CentOS - Jun 2009 - which programming language for server-side admin tasks

Hi,

I would like to spend some time learning a new coding language, but
specifically for server side admin stuff, i.e. setting up users / databases
/ FTP accounts / virtual domains on Apache, etc.

I already know PHP, but realize it's not quite suited for this kind of
admin, and I suppose I need to look @ PERL / Python / C++ / Ruby? / others?

Can someone give me some pointers on this?

I basically need to write a control panel, with web access for admins to
manage servers, similar to what cPanel / WebMin / Plesk / etc does right
now, but something more customized for our needs.

-- 
Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
CEO, SoftDux Hosting
Web: http://www.SoftDux.com
Office: 087 805 9573
Cell: 082 554 7532
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Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to spend some time learning a new coding language, but
> specifically for server side admin stuff, i.e. setting up users / databases
> / FTP accounts / virtual domains on Apache, etc.
> 
> I already know PHP, but realize it's not quite suited for this kind of
> admin, and I suppose I need to look @ PERL / Python / C++ / Ruby? / others?
> 
> Can someone give me some pointers on this?
> 
> I basically need to write a control panel, with web access for admins to
> manage servers, similar to what cPanel / WebMin / Plesk / etc does right
> now, but something more customized for our needs.
I can't help thinking that you are just about to repeat all the security 
mistakes those other tools have spent years correcting and that you'd be 
much better off using one of the existing tools or making minor mods.

Having said that, it's really about time for someone to tackle this in 
java - perhaps with most of the details in a backend LDAP database.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

Am 14.06.2009 um 20:00 schrieb Rudi Ahlers:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to spend some time learning a new coding language, but  
> specifically for server side admin stuff, i.e. setting up users /  
> databases / FTP accounts / virtual domains on Apache, etc.
>
> I already know PHP, but realize it's not quite suited for this kind  
> of admin, and I suppose I need to look @ PERL / Python / C++ /  
> Ruby? / others?
>
> Can someone give me some pointers on this?
>
> I basically need to write a control panel, with web access for  
> admins to manage servers, similar to what cPanel / WebMin / Plesk /  
> etc does right now, but something more customized for our needs.


The problem is that once you look closely at these kinds of software,  
you realize that what you're really looking at is an EAI (Enterprise  
Application Integration) type of task.
You have different applications, maybe different databases that you  
need to synchronize and provision.

Commercial control-panels have more or less solved that - for their  
specific set of problems. Trying to integrate other kinds of software  
into them is usually just a futile exercise. E.g., most would like to  
integrate their own infrastructure for web-hosting or email-hosting  
(or both...) into one of the leading control-panels.
There is Parallels Operations Automation and Parallels Business  
Automation - but the cheaper versions of them only support the other  
software in the "Parallels-universe" and the other versions I
haven't
been able to get my hands on and test.

In sourceforge.net, you can find some projects that aim to build  
opensource version of control-panels - few (if any) are in a state  
that would allow deployment in a mission-critical way (which they will  
be, after some time).
Most applications of this type that are developed in-house at ISPs or  
telcos are probably to specific to the company they were developed for  
and this can never be released as opensource - or only with a  
significant efforts that nobody can afford (time- and money-wise).

It's a big problem - and a solid, sustainable solution will IMO  
require not only solid coding-skills, but also a talented software- 
architect.



Rainer

On Sun, Jun 14, 2009, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I would like to spend some time learning a new coding language, but
>specifically for server side admin stuff, i.e. setting up users / databases
>/ FTP accounts / virtual domains on Apache, etc.
>
We use python for most of the things we write now after having
used perl for about 15 years.

You may find that webmin is useful for this type of thing as it
can be configured to allow users to do pretty much anything, and
to limit what they can do.  On the other hand, IHMO it's written
in pretty ugly perl, and I have found some major problems (e.g.
happily removing the entire /home directory when changing a
user's $HOME with a type).  When we do set this up, we generally
restrict access to the local LAN and a very small set of public
IP addresses.

There is also a webmin companion program, usermin, which allows
users to do many of their own user maintenance functions.
Unfortunately I have seen it used in several cases to change
mail user's shell from /bin/false to /bin/bash then giving access
to the shell.  Again, this can be restricted to the private LAN
as webmin allows.

