Python in System Administration: How, When, and Why one SysAdmin uses Python

Sean Reifschneider

tummy.com, ltd.

Python for the System Admin

• Monitoring
• Helpers
• Automation
• Accounting
• Random Scripts

System Admin Constraints

• 5% Programmer
• Using Older Python Versions (Enterprise)
• Security/Privilege Issues
• Integration (system commands, file-system, GUIs, web)
• Heavy Data processing

Example Tasks

• Monitoring
  • Helpers
  • Exposing via HTTP
• vim DNS Serial Updater
• Work History/Report Helper
• PBX Emergency Escallation
• E-Mail
  • Milters/Policy filters/Transports
• Linux HA Plugins
• Tier 1 Web or Shell Tools
• Network Usage/Accounting
  • RRD massive updates
• SMTP AUTH/IMAP Testing

Benefits of Python

• Execute commands as tuples
  • subprocess.call(['ls', '-ld', '/etc'])
• Exceptions and Tracebacks
  • Pushing to syslog
• Regexes
• Networking
• Fewer forks
• Lots of libraries
• Complex algorithms
• Database access

Alternatives

• Shells
• Perl

These are a few of my favorite things:

• fileinput re syslog
• datetime email
• os shutil ConfigParser
• optparse pwd/grp telnetlib
• subprocess popen urllib2
• smtplib/imaplib/poplib
• SocketServer
• sys crypt pty commands