References for More Information (Perl for System Administration)

3.5. References for More Information

3.5.1. Unix Password Files

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi is where the FreeBSD Project provides access to the online manual pages for *BSD and other Unix variants. This is a handy way to compare the file formats and user administration commands (useradd, et al.) for several operating systems.

Practical Unix & Internet Security, 2nd Edition, by Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford (O'Reilly, 1999), is an excellent place to start for information about password files.

3.5.2. NT User Administration

http://Jenda.Krynicky.cz is another site with useful Win32 modules applicable to user administration.

http://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/, from the Windows 2000 online help. (Navigate to the Active DirectoryConceptsUnderstanding Active DirectoryUnderstanding Groups section.) This is a good overview of the new Windows 2000 group mechanisms.

http://www.activestate.com/support/mailing_lists.htm hosts the Perl-Win32-Admin and Perl-Win32-Users mailing lists. Both lists and their archives are invaluable resources for Win32 programmers.

Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions, by Dave Roth (Macmillan Technical Publishing, 1999) is currently the best reference for Win32 Perl module programming.

Windows NT User Administration, by Ashley J. Meggitt and Timothy D. Ritchey (O'Reilly, 1997).

http://www.mspress.com are the publishers of the Microsoft NT Resource kit. They also offer a subscription services that provides access to the latest RK utilities.

http://www.roth.net is the home of Win32::AdminMisc, Win32::Perms, and other modules the Win32 community relies upon for user administration.

3.5.3. XML

There's been a tremendous explosion of material covering XML in the last two years. The following are some of the best references I know of for people interested in learning about XML. There haven't been any XML for Perl books released as of this publication, but I know of several projects in the works.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml and http://www.ibm.com/developer/xml both contain copious information at their respective sites. Microsoft and IBM are very serious about XML.

http://www.activestate.com/support/mailing_lists.htm hosts the Perl-XML mailing list. It (and its archive) is one of the best sources on this topic.

http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210 is the actual XML 1.0 specification. Anyone who does anything with XML eventually winds up reading the spec. For anything but quick reference checks, I recommend reading an annotated version like those mentioned in the next two citations.

http://www.xml.com is a good reference for articles and XML links. Also contains an excellent annotated version of the specification created by Tim Bray, one of its authors.

XML: The Annotated Specification, by Bob DuCharme (Prentice Hall, 1998), is another excellent annotated version of the specification, chock full of XML code examples.

XML Pocket Reference, by Robert Eckstein (O'Reilly, 1999), a concise but surprisingly comprehensive introduction to XML for the impatient.

3.5.4. Other

http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~evard is Rémy Evard's home page. Using a set of central databases from which configuration files are automatically generated is a best practice that shows up in a number of places in this book; credit for my exposure to this methodology goes to Evard. Though it is now in use at many sites, I first encountered it when I inherited the Tenwen computing environment he built (as described in the Tenwen paper linked off of Evard's home page). See the section "Implemented the Hosts Database" for one example of this methodology in action.

http://www.rpi.edu/~finkej/ contains a number of Jon Finke's published papers on the use of relational databases for system administration.


3.4. Module Information for This Chapter		4. User Activity