Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

8/24/2005

PERL OS Detection

Filed under: Apple,Fun Work,Geek Work,Linux,MicroSoft,Novell,PERL — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:10 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

This is sort of the long way around, but…
Well, I have a dream. I dream of a single, giant PERL script that does a complete server inventory, no matter what version of operating system it’s running. Why? Look at my resume. Notice how many times I’ve changed jobs? Every time I hit a new gig, I look at their server documentation, if they have any, and ask how old it is. 80% of the time, no one knows how old it is. The rest of the time, it’s so old and out of date as to be totally irrelevant. Of course, no matter the state of their documentation, it always falls to me to create it or update it. Hence my quest for a single, glorious PERL script that checks everything that matters on an individual server and drops it into a report, or at least a text file that I can make into a report.
The biggest stumbling block to my vision of this splendiferous chunk of code has almost always been the first one: figuring out which operating system the target is running. Well, not any more. No, my faithful readers, including my ex-wife and her new meal-ticket, now I give you Step One in Uncle Jim’s Master Plan for Network Domination.
PERL OS Version checker

Well, at least yesterday wasn’t a total waste.


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