[Tutor] python-based system programming and admin?

[Mike Hansen]

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Subject:
> [Tutor] python-based system programming and admin?
> From:
> Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>
> Date:
> Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:01:03 -0700 (MST)
> To:
> tutor <tutor at python.org>
> 
> To:
> tutor <tutor at python.org>
> 
> 
> I'm an experienced linux guy, with lots of python interest and some
> python experience.
> 
> I'm helping a colleague develop software to run on our linux server.
> He has python skill, but doesn't know the shell or linux very well at
> all.
> 
> I'd like to give him a secure, safe, flexible development environment
> on the serve, (which does audio streaming and other fun things).
> 
> At the moment, he has an account and can connect from his mac via ssh,
> and copy files back and forth (ftp-like stuff - I forget which ssh
> client).  But he doesn't want to log in to a bash shell and learn a
> whole new way to do things.  But he does want to run programs.
> 
> Editing python scripts spawned by cron is one of the goals.
> But developing them by waiting for cron to fire and send the output
> via email is pretty painful....
> 
> The server currently doesn't need to run a web server, and I'm
> reluctant to introduce new services that have much security risk
> associated with them, but something like that seems like a
> possibility.
> 
> One idea that just popped in my brain is to give him a python login
> shell on linux - any advice on how to do that?
> 
> Other possibilities, I guess:
> 
>  - An https-based web server with and mod-python, somehow configured
>    so that his jobs run as him.
> 
>  - a pure-python server (via twisted?) running as him
> 
>  - moinmoin or the like
> 
>  - zope or plone (not sounding very simple any more, but I've done a
>    bit of this ....)
> 
> What would be the safest, simplest solution that was adequate for
> providing a reasonable development environment?
> 
> Any ideas I haven't thought of yet?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/

Sorry to pop in late on this discussion. I get the digest and it's sent to my 
work, so I got all weekend's digests to catch up on.

Rather than having you bend over backwards setting up a weird environment, I 
think your colleague should learn some basic unix commands. Since he's running a 
Mac(I'm assuming OS X), the basic commands will help him with Darwin OS which is 
underneath the Mac GUI. Darwin is a flavor of BSD, and BSD is a flavor of unix. 
There's not a lot to learn. Basic file management(copy, delete, move, rename), 
setting the permissions(chmod, chown), navigating the directory structure(cd, 
ls), and finally running a python program.

Some editors have FTP built into them, so he could write the code on his mac and 
have the editor FTP the file to his account on the server. He could then telnet 
to the server and run the script.

Mike