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Red Hat® Linux 6 Unleashed

Chapter 27: Automating Tasks

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Sections in this Chapter:

First
Example--Automating Data Entry

Other
Mechanisms: Expect, Perl, and More

Tips for
Improving Automation Technique

Concluding Challenge for an Automater--Explaining
Value

Shell
Scripts

Scheduling
Tasks with cron and at Jobs

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Concluding Challenge for an Automater--Explaining Value
You've
become knowledgeable and experienced in scripting your computer so that it best
serves you. You know how to improve your skills in script writing. You've
practiced different approaches enough to know how to solve problems efficiently.
The final challenge in your automation career is this: How do you explain how
good you have become?This is a serious problem, and,
as usual, the solution begins with attitude. You no longer pound at the keyboard
to bludgeon technical tasks into submission; you now operate in a more refined
way and achieve correspondingly grander results. As an employee, you're
much more valuable than the system administrators and programmers who reinvent
wheels every day. In your recreational or personal use of Red Hat Linux, the
computer is working for you--not the other way around, as it might have been
when you started. Your attitude needs to adjust to the reality you've
created by improving your productivity. Invest in yourself, whether by attending
technical conferences where you can further promote your skills, negotiating a
higher salary, or simply taking the time in your computer work to get things
right. It's easy in organizations to give attention to crises and reward
those visibly coping with emergencies. It takes true leadership to plan ahead,
organize work so emergencies don't happen, and use techniques of automation
to achieve predictable and manageable results on
schedule.One
of the most effective tools you have in taking up this challenge is
quantification. Keep simple records to demonstrate how much time you put
into setting up backups before you learned about
cron, or run a simple experiment to compare two ways
of approaching an elementary database maintenance operation. Find out how much
of your online time goes just to the login process and decide whether scripting
that is justified. Chart a class of mistakes that you make and see whether your
precision improves as you apply automation ideas.
In all cases, keep in mind that you are efficient, perhaps extraordinarily
efficient, because of the knowledge you apply. Automation feels good!