Average Customer Review:  
| The Art of System Administration...revealed! | |
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.
| Multiplatform SysAdmin Perl Tools | |
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.
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