Archive for March, 2011
Perlish – Dates and Time
Introduction Anyone who frequently writes utility scripts will eventually run into having to deal with Dates and Time. The type of tasks, though, can vary: sometimes you have to format a date, convert a date, add or subtract time to a date, or find a date. This article covers various ways of having to deal [...]
Perlish – Text::Template
Introduction Most scripts or applications involve some type of output and reporting. If the script or application starts growing, the output can become more complex. Mixing the code that formats and displays your output in the same area as the code that performs the logic can become messy. Templating is a popular solution to this [...]
Perlish – Logging
Introduction Logging is an essential tool and feature for System Administrators. With Perl, logging can be as simple as using print, die, or warn, or more advanced such as logging to syslog, a private log file, or even a database. This article quickly covers the more advanced logging.
Perlish – Try::Tiny
Introduction Although not used all the time with System Administration-based scripts, the ability to run a piece of code and react if it errors out is a convenient programming feature. Perl has always been able to do this with eval, but compared to other languages, the syntax is awkward. Try::Tiny is a small alternative to [...]
Cobbler, ESXi, CentOS, and VMWare Tools
Introduction This short article will detail a Cobbler snippet for automatically installing the ESXi VMWare Tools. Table of Contents Method VMWare Repo Cobbler Snippet Snippet Inclusion Conclusion Method This method was inspired by this blog post. It imports the VMWare RPM key and then creates a Yum repository to download the VMWare RPMs. I simply [...]
Perlish – File::Slurp
Introduction Reading files is a cornerstone of solving everyday tasks with Perl. While Perl’s file IO features are very easy to use, repeating the simple task of reading a file into a variable can become cumbersome. File::Slurp can alleviate some of this burden with a few nice shortcut functions.
Perlish – cpan-outdated
Introduction This Perlish article covers App::cpanoutdated.
Perlish – cpanm
Introduction Perlish will be a series of short articles about various Perl modules and programs that I’ve found to come in handy. This first article is about cpanminus or cpanm.
Adding a Calendar Widget to BIRT
Introduction BIRT does a very well job at asking users for input parameters — except in one area: dates. This article will explain how to add a graphical calendar widget so users can visually choose a date rather than typing one in.
New cPanel Perl Module
Introduction On Monday, cPanel announced the release of a new cPanel::PublicAPI Perl module. It’s a really nice module and this short article will explain how to use it.