If you do systems administration work of any sort, you have no choice: you have to deal with increasing demands on your time and the growing complexity of your environment. Automating System Administration with Perl, the second edition of O'Reilly's popular Otter Book, not only offers you the right tools for your job, but also suggests the best way to approach particular problems and securely automate pressing tasks. With this book in hand and Perl in your toolbox, you can do more with less - less effort, fewer resources, and less hassle. Thoroughly updated and expanded to cover the latest operating systems, technologies, and Perl modules, Automating System Administration with Perl will help you: manage user accounts; monitor filesystems and processes; work with configuration files in important formats such as XML and YAML; administer databases, including MySQL, MS-SQL, and Oracle with DBI; work with directory services like LDAP and Active Directory; script email protocols and spam control; effectively create, handle, and analyze log files; administer network name and configuration services, including NIS, DNS and DHCP; maintain, monitor, and map network services, using technologies and tools such as SNMP, nmap, libpcap, GraphViz and RRDtool; and, improve filesystem, process, and network security. To get you up to speed on technologies like XML/XPath, LDAP, SNMP, and SQL, this edition also features additional appendices, which readers found particularly helpful in the first edition. Packed with advice, Automating System Administration with Perl explains both why and how to manage your system administration challenges with Perl.