Book Image

Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators

By : Ganesh Sanjiv Naik
Book Image

Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators

By: Ganesh Sanjiv Naik

Overview of this book

Python has evolved over time and extended its features in relation to every possible IT operation. Python is simple to learn, yet has powerful libraries that can be used to build powerful Python scripts for solving real-world problems and automating administrators' routine activities. The objective of this book is to walk through a series of projects that will teach readers Python scripting with each project. This book will initially cover Python installation and quickly revise basic to advanced programming fundamentals. The book will then focus on the development process as a whole, from setup to planning to building different tools. It will include IT administrators' routine activities (text processing, regular expressions, file archiving, and encryption), network administration (socket programming, email handling, the remote controlling of devices using telnet/ssh, and protocols such as SNMP/DHCP), building graphical user interface, working with websites (Apache log file processing, SOAP and REST APIs communication, and web scraping), and database administration (MySQL and similar database data administration, data analytics, and reporting). By the end of this book, you will be able to use the latest features of Python and be able to build powerful tools that will solve challenging, real-world tasks
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

MySQL database administration

This section will cover MySQL database administration using Python. You already know Python has various modules for mysql database administration. So, we will learn about the MySQLdb module here. The mysqldb module is an interface for MySQL database server and is used to provide Python database API.

Let's learn how to install MySQL and a Python mysqldb package. For this, run the following command in your Terminal:

$ sudo apt install mysql-server

This command installs the MySQL server and various other packages. While installing the package, we are prompted to enter a password for the MySQL root account:

  • The following code is used for checking for the mysqldb package to install:
$ apt-cache search MySQLdb
  • And the following is for installing the Python interface for MySQL:
$ sudo apt-get install python3-mysqldb
  • Now, we will check if mysql...