Perl for system administration — a 4-day course

Synopsis

A specialist Perl training course for system administrators, who want to use the Perl programming language to get their jobs done more quickly and efficiently.

This Perl course includes a thorough grounding in generic Perl programming before moving on to specialised system administration tools and techniques.

Suitable For

Programmers who need to administer IT systems on any of today's major platforms and in multi-platform environments.

Delegates with backgrounds in C-like languages will recognise elements of Perl syntax and can use much existing knowledge, but must beware the temptation to translate literally from C/C++. Perl's native way of doing things is invariably more efficient and better adapted to specialist system administration tasks.

System administrators with limited scripting (rather than pure programming) experience may need more than 4 days to benefit fully from this course.

Like all our Perl courses, this course is designed for cross-platform system administration, but Unix sysadmins will benefit particularly by recognising tools which have been incorporated into Perl from their favourite OS.

Prerequisites

Programming experience in at least one programming language or scripting language, e.g., C, C++, Java, PHP, Visual Basic, Pascal, or COBOL.
System administration experience with a server operating system

Delivery

This is a hands-on Perl workshop based around the coding of real world solutions to real world system administration problems.

This Perl course is currently only run as in-house/on-site training for company groups.

We are prepared to take bookings from individuals for the occasional public running of the course, but publicly scheduled dates are only offered once we have a significant number of commitments to attend.

Please contact us at training@gbdirect.co.uk to arrange delivery of this course for your company or to register an interest in an individual place on a public presentation of this course. Please state clearly which of these options applies to you.

Preparing to learn perl

Things you need to know and do in order to run Perl programs and learn Perl programming
A module designed for complete beginners
The perl compiler/interpreter
Perl under Unix/Linux
Perl under MS Windows 2000/NT/95/98/ME (perl.exe)
ActiveState Perl
Making programs executable (chmod +x)
Perl from the command line (perl command)
Specify the perl compiler/interpreter (#!)
Using plain text for programs
Writing a very simple program
Running a very simple program
Basic syntax

Perl: the absolute minimum

Enough of the language to get started
The print function
Variables
Scalars — numbers and strings
Assignment
Simple conditional tests — if
Lists
Arrays — for storing lists
foreach loops
Hashes
Other loops: while, for, do, until
Arrays — the rest
Simple input, e.g., while(<>)
Functions overview — recognising, writing, using
Simple file handling — open, print
Subroutines — parameters in and out, listification, local variables (my)
Help — perldoc, books, web

Regular expressions

Text manipulation with regular expressions
Matching strings
Matching the default variable
Case-sensitivity and matching
Special characters
Special characters: where
Special characters: what
Special characters: how many
Built-in character classes
Built-in character class examples
Capturing
Regular expression examples
Substitution
Global substitutions

Perl: beyond the basics

More flow control
Statement modifiers
Quoting mechanisms — qq(), etc.
Here documents
Uppercase/lowercase conversion
Splitting strings into lists
Joining lists into strings
Filtering lists with map
Sorting lists
The importance of context
Assignment shortcuts
Scoping rules
Special variables

Complex data structures & references

Limits of flat lists
Nesting arrays
Array references
Anonymous arrays
Named array references
Passing multiple arrays to/from functions
Hashes of arrays
Hash references
Arrays of hashes
Hashes of hashes
Complex nested data structures
Code references
Dispatch tables

Finding Out More For Yourself

How to read Perl's documentation
Where to find more information
Knowing what's out there to look for
FAQs

Using Perl Modules from CPAN

The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
Why effective Perl programmers are efficient CPAN users
CPAN's philosophy
Finding modules
Installing Modules
Using modules
Some particularly useful modules

The Perl debugger & debugging perl

Avoiding bugs
Perl's built-in debugger
Invoking the debugger
What you can do with the debugger
Understanding the debugger's command line interface
Knowing the debugger's basic command set
Exploring some extended functions
Graphical debuggers
Alternative debugging techniques

Command-Line Perl

General principles
Using Perl as a filter
Editing files in-place
Many real world examples
Command line flags
Many examples using regular expressions

A Whistle-Stop Tour of the World of Perl

Wheels you don't need to re-invent
Common recipes
Common pitfalls

Advanced File Processing with Perl

Types of open
Filehandles
Reading line by line
Reading paragraph by paragraph
Reading entire files
Special variables
The flip-flop operator (..)
File test functions
Pipes

Perl Security Issues

Potential security pitfalls
Coding for security
Taint checking
Dangerous environment variables
File input
Set-user-id Perl programs
Permissions and users

System interaction

Connecting to other programs
Unsafe pipes
Using IO::Pipe
Grabbing a program's output
Other ways to run programs

Managing Users and Processes with Perl

User identity across platforms
Process control
Scheduling events
Managing disk quotas
Querying filesystem usage
Monitoring file operations
Monitoring network operations
Related perl modules

Managing Networks with Perl

Host Files
DNS
NIS lookups
WHOIS
LDAP
ADSI
Sending and receiving email
Related modules

Logging with Perl

Text logs
Logs used on Unix
Handling state
Disk usage problems
Log analysis
Log munging
Logging related modules