Programming Language for Systems Administrator

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:41:46 +0200, Laszlo Zsolt Nagy
<gandalf@geoche msource.com> declaimed the following in comp.lang.pytho n:
[color=blue]
> For smaller, simple applications you can consider FireBird. It is more
> simple and lightweight.[/color]

Derived from the Interbase system...
[color=blue]
> I also tried SAP-DB before. I cannot tell too much about SAP but it
> looked promising.[/color]

Now known as (or was, last time I checked) "MaxDB by MySQL"

--[color=blue]
> =============== =============== =============== =============== == <
> wlfraed@ix.netc om.com | Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG <
> wulfraed@dm.net | Bestiaria Support Staff <
> =============== =============== =============== =============== == <
> Home Page: <http://www.dm.net/~wulfraed/> <
> Overflow Page: <http://wlfraed.home.ne tcom.com/> <[/color]

[Buck Nuggets]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

>> I also tried SAP-DB before.
[color=blue]
> Now known as (or was, last time I checked) "MaxDB by MySQL"[/color]

and formerly known as the pre-relational dbms 'Adabas'. I think the
only reason for its continued existance is that SAP was hoping for a
very low cost, low-end database years ago. However, the database world
has changed substantially over the last ten years: you can get
postgresql and firebird for nothing, and db2 & oracle are often under
$1000 for a small server.

With that in mind I can't think of a database that's more of a has-been
than maxdb. Maybe something from the 70s like IMS-DB or Model 204?

buck

[Pierre-Frédéric Caillaud]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator


[color=blue]
> Thank You for your suggestions.... I request you all to eloborate the
> Uses(In Practical) for systems administrator.S ome of my questions
> regarding the same follows.[/color]

What do you want to do ?
[color=blue]
> 1)Can i build web applications in Python ? If so how. I am planning to
> build a web application for intranet use which deals with workflow of
> Internal office communication.[/color]

Sure, you could use mod_python+apac he2 or Zope, Skunkweb... there's a lot
of options depending on what you need. I find it better than PHP because
it'll raise exceptions when you do something funky. PHP's way of ignoring
missing keys in arrays or silent type conversions is a double ended sword
and can simplify code as well as giving hard to trace bugs.
[color=blue]
> 2)Which is best opensource database to be used with Python ?[/color]

I like postgresql a lot, and the psycopg adapter for python is great.
[color=blue]
> 3)When i write a remote execution script in python is it required that
> python should be installed in remote system.[/color]

Yes.
[color=blue]
> 4)I heard about Perl/CGI and that CGI application done by python
> too.....Is CGI still valid when PHP has taken over the WebApplication
> Development, Dominating.[/color]

CGI will be slow as it spawns an interpreter for each request. See
mod_python.

[beliavsky@aol.com]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

Brian van den Broek wrote:[color=blue]
> beliavsky@aol.c om said unto the world upon 2005-04-12 08:11:
>
> <SNIP>
>[color=green]
> > I actually like the Windows cmd language (it's an acquired taste),[/color][/color]
but[color=blue][color=green]
> > I have read it is going away in Windows Longhorn (WH). That's an
> > argument for writing more complicated scripts in Python. WH is[/color][/color]
supposed[color=blue][color=green]
> > to get a much better shell, called Monad, inspired by the[/color][/color]
philosophy of[color=blue][color=green]
> > Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz :).[/color]
>
> Hi all,
>
> this is the first I've heard of Monad.
>
> Leibniz characterized his monads as the fundamental building blocks[/color]
of[color=blue]
> nature, insusceptible of change from the outside, and as[/color]
"windowless ".[color=blue]
>
> So, if the account of MS's plans is true, it would seem to indicate a[/color]
[color=blue]
> combination of arrogance, honesty, and ignorance. (I leave it to you
> to decide which part, if any, of this triad, is surprising.)
>
> Best to all,
>
> Brian vdB[/color]

I was joking about Leibniz, but from the Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSH_(shell) it appears that the codename
of the new Microsft shell was in small part inspired by the philosophy
of Leibniz:

"Central concepts
The system's codename comes from Gottfried Leibniz's "Monadology ", a
philosophy which says that everything is a composition of fundamental
elements called 'Monads', which are all integrated together in
'pre-established harmony'. Similarly, the focus of MSH is on
composition of complex tasks from a series of components. In this case,
the components are special programs called commandlets (or cmdlets),
which are .NET classes designed to use the features of the environment.
The key difference between the Unix approach and the MSH one is that
rather than creating a "pipeline" based on textual input and output,
MSH passes data between the various commandlets as arbitrary objects.

