Python

January 4, 2026 · View on GitHub

NOT FULLY PORTED YET.

Python is a popular and easy to use general purpose programming language that is heavily used in Data Analytics and Data Science as well as systems administration.

It's not as amazing for one-liners as Perl is though, which can boost shell scripts more easily.

Core Reading
DevOps Python tools
Shell scripts with Python
Nagios Plugins in Python
Python Library with Unit Tests
Python HTTP Server
VirtualEnv
Pipenv
Poetry
Jupyter Notebook
Libraries
Jython
- Install
- Run
- Code
Python Hosting Sites
Troubleshooting
Meme

Shell scripts with Python

Shell scripts using Python and making it easier to install Python pip libraries from PyPI.

HariSekhon/DevOps-Bash-tools

Python Library with Unit Tests

HariSekhon/pylib

Python HTTP Server

When you need a quick HTTP server to serve out local files at:

http://$HOSTNAME:8000/

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

This is useful for temporary file sharing for things like making automated installer configurations available, such as for Redhat Kickstart, Debian Preseeding or Ubuntu Autoinstall.

VirtualEnv

Creates a virtual environment in the local given sub-directory in which to install PyPI modules to avoid clashes with system python libraries.

virtualenv "$directory_name_to_create"

I like top always the directory name venv for the virtualenv:

virtualenv venv

Then to use it before you starting pip installing:

source venv/bin/activate

This prepends to $PATH to use the bin/python and lib/python-3.12/site-packages under the local venv directory:

Now install PyPI modules as usual.

The venv/pyvenv.cfg file will contain some metadata like this:

home = /opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.12/3.12.3/bin
implementation = CPython
version_info = 3.12.3.final.0
virtualenv = 20.25.3
include-system-site-packages = false
base-prefix = /opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.12/3.12.3/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12
base-exec-prefix = /opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.12/3.12.3/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12
base-executable = /opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.12/3.12.3/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/bin/python3.12

Pipenv

https://pipenv.pypa.io/en/latest/

:octocat: pypa/pipenv

Combines Pip and VirtualEnv into one command.

brew install pipenv

Creates a Pipfile and Pipfile.lock, plus a virtualenv in a standard location $HOME/.local/share/virtualenvs/ if not already inside one.

pipenv install

Activates the virtualenv

pipenv shell

Automatically converts a requirements.txt file into a Pipfile:

pipenv check

Dependency graph:

pipenv graph

Poetry

:octocat: python-poetry/poetry

Replaces pip requirements.txt for PyPI library management with a simple pyproject.yaml:

Writes a lockfile to save versions like npm and go mod do.

Jupyter Notebook

(formerly called IPython Notebook)

https://ipython.org/notebook.html

Interactive web page where you can mix code blocks, rich notes and graphs on the same page, click to execute code blocks and form a page oriented workflow of results and analysis for sharing and demonstrating.

Libraries

You can search for libraries at pypi.org.

Some libraries you may find useful are below.

You can see most of these used throughout my GitHub repos, eg:

General

GitPython - Git
sh - execute shell commands more easily
jinja2 - Jinja2 templating
humanize - converts units to human readable
pyobjc-framework-Quartz - control Mac UI
psutil
PyInstaller - bundle Python code into standalone executablers (doesn't work for advanced code)
sasl

Web

requests - easy HTTP request library
beautifulsoup4 - HTML parsing library
Scrapy - web scraping
pycookiecheat - use or extract cookies from your browser's cookie jar to query websites directly or using curl
selenium - Selenium web testing framework

Databases

mysqlclient - MySQL client
psycopg2 - PostgreSQL
psycopg2-binary

Cloud

boto3 - AWS
aws-consoler

CI/CD & Linting

python-jenkins - Jenkins
TravisPy - for Travis CI
pylint - Python linting CLI tool
grip - Grip renders local markdown using a local webserver
Markdown
MarkupSafe
checkov
semgrep - security / misconfiguration scanning
jsonlint
yamllint - CLI YAML linting tool

Unit Testing

unittest2
nose
Faker - generate fake but realistic data for unit testing, Python version of the original Perl library, comes with a faker command convenient for shell scripts:

Generate 10 fake addresses:

faker -r 10 address

Virtualization & Containerization

docker - control local Docker
kubernetes - Kubernetes
pyvmomi - VMware

Pub/Sub

kafka-python - Kafka
pika - RabbitMQ

Big Data & NoSQL

elasticsearch - Elasticsearch
happybase - HBase
impyla - Impala
kazoo - ZooKeeper
PyHive - for Apache Hive
python-krbV - Kerberos support, often pulled as a dependency for snakebite[kerberos]
snakebite - HDFS

Data Formats & Analysis

avro - Avro
ldif3 - LDAP LDIF format
jsonlint
Markdown
MarkupSafe
numpy - NumPy for scientific numeric processing
pandas - Pandas for data analysis
python-cson
pyarrow - Apache Arrow and Parquet support, but Parquet support in this is weak, prefer Parquet Tools
python-ldap
python-snappy - work with Snappy compression format, often pulled as a dependency
PyYAML - work with YAML files in Python
sciki-learn - SciKit Learn
toml
xmltodict
yamllint - CLI YAML linting tool

Faker - generate fake but realistic data for unit testing, Python version of the original Perl library, comes with a faker command convenient for shell scripts:

Generate 10 fake addresses:

faker -r 10 address

Data Visualization

matplotlib - General-purpose plotting, highly customizable
seaborn - built on matplotlib, higher level to make it easier to great aesthetic visualizations
plotly - Interactive graphs, dashboards, 3D plots
bokeh - Interactive, web-ready visualizations
pandas - Quick and easy plots directly from dataframes
networkx - Graph theory, network analysis
altair - Declarative statistical visualizations
pygal - Vector (SVG) visualizations, interactive
graph-tool - Scalable and efficient for large graph analysis

Jython

https://www.jython.org/

Python on the Java JVM.

The ease of Python coding with full access to Java APIs and libraries.

Useful when there aren't Python libraries available or they aren't as fully featured as the Java versions (eg. for Hadoop).

Today, I'd prefer to write in the native JVM language Groovy.

Install

From DevOps-Python-tools:

jython_install.sh

Run

Interactive REPL:

$ jython
Jython 2.7.3 (tags/v2.7.3:5f29801fe, Sep 10 2022, 18:52:49)
[OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (Eclipse Adoptium)] on java17.0.1
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Run a Jython script and add Java classpath to find any jar dependencies that the script uses:

jython -J-cp "$CLASSPATH" "file.py"

Code

Some Jython programs, such as those using Hadoop HDFS Java API can be found in the DevOps-Python-tools repo.

Python Hosting Sites

Hosted Python WebApps

Heroku
Vercel
Render
PythonAnywhere - fully hosted Python apps / webapps with a <username>.pythonanywhere.com domain and long list of libraries pre-installed batteries included

Hosted Jupyter Notebooks

Google Collab - Jupyter Notebooks in the cloud with free access to GPUs
Binder - run Jupyter Notebooks from GