daniel@world.std.com (Daniel Smith "oh, this must be Boston..") (01/26/91)
This is a pseudo-summary of responses that I got from a posting of mine: > What freely available tools (like PERL, PBM, etc.) would > you say are of most value to you in accomplishing system > administration tasks? In other words, tools that did not come with > the release tapes for your machine...things that you picked up from > {alt,comp}.sources.*. Answers are from the following net.people: Ian Spare <uunet!relay.EU.net!ukpoit!ian> Mark W. Eichin <uunet!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!eichin> Matthew Farwell <uunet!ibmpcug.co.uk!dylan> Pete Phillips <uunet!relay.EU.net!egh-qc!pete> Rich Salz <uunet!bbn.com!rsalz> uunet!acd4!smm ( Steve McCoole ) Richard Kaul <uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!kaul> uunet!alberta!oha!tony (Tony Olekshy) uunet!bfmny0.BFM.COM!tneff (Tom Neff) uunet!brahms.AMD.COM!cdr (Carl Rigney) uunet!cadlab.sublink.org!staff (Alex Martelli) uunet!cod.nosc.mil!zimmer (Thomas L. Zimmerman) uunet!decwrl.dec.com!mindcrf!karish (Chuck Karish) uunet!eng.umd.edu!stripes (Joshua Osborne) uunet!fantasci!jep (Joseph E Poplawski) uunet!forsoil.msc.edu!jladwig (John Ladwig) uunet!groucho.cs.psu.edu!schwartz (Scott Schwartz) uunet!iWarp.intel.com!merlyn (Randal L. Schwartz) uunet!mh.nl!jv (Johan Vromans) uunet!ncar.UCAR.EDU!woods (Greg Woods) uunet!phx.mcd.mot.com!kjj (Kevin Johnson) uunet!prism.gatech.edu!gs26 (Glenn R. Stone) uunet!pyramid.pyramid.com!csg (Carl S. Gutekunst) uunet!sparrms.ists.ca!mb (Mike Bell) uunet!spl25.spl.loral.com!andy (Andrew Purshottam) uunet!thor.dbsm.oz.au!maf (Martin Foord) Enjoy! Daniel > > > John Ladwig wrote: > > Umm, I don't know if this is fair, but.. A News feed. > Really, my Internet and Usenet mail and news groups are where I have > learned most of the good practices and tricks which I use in admin. > > More directly on-topic: > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > COPS (Dan Farmer) - Looks over my shoulder in case I should > do anything silly during admin which left > security holes. > > Perl (Larry Wall) - For all the little (and not-so little) > things which need reformatting/manipulation. > > RCS (Walter Tichy) - Free revision control system. Since I > make mistakes, it's nice to have control. > > Patch (Larry Wall) - To handle the good updates to tools. > > EMACS (FSF) - Text editor as a way of life. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Thomas L. Zimmerman wrote: > Hmmm, pbm is certainly one of the most useful packages. Others that > support my day-to-day activities include kermit, NCSA telent, micro emacs and > sc, the public domain UNIX spreadsheet. > > > Tom Neff wrote: > >[daniel] I expect perl to be heading up the list ... > > No way Jose' - LESS is the most indispensable user contributed product! > > Then probably SMAIL and DELIVER, then PERL. > > Certainly RN and MUSH. Maybe some people get these on their tapes, I > don't know. > > > Richard Kaul wrote: > 1. GNU-Emacs! I wouldn't be caught dead editing without it. It > makes backups of files, so I don't get as many requests for > restorations, and I can always back out of unwise modifications. > > 2. Perl. Life is better than with sh/csh/awk. There are also a fair > number of hacks people have written to make system administration > easier on tut.cis.ohio-state.edu in pub/perl/scripts. > > 3. Gawk. Some things are easier to write in awk, and it's nice for > very quick things. It's also better than the awk sent with SunOS 4.x. > > 4. Cops. Simple shell scripts to add a modicum of security for the > site. > > 5. Ntp. Keeps the clocks around here in line. > > 6. C-news. Where else could you ask questions like this? ;-) > > > Kevin Johnson wrote: > In no particular order... > > perl > expect > tcl > elm > gcc > emacs > dmake > rh > less > tgif > xfig > > > > Rich Salz wrote: > The usenet software