1. Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Automation Is a Must 1
How Perl Can Help You 2
This Book Will Show You How 3
What You Need 5
Some Notes About the Perl Versions Used for This Book 6
What About Perl 5.10? 6
What About Strawberry Perl? 6
What About Perl 6? 6
Some Notes About Using Vista with the Code in This Book 7
Locating and Installing Modules 8
Installing Modules on Unix 9
Installing Modules on Win32 9
It’s Not Easy Being Omnipotent 10
Don’t Do It 10
Drop Your Privileges As Soon As Possible 10
Be Careful When Reading Data 11
Be Careful When Writing Data 12
Avoid Race Conditions 12
Enjoy 13
References for More Information 13
2. Filesystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Perl to the Rescue 15
Filesystem Differences 16
Unix 16
Windows-Based Operating Systems 16
Mac OS X 18
Filesystem Differences Summary 19
Dealing with Filesystem Differences from Perl 19
vii

2. Walking or Traversing the Filesystem by Hand 21
Walking the Filesystem Using the File::Find Module 26
Walking the Filesystem Using the File::Find::Rule Module 36
Manipulating Disk Quotas 38
Editing Quotas with edquota Trickery 40
Editing Quotas Using the Quota Module 44
Editing NTFS Quotas Under Windows 45
Querying Filesystem Usage 46
Module Information for This Chapter 48
References for More Information 48
3. User Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Unix User Identities 50
The Classic Unix Password File 50
Changes to the Password File in BSD 4.4 Systems 57
Shadow Passwords 58
Windows-Based Operating System User Identities 59
Windows User Identity Storage and Access 59
Windows User ID Numbers 61
Windows Passwords Don’t Play Nice with Unix Passwords 63
Windows Groups 63
Windows User Rights 68
Building an Account System to Manage Users 71
The Backend Database 73
The Low-Level Component Library 78
The Process Scripts 89
Account System Wrap-Up 94
Module Information for This Chapter 97
References for More Information 97
Unix Password Files 97
Windows User Administration 98
4. User Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Process Management 100
Windows-Based Operating System Process Control 100
Unix Process Control 119
File and Network Operations 125
Tracking File Operations on Windows 125
Tracking Network Operations on Windows 128
Tracking File and Network Operations in Unix 129
Module Information for This Chapter 135
Installing Win32::Setupsup 135
References for More Information 136
viii | Table of Contents

