The Problem, A Solution

Sysadmins have long wrestled with the task of writing generalized scripts to monitor systems and deal with recurring problem situations. As conventionally practiced, this approach has numerous disadvantages: it is hard to account for diversity across machines and operating systems; operations are fragile and error-prone; scripts for handling simple tasks are difficult to code, or are hardly worth the effort to maintain; scheduling and managing scripts are time-consuming and repetitive; setup is inflexible; activity and error logging is rudimentary or nonexistent; and the whole mass of scripts and configuration files is nearly impossible to keep track of or even comprehend.

PIKT attempts to solve some of the problems observed in more traditional methods of monitor scripting and managing system configurations. PIKT is an embedded scripting language and accompanying script interpreter. PIKT is also a sophisticated script and system configuration file preprocessor for use with the Pikt scripting language or any other scripting language of your choice. Finally, PIKT is a cross-platform, centrally run script scheduler (like cron), customizing installer (like rdist), command shell enhancement, and total script and configuration file management facility. PIKT's primary purpose is to monitor systems, report problems, and fix those problems whenever possible, but its flexibility lends itself to quite a few other uses as well.

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