Python for Unix and Linux System AdministrationThe book left me hungry for a main course. After an appetizing introduction to python and IPython, the book meandered through one section after another showing light weight examples of 3+line python replacements for 1-line shell commands, or quickly introducing a topic only to beg off with an 'outside the scope' disclaimer and reference url. These external links were often where the meat was, and for me is where I found most of the value of this book. Examples include paramiko, asr, supervisor and Zenoss.

I also found occasional nuggets along the way, on LDAP and daemonize for example, and the entire section on Processes and Concurrency. Others may benefit from the section on SNMP, but for my installations it doesn't come into play. On the other hand, the section on Package Management, while interesting to my developer side, didn't find an audience on the learn python or sysadmin side, except potentially to a sysadmin working for a software producer/distributer.

Firewalls, intrusion detection, spam and mail admin, proxied web access controls, backups, version control, issue tracking -- these are the areas that consume my sysadmin time and where I've used python as glue -- and only Trac earns mention in the index.

Perhaps the large shops have python in the loop to such an extent that this text may act as a primer to overview the technologies in use. For me, I may refer to the book for ideas, but I'm more likely to continue as I have: search the web, select a python written or harnessable solution, install and deploy. YMMV.