I think O’Reilly is publishing a book about Python in sys admin next year.
Heh, emacs/vi, kde/gnome
now there’s perl/python/ruby/add your own here….
I personallly really used to like ruby until I ran into IO and started asking myself: how complex should a langauge really be?
Real men, (Or woman..) do things manually ^_^
Granted I’m a ‘nix guy, but the idea of ClusterRdesktop (for windows) would be really cool as an equivalent to something like clusterssh on Linux.
Real men, (Or woman..) do things manually ^_^
Umm, no. We women are smart enough to leave such things to “real men” ;P
Ruby ownzzzzzzzzzzz!
Please stop. Comments like that, which are all too common, make the Ruby community seem like a bunch of teenagers.
Rarely do I see comments like “Python Rulezzzzz!” in Ruby-related threads. But, for whatever reason, some Ruby fans just can’t resist getting childish when the topic of Python comes up.
I *prefer* Python. It’s a great language. But I choose not to trumpet the fact in Ruby-oriented threads, because I feel that it would be in poor taste, and would not be constructive.
Well in that case: VBScript RulezzZZzz!
-Ad
Now you’re just being silly.
“Now you’re just being silly.
“
That’s not silly. That would be silly:
C:/MICROS~1/SYSADMIN/QBASIC.EXE ruhletzzzz!!! 🙂
Don’t forget GW-Basic and BASICA! 😉
Interestingly, in “The Python Cookbook” most of the examples of Python’s use in system administration are for Windows. The authors comment about that at the beginning of the chapter. It seems that the power of shell script eclipses Python’s usefulness in that area in the Unix/Linux domain. It has less competition in a Windows environment.
As much as I like Python, I must admit that for most system administration uses, shell script, ugly as it is, is much more straightforward and convenient most of the time.
There is a lot of bickering about Python here, suggesting that real system admins use Perl or shell. But it completely depends on the system that you are administrating. E.g., on RHEL and related systems (Fedora, CentOS, etc.), *a lot* of tools are written in Python. As a result, there are very good bindings from everything from Xen/libvirt via kickstart to yum/RPM.
As a result, you can automate stuff like VM deployments with only a few lines of code. And in contast to e.g. running virsh from a shell scripts, you can interpret all the return values/exceptions, etc. in a sane way.
Just to give some slight examples. This script was used to demo Xen at LinuxTag:
http://people.centos.org/~daniel/code/event-demos/instloop/xenloop-…
As you can see, one can easily create/destroy virtual machines in a controlled manner. Very handy if you want to build custom tools for your VM setup. Another example is the yum priorities plugin. I wrote it about a year ago, because I use some non-official repositories, and I wanted to tweak yum to avoid overriding packages from high-priority repos with packages from low-priority repos:
http://devel.linux.duke.edu/gitweb/?p=yum-utils.git;a=blob_plain;f=…
There is *no* way this could have been done easily with Perl or shell scripts, while it eases up system administration considerably.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to systems that don’t use Python for their administration tools/libraries. Python, Perl, or shell scripts can all be excellent system administration tools, but often the most comfortable tool is dictated by the systems that are in use.
Edited 2007-09-15 11:42
Wake me when there’s a pysh, a python shell.
Like any sysadmin I will always use the best tool for the job. Since I’m in bash most of the time it is often best to hack a quick one-liner or small script to do what I need. If I am mostly running other programs this also makes sense. I will resort to perl for added functionality I can’t get with existing tools… and then inevitably invoke my perl script from within a shell script.
This held true even when I worked in the perl shell.
Python is no different. If you want me to write in python what I now do with shell scripts, I want a python shell. For everything else I’ll just write a python program which I will use from a shell script.
“Wake me when there’s a pysh, a python shell.”
Okay then. Wake up!
http://pysh.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyshell/
But I agree with the pysh author, it probably isn’t the right way to go.
The reason not every unix system has Python, or even perl installed is that the tools that are available are doing a pretty good job for most simple automation tasks.
Just as the reason Microsoft made PowerShell is that the tools on that platform didn’t really do a good job at all kind of simple automation tasks.
http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/
IPython is a multiplatform, Free Software project (BSD licensed) that offers:
* An enhanced Python shell designed for efficient interactive work. It includes many enhancements over the default Python shell, including the ability for controlling interactively all major GUI toolkits in a non-blocking manner.
* A library to build customized interactive environments using Python as the basic language (but with the possibility of having extended or alternate syntaxes).
* A system for interactive distributed and parallel computing (this is part of IPython’s new development).
And have never looked back. Perl was great for small system admin scripts (probably even better than Python), but it always failed to scale when necessary. I wanted a language that could be used to write both system admin stuff and great programs. Python was that language. Ever try to scale a Perl program and then try to debug it? Now with Python, if that script that I wrote needs to grow, it becomes very easy.
Situations vary, so use what works best for you. But, some reason to consider Python:
1) Many people consider Python to more readable than Perl, or shell scripts.
2) If you happen to use Redhat, your system is designed to use Python.
3) If you also do web-development, or desktop development, you can learn one language and to do everything, and get really good at that one language.
4) Unlike shell scripts, Python. and Perl, work well cross-platform.
5) Doing everything manually is insane for a large installation. Scripting is vastly more efficient.
there are so many reasons to learn python… it’s quick, it’s not so difficult, then there’s django, which is just amazing… and thinking of sys-admin work with python sounds great… such a list.
but for some reason I can’t get myself to do it! at least I know python will be around long enough to mess with it later
irb(main):003:0> array[0][:ruby]
=> “rocks”
Nothing comes close to Perl One liners in an UNIX environment for us Sysadmins.
While Python doesn’t have something as expansive as ‘CPAN’, the default install of Python has more functionality than Perl. Most scripts you find to do SYSADM work will work w/o any additional modules installed.. With Perl, you’ll be CPAN’in away to get anything useful working.
I can think of LOTS of reasons to NOT use Python.
Right now as I go from customer to customer systems, be it AIX, Solaris, BSD or Linux, I have yet to find a requirement in which I have to compile a sh shell to get my stuff to run.
It just works, most of it, with a few little tweaks here and there for different platforms.
I do not have the time to build Python, pay all of the license fees for compiler tools, or even setup a GNU C compiler environment to get Python up and running.
Probably the same reason why I never embraced Perl like most of my friends did for system administration tasks.
bash, grep, awk, cut everything just works on most POSIX unix compliant systems.
-Hack