itself, obviously. > > > Randal L. Schwartz wrote: > GNU Emacs is also a daily-used tool for me. Perl is certainly right > up there. > > > Chuck Karish wrote: > compress > patch > > > Martin Foord wrote: > For me, I use perl above all else. The interactive tool `expect' I > hope to get into. Other than that I use most of the other standard UNIX stuff. > I do all scripts in sh (not csh ...). People tell me to get into emacs lisp > but perl seems to be able to do most of the things I want. > > > > Scott Schwartz wrote: > > perl and pbm are good choices: we use them constantly around here. > Also, patch, emacs and X11 could go on the list. Netnews, too, > actually! > > > Carl Rigney wrote: > I don't use PBM much at all, but then what does graphics have to do with > being a sysadmin? If you're going to talk about what users find useful, > that's a whole other subject. > > I have hundreds of commands in my bin, but only use a handful frequently. > > Starting with the most useful, I'd list these. No sysadmin should > be without the top 10. > > perl God's gift to system administrators (Thank you Larry!) > patch God's gift to source distributions (Thanks again Larry!) > rn for reading comp.sys.sun et al! (Also Larry's gift) > CMU snmp for monitor various network matters > rcs Version control for configuration files is a must! > ofiles To tell which file just filled up the disk > unshar for neatly unpacking source > top for telling why things just got slooooooow > gnu tar much nicer than standard tar > less a paginator that goes backwards > > gawk but haven't really used it since learning perl > gcc better than cc for many tasks > elm I don't use it but many of our sysadmins do > getpkg a perl tool written here for moving /usr/local entries around > uuhosts for unpacking & looking up UUCP maps - I've rewritten it > in perl for speed, but even the original shellscript > was very useful > > I don't use emacs but if I did I'd certainly list that. I don't do > much C programming but back when I did mkid was very high on my list of > wonderful things. > > > Glenn R. Stone wrote: > Right now, less, duonly, the ELM suite, GNU tar, patch, and bm > are what I consider essentials on a machine.... in addition to > access to a news feed. (I'm going to bring up news on my machine(s) > Real Soon Now.... I'd have wasted a LOT of time without access > to comp.sys.aix....) Of these, news, GNU tar, and patch are > the most important. > > > Carl S. Gutekunst wrote: > less > James Woods Boyer-Moore grep > MH (for E-mail-driven task management) > perl > > > Matthew Farwell wrote: > This is a shortened listing of our /usr/local/bin directory > > Out of these, I find perl, rcs, psroff, and the gcc stuff most useful. > I sometimes use the pbm stuff, but not very often. > > Dylan. > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 79765 Dec 3 23:59 a2p > -rwxrwxr-x 1 root source 26792 Dec 30 05:19 a2ps > -rwxrwxr-x 1 root source 46096 Feb 8 1989 arcnew > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 15030 Aug 21 1989 atob > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 12539 May 22 1989 boo > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 22900 May 16 1989 brik > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 11397 Aug 21 1989 btoa > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 69184 May 16 1989 ci > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 154 Feb 25 1990 clast > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 61524 May 16 1989 co > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 44576 Oct 11 1989 diff > -rwxrwxr-x 1 root source 559681 Jul 31 02:36 emacs > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 20648 Jul 14 09:56 fmt > -rwxrwxr-x 1 bin bin 90572 Jun 1 1990 gas > -rwxrwxr-x 1 root source 202805 Oct 27 1989 gawk > -rwxrwxr-x 1 bin bin 30820 Jun 1 1990 gcc > -rwxrwxr-x 1 bin bin 312384 Jun 1 1990 gdb > -rwxr-xr-x 