As for starting from scratch to do these things, it's probably a
better idea to take something that does most of what you want and
hack it to your needs.  As others have said, this can help avoid
the many pitfalls that one can find when doing security related
administrative tasks.  As an example, webmin allows one to
specify a post-processing python script for user administration,
and we provide one for our SMB customers that automatically updates
things like Samba and jive_messanger user info in a single step.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186  Skype: jwccsllc (206) 855-5792

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes
a revolutionary act.  --George Orwell

Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to spend some time learning a new coding language, but 
> specifically for server side admin stuff, i.e. setting up users / 
> databases / FTP accounts / virtual domains on Apache, etc.
>
> I already know PHP, but realize it's not quite suited for this kind of 
> admin, and I suppose I need to look @ PERL / Python / C++ / Ruby? / 
> others?
>
> Can someone give me some pointers on this?
>
Python has become quite common for sysadmin stuff. Indeed, a lot of 
RedHat/Fedora (e.g. anaconda, the installer) and Ubuntu tools are really 
Python scripts. The code is quite readable and usually, there are Python 
bindings for almost every popular C library.

GUI can quickly be made with PyGTK or WxPython.

Programming language runtime performance is usually not an issue for 
sysadmin tasks, since most of the time you r program will have to wait 
for some disk I/O, a backup tape, etc.
> I basically need to write a control panel, with web access for admins 
> to manage servers, similar to what cPanel / WebMin / Plesk / etc does 
> right now, but something more customized for our needs.
>
> -- 
> Kind Regards
> Rudi Ahlers
> CEO, SoftDux Hosting
> Web: http://www.SoftDux.com
> Office: 087 805 9573
> Cell: 082 554 7532
>   
Peter
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>   

-- 
 
Dott. Peter Hopfgartner
 
R3 GIS Srl - GmbH
Via Johann Kravogl-Str. 2
I-39012 Meran/Merano (BZ)
Email: peter.hopfgartner at r3-gis.com
Tel. : +39 0473 494949
Fax  : +39 0473 069902
www  : http://www.r3-gis.com

On 06/14/2009 07:00 PM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> I would like to spend some time learning a new coding language, but
> specifically for server side admin stuff, i.e. setting up users /
> databases / FTP accounts / virtual domains on Apache, etc.
If you are targetting CentOS and/or Linux only - doing this in anything 
other than python just does not make sense to me. Ruby, perhaps - but 
you will need to redo or atleast work with a lot of the underlaying systems.

-KB

PS: you still dont really seem to trim your replies, having bad mailing 
list etiquette after having been on the list for so long is odd.

Just curious, why not just use C/C++? thanks in advance !
Lincong

--- On Mon, 6/15/09, David G. Mackay <mackay_d at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> From: David G. Mackay <mackay_d at bellsouth.net>
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] which programming language for server-side admin
tasks
> To: "CentOS mailing list" <centos at centos.org>
> Date: Monday, June 15, 2009, 3:16 PM
> 
> On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 10:04 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > > Also, there are several engineers at Red Hat that
> are very unhappy with
> > > the impact that the 3.0 release is going to have
> on them.
> > 
> > Yes but it has been obvious for a long time that
> python does not 
> > consider backwards compatibility to be
> important.  This shouldn't have 
> > come as a surprise.  By comparison, perl has been
> around longer and 
> 
> Judging by some of the comments on the fedora-devel list,
> it did anyway.
> 
> > through more changes and yet about the only thing you
> might have to 
> > check on a program written for perl 1.x to run under
> 5.x would be 
> > whether you have @ in double-quoted strings that you
> wanted to remain 
> > literal.
> 
> I used to do a lot of coding in perl, but I found that I
> liked python
> better.  I still like python for quick and dirty
> one-offs, but I'm not
> going to use it for large and persistent projects.
> 
> > One other consideration is that perl probably has the
> current advantage 
> > in terms of available code library modules. 
> Pretty much anything you 
> > can imagine doing has already been done and
> contributed to CPAN so often 
> > the code you have to write yourself is trivial with
> the modules doing 
> > the bulk of the work.  Java may be catching up in
> this regard but I 
> > don't think there is a central place to find available
> code.
> 
> Google? ;)
> 
> I guess the real question is how well java is going to
> prosper under
> Oracle's ownership.  Then again, with openjdk, it
> might not matter too
> much.
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
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