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)

Sockets

In this section, we are going to learn about sockets. We are going to use Python's socket module. Sockets are endpoints for communication between machines, whether locally or across the internet. The socket module has a socket class, which is used to handle the data channel. It also has functions for network-related tasks. To use the functionality of the socket module, we first need to import the socket module.

Let's see how to create a socket. The socket class has a socket function, with two arguments: address_family and socket type.

The following is the syntax:

            import socket
s = socket.socket(address_family, socket type)

address_family controls the OSI network layer protocol.

socket type controls the transport layer protocol.

Python supports three address families: AF_INET, AF_INET6, and AF_UNIX. The most commonly used is AF_INET, which...