If accessed individually from the command-line, a commandlet's output
will automatically be converted into text, but if its output is to be
used by another commandlet, it will be converted into whatever form of
object is most appropriate for that commandlet's input. This has the
advantage of eliminating the need for the many text-processing
utilities which are common in Unix pipelines, such as grep and awk, as
well as allowing things to be combined interactively, or in a scripting
environment, which would otherwise require a more complex programming
language. For instance, a listing of processes will consist not of text
describing them, but objects representing them, so that methods can be
called on those objects without explicit reference to any outside
structure or library.

MSH is part of an overall strategy within Longhorn to treat all parts
of the OS as .NET objects, and thus allow the user greater flexibility
over how they are used. This is aimed to make previously complex
interactions manageable within the bounds of frameworks such as MSH;
for example, Longhorn's registry can be exported as though it were a
filesystem, and navigated by treating it as a hierarchy of files and
directories."

[Ville Vainio]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

>>>>> "beliavsky" == beliavsky <beliavsky@aol. com> writes:

beliavsky> The key difference between the Unix approach and the
beliavsky> MSH one is that rather than creating a "pipeline" based
beliavsky> on textual input and output, MSH passes data between
beliavsky> the various commandlets as arbitrary objects.

They clearly read my rant from last summer

http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=du7brj2mpg9.fsf%40mozart.cc.tut.fi

;-)

--
Ville Vainio http://tinyurl.com/2prnb

[Uwe Grauer]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

Kanthi Kiran Narisetti wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi All,
>
> Thank You for your suggestions.... I request you all to eloborate the
> Uses(In Practical) for systems administrator.S ome of my questions
> regarding the same follows.
>
> 1)Can i build web applications in Python ? If so how. I am planning to
> build a web application for intranet use which deals with workflow of
> Internal office communication.
>[/color]
Look here:

http://www.python.org/moin/WebProgramming

[color=blue]
> 2)Which is best opensource database to be used with Python ?
>[/color]
I personally think that Firebird is a very good Database:

http://www.firebirdsql.org/

http://kinterbasdb.sourceforge.net/

[color=blue]
> 3)When i write a remote execution script in python is it required that
> python should be installed in remote system.
>
> 4)I heard about Perl/CGI and that CGI application done by python
> too.....Is CGI still valid when PHP has taken over the WebApplication
> Development, Dominating.
>
> Sorry if these questions are out of this group , but answers to these ?
> will help me a lot.
>
> Thanks in Advance
>
> Kanthi.
>[/color]

[pythonUser_07]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

Python is great, but having much "admin" type experience, I've found
python to be less than Ideal when dealing with system calls and
standard Input Ouput.

For example, I've written complex tools that use perforce, I've taken
advantage of both regular IO and the perforce marshalled IO. Under
heavy load, some of the threads in my scripts experience IO hang (Linux
and WIndows) (solaris and BSD were fine). I did not get the same
behavior with Perl.

Having said that I still do 99% of my utilities in python. Just be
aware.

[Bryan]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

pythonUser_07 wrote:[color=blue]
> Python is great, but having much "admin" type experience, I've found
> python to be less than Ideal when dealing with system calls and
> standard Input Ouput.
>
> For example, I've written complex tools that use perforce, I've taken
> advantage of both regular IO and the perforce marshalled IO. Under
> heavy load, some of the threads in my scripts experience IO hang (Linux
> and WIndows) (solaris and BSD were fine). I did not get the same
> behavior with Perl.
>
> Having said that I still do 99% of my utilities in python. Just be
> aware.
>[/color]

i've written some complex tools around perforce too, but i use the perforce
python module and get an order of magnitude better performance than when i use
popen to execute the same command (if that is what you are referring to by
"regular IO and marshalled IO". my app doesn't use threads, so i can't speak to
that, but i've never experienced an IO hang related to perforce.

bryan

[Greg Ewing]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

Peter Maas wrote:[color=blue]
>
> This is only true for trivial bash scripts. I have seen bash scripts
> which were quite hard to read especially for beginners.[/color]

I've seen shell scripts which are quite hard to read
even for experts!

--
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand

http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg

[Ville Vainio]

Re: Programming Language for Systems Administrator

>>>>> "zsolt" == pythonUser 07 <zsolt-googleP6463@mai lblocks.com> writes:

zsolt> Python is great, but having much "admin" type experience,
zsolt> I've found python to be less than Ideal when dealing with
zsolt> system calls and standard Input Ouput.

Have you tried the 'subprocess' module to see whether it solves your
problems, new in 2.4?

That said, I've never had the problems you describe with normal popen*
calls either.

--
Ville Vainio http://tinyurl.com/2prnb