3. 5. TCP/IP Name and Configuration Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Host Files 137
Generating Host Files 140
Error-Checking the Host File Generation Process 143
Improving the Host File Output 144
Incorporating a Source Code Control System 148
NIS, NIS+, and WINS 151
NIS+ 154
Windows Internet Name Server (WINS) 154
Domain Name Service (DNS) 155
Generating DNS (BIND) Configuration Files 156
DNS Checking: An Iterative Approach 165
DHCP 174
Active Probing for Rogue DHCP Servers 176
Monitoring Legitimate DHCP Servers 181
Module Information for This Chapter 183
References for More Information 184
6. Working with Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Configuration File Formats 188
Binary 188
Naked Delimited Data 189
Key/Value Pairs 190
Markup Languages 192
All-in-One Modules 235
Advanced Configuration Storage Mechanisms 236
Module Information for This Chapter 236
References for More Information 237
XML and YAML 237
7. SQL Database Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Interacting with a SQL Server from Perl 240
Using the DBI Framework 243
Using ODBC from Within DBI 249
Server Documentation 251
MySQL Server via DBI 252
Oracle Server via DBI 254
Microsoft SQL Server via ODBC 255
Database Logins 258
Monitoring Space Usage on a Database Server 260
Module Information for This Chapter 263
References for More Information 263
DBI 263
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4. Microsoft SQL Server 264
ODBC 264
Oracle 264
8. Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Sending Mail 265
Getting sendmail (or a Similar Mail Transport Agent) 266
Using the OS-Specific IPC Framework to Drive a Mail Client 266
Speaking the Mail Protocols Directly 268
Common Mistakes in Sending Email 273
Overzealous Message Sending 273
Subject Line Waste 282
Insufficient Information in the Message Body 282
Fetching Mail 285
Talking POP3 to Fetch Mail 285
Talking IMAP4rev1 to Fetch Mail 287
Processing Mail 291
Dissecting a Single Message 291
Dissecting a Whole Mailbox 296
Dealing with Spam 297
Support Mail Augmentation 305
Module Information for This Chapter 310
References for More Information 311
9. Directory Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
What’s a Directory? 313
Finger: A Simple Directory Service 314
The WHOIS Directory Service 318
LDAP: A Sophisticated Directory Service 321
LDAP Programming with Perl 322
The Initial LDAP Connection 323
Performing LDAP Searches 325
Entry Representation in Perl 329
Adding Entries with LDIF 331
Adding Entries with Standard LDAP Operations 333
Deleting Entries 334
Modifying Entry Names 335
Modifying Entry Attributes 337
Deeper LDAP Topics 339
Putting It All Together 348
Active Directory Service Interfaces 354
ADSI Basics 355
Using ADSI from Perl 357
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5. Dealing with Container/Collection Objects 359
Identifying a Container Object 360
So How Do You Know Anything About an Object? 360
Searching 363
Performing Common Tasks Using the WinNT and LDAP Namespaces 366
Working with Users via ADSI 367
Working with Groups via ADSI 369
Working with File Shares via ADSI 369
Working with Print Queues and Print Jobs via ADSI 370
Working with Windows-Based Operating System Services via ADSI 371
Module Information for This Chapter 373
References for More Information 373
LDAP 373
ADSI 374
10. Log Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Reading Text Logs 377
Reading Binary Log Files 378
Using unpack() 378
Calling an OS (or Someone Else’s) Binary 383
Using the OS’s Logging API 384
Structure of Log File Data 385
Dealing with Log File Information 388
Space Management of Logging Information 388
Log Parsing and Analysis 395
Writing Your Own Log Files 425
Logging Shortcuts and Formatting Help 425
Basic/Intermediate Logging Frameworks 426
Advanced Logging Framework 428
Module Information for This Chapter 429
References for More Information 430
11. Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Noticing Unexpected or Unauthorized Changes 434
Local Filesystem Changes 434
Changes in Data Served Over the Network 440
Noticing Suspicious Activities 442
Local Signs of Peril 442
Finding Problematic Patterns 444
Danger on the Wire, or “Perl Saves the Day” 449
Preventing Suspicious Activities 460
Suggest Better Passwords 460
Reject Bad Passwords 461
Table of Contents | xi

6. Module Information for This Chapter 466
References for More Information 467
12. SNMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Using SNMP from Perl 469
Sending and Receiving SNMP Traps, Notifications, and Informs 480
Alternative SNMP Programming Interfaces 484
Module Information for This Chapter 486
References for More Information 486
13. Network Mapping and Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
Network Mapping 489
Discovering Hosts 490
Discovering Network Services 499
Physical Location 501
Presenting the Information 503
Textual Presentation Tools 503
Graphical Presentation Tools 507
Monitoring Frameworks 522
Extending Existing Monitoring Packages 524
What’s Left? 526
Module Information for This Chapter 527
References for More Information 527
14. Experiential Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
Playing with Timelines 530
Task One: Parsing crontab Files 530
Task Two: Displaying the Timeline 531
Task Three: Writing Out the Correct XML File 533
Putting It All Together 534
Summary: What Can We Learn from This? 536
Playing with Geocoding 537
Geocoding from Postal Addresses 537
Geocoding from IP Addresses 541
Summary: What Can We Learn from This? 544
Playing with an MP3 Collection 544
Summary: What Can We Learn from This? 546
One Final Exploration 546
Part One: Retrieving the Wiki Page with WWW::Mechanize 547
Part Two: Extracting the Data 550
Part Three: Geocoding and Mapping the Data 551
Summary: What Can We Learn from This? 554
Remember to Play 555
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7. Module Information for This Chapter 555
Source Material for This Chapter 556
A. The Eight-Minute XML Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
B. The 10-Minute XPath Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
C. The 10-Minute LDAP Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
D. The 15-Minute SQL Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
E. The Five-Minute RCS Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
F. The Two-Minute VBScript-to-Perl Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
G. The 20-Minute SNMP Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617
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