Practical Ruby for System Administration

Description

Ruby has set the world on fire, proving itself a serious challenger to Perl and Python in all spheres. In particular, more and more people are discovering that Rubys flexibility, superb feature set, and gentle learning curve make it a natural choice for system administration tasks, from the humblest server to the largest enterprise deployment.

Within the pages of Practical Ruby for System Administration, youll learn the Ruby way to construct files, tap into clouds of data, build domain-specific languages, perform network traffic analysis, and more.

Based on author Andr?Ben Hamous own experiences working as a system administrator, this book will help you pick up practical tips on Ruby coding style, learn how to analyze and improve script performance, and make use of no-nonsense advice on scripting workflow, including testing and documentation.

Above all, youll come to appreciate the sheer power of Ruby and the hundreds of benefits it offers for system administration.

• This book places equal emphasis on fundamental Ruby concepts as well as practical how-tos.
• It uses examples from other languages to ease the transition to Ruby.
• The book is concise, entertaining, and informativeunlike many books aimed at system administrators, which can be overly long and stodgy.

 

 

Table of Contents

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
About the Technical Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
■CHAPTER 1 What Ruby Can Do for You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
■CHAPTER 2 Common Tasks, Quick Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
■CHAPTER 3 A Practical Look at Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
■CHAPTER 4 The Power of Metaprogramming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
■CHAPTER 5 Building Files the Smart Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
■CHAPTER 6 Object Storage and Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
■CHAPTER 7 Working with Enterprise Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
■CHAPTER 8 Networking for Fun and Profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
■CHAPTER 9 Network Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
■CHAPTER 10 Extending Ruby: A Fistful of Gems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
■CHAPTER 11 Testing and Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
■CHAPTER 12 The Future of Ruby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
■APPENDIX Ruby Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
■INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225