1 dylan source 245628 Aug 17 19:23 mush > drwxrwxr-x 2 dylan source 1248 Jul 30 14:55 pbm > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 251525 Dec 3 23:59 perl > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 4745 Nov 22 18:35 psroff > -rwxrwxr-x 1 bin bin 15660 May 11 1990 ranlib > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 62104 May 16 1989 rcs > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 11855 Dec 3 23:59 s2p > -rwx--x--x 1 root source 15890 Jun 30 1988 shar > -rwxrwx--x 1 root source 92150 Oct 21 1989 ue > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 16732 Apr 11 1989 unzip > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 67168 Jul 31 02:11 uzap > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root source 55336 Feb 10 1989 zoo > > > Mark W. Eichin wrote: > Actually, EMACS is at the top of my list, and PERL is right > behind it. Emacs is more useful than perl in that I *always* use > emacs, whereas sometimes I go a day without running perl. (At one > point I had a machine set up with emacs as my login shell :-) > X11 is also very important and freely available. > GDB (Gnu Debugger) is more useful than the GNU compilers, > though they are very useful as well. For development, I also find > "etags" indispensable (in conjunction with emacs of course.) I also > make heavy use of RCS (which is available via the GNU archive, but is > from Purdue.) > _Mark_ <eichin@athena.mit.edu> > > > > > > > Tony Olekshy wrote: > cdecl deliver less mush pathalias perl shar trn > cdiff ediff month patch pcomm sc smail zmodem > > > Ian Spare wrote: > We use mainly only the news and mail stuff , elm , smail , c-news , b-news, > rn and trn . I will use others when I hear good reports about them !!! > > > Johan Vromans wrote: > Sysadmin: > > perl (Larry Wall) > Major kitchen sink > crond (Paul Vixie) > SystemV compatible cron daemon for Berkeley systems > > Software development: > > emacs (Free Software Foundation) > All-purpose development tool > gcc (Free Software Foundation) > Compatible C-compiler > gdb (Free Software Foundation) > Debugging tool > patch (Larry Wall) > To apply patches > > News/Email: > > C-news (Henry Spencer & friends) > Much better than B-news > GNUS (Masanobu UMEDA) > GNU Emacs newsreader > VM (Kyle Jones) > GNU Emacs mail handler > Smail3 (Ronald Karr & Landon Curt Noll) > Much better than Sendmail > shar3/unshar (misc. artists) > Good shar; unshar can handle multiple-file shars > unsh (Mike Bell) > Can handle uuencoded shars and creates directories > > Workstation specific: > > tvtwm (Tom LaStrange) > Fully-fledged window manager with virtual roots > xphoon (Jef Poskanzer & friends) > Cute screen saver > xlock (Patrick Naughton) > Session protection > xv (John Bradley) > Universal picture tool > > Documentation/printing: > > psroff (Carl Lewis) > CAT troff to PostScript etc. > mp (Rich Burridge) > Mail/news/etc PostScript wrapper > a2ps (Evan Kirstenbaum & Miguel Santana) > ASCII text PostScript wrapper > TeX (Donald Knuth) > Typesetting > > Archiving: > > pdtar (John Gilmore) > Includes compression facilities > zoo (Rahul Dhesi) > Compatible archive utility > > > Greg Woods wrote: > You're right about perl; I use it for all sorts of stuff, including a program > that reads qf* files in /var/spool/mqueue and sends warning messages to > local users whose outgoing mail has been delayed, as well as a number of > scripts that parse syslog files to do statistics gathering. > Another less common tool that I use a lot is the "watcher" program posted > to the net a couple of years ago. This is a program that runs various programmed > commands and parses the output. It can detect absolute limits, absolute > changes, or relative changes and report it when it finds something outside > of the specified limit. For example one use of it is to parse the output of > df(1) and warn me when a file system is filling up. It is also used to parse > the output of "uusnap" and let me know when one of our UUCP links is backing > up. > > --Greg > > > > > > Joshua Osborne wrote: > X is. Not any one part, the whole thing. The run and top programs tie for > second, and perl is a distant (but respectable) third. Kerberos is in > dead last place, untill someone around here fixes it, then I expect it to > rise to number 5 or 6. (It is nice having the same root password on 200 > boxen, insted of trying to rember 8 or nine...) > > > Mike Bell wrote: > cnews emacs less nn patch xmodem - make it into our /usr/local/bin directory > > > Alex Martelli wrote: > > 1: GNU awk (latest-release awk on many machines) > 2: xargs (from Fiedler & Hunter book) for machine that don't have it > 3: Almquist's ash, and (a little) GNU bash, for good interactive shells > without the flakiness of csh and friends > 4: the 'less' pager program > 5: free regexp/getopts/etc etc libraries > > We don't (yet) use perl, although we plan to give it a good try when the > book is out; awk IS heavily used, thanks to the excellent book and the > excellent GAWK implementation. > Note an anomalous situation: we have to support 14 different platforms, > many obsolete (eg, IBM RT/6150), since we sell application programs on > them; thus most precious tools may be just ones that homogeinize them, > such as Gawk, xargs, ash, regexp, getopts, etc, that would not be > relevant if we only worked with, say, SUN/Os or IBM RISC/6000's! > > > Steve McCoole wrote: > My biggest is Perl for sysadmin ( 'natch! ) and cops for security > purposes. > > I'd have to say that our biggest for users/development are: > > 1. TeX, LaTeX makes better output than we could ever get before. > Especially good when the company won't spring for graphics > terminals so we can't use WYSWYG systems. > > 2. GNU Emacs, users claim that they'd die without it. > > > Pete Phillips wrote: > Perl is the main one. We use a 68010 Convergent Miniframe, and perl is > slow loading, but still it is worth it to be able to get one-time task > done quickly. > > Other useful ones are pstree (prints postscript directory trees), agef > (prints files categorised by age) which I use to get users to > trim/archive their directories > > > Joseph E Poplawski wrote: > Perl, Bnews, Rn, Trn, Uureroute, bison, flex, gawk, compress, freeze, > cops, rolo, uustatus, strings, uutraf, pathalias, agelog, dpasswd, > John Haugh's login/passwd package, Empire (1/2 :-), rcs, abc, tcl, ilib, > cbase, mbase, afio, xcmalt, sc, limit, diskhog, menu. > > > Andrew Purshottam wrote: > top - top users display > - useful for figuring out whats clogging my server / which user to kill > tcpdump - packet monitor > - has easier filter language than etherfind and also works! > cops - look for operational secuirty holes > changed - local tool to find "interesting" files that have changed recently -- daniel@island.com .....Daniel Smith, Island Graphics, (415) 491 0765 x 250(w) daniel@world.std.com ...4000 CivicCenterDrive SanRafael MarinCounty CA 94903 dansmith@well.sf.ca.us .I must write this, or Island will take away my coffee. Could we continue with the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing-Data:TNG
bbh@mtek.com (Bud Hovell @ Mtek) (01/30/91)
In article <1991Jan26.035839.22408@world.std.com> daniel@world.std.com (Daniel Smith "oh, this must be Boston..") writes:
<
< This is a pseudo-summary of responses that I got from a posting
<of mine:
[ ...deleted... ]
To pick a minor nit (NOT FLAME) in one response:
<> psroff (Carl Lewis)
<> CAT troff to PostScript etc.
Chris Lewis - who also wrote 'unpackmaps'.
^^^^^
The generous authors of all this neat pd stuff receive no monetary
compensation, and little other direct reward than acknowledgement by the
rest of us of their good deeds. So it is important, I think, that we at
least get their names right. :-)
____________
bud@mtek.com