Sysadmin Help Section

[adminpout]

Hmmmm my petition is coming from a different realm of monks. The realm of sysadmin monks. We didn't write the code, but we have to know enough about how to modify it when there isn't a true perl monk to do it. Of course, this would be done with the utmost care and with viligence while we learn more to write our own future perls.
Most currently on this sysadmin's mind is the "CERT Advisory CA-2000-02 Malicious HTML Tags Embedded in Client Web Requests" that was just released.

The HTML pages that run cgi that run perl..... ahhhhhhhh

To place a character check for allowable characters, and if not the allowed, then change it to an underscore.

The code has been suggested, but this sysadmin pouts because she can't decide exactly where it goes and can't get it to work with existing code.

The books are open, the sysadmin-wanna-be-perl-monk is learning, but needs help.

Is there a section the Friar can open that will give different examples of how to modify code, whether it's after the read(STDIN, the @prompts array, or checking the $fields... Arggghhhhh

[vroom]

I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say about this stuff. My feeling is that it's hard to help someone who doesn't understand something to change that something and have it still work. It's equally hard to help with this type of thing on a general level. My feeling is that you're welcome to post your questions, and we'll be glad to help out.

Some sort of system administration script collection would be cool I think though.. again I'd like to hear what you all think

[setantae]

Well I suppose that we could just have a section in the Code Catacombs for sysadmins.
However, my feelings are also that it's not really doing someone that much of a favour to just give them a script and tell them "it works"...it's all along the "Give a man a fish" lines, and although I appreciate that not everyone has the time to learn Perl (or whatever), I'd rather know why something works than just knowing that it works, just for those moments when said something barfs and needs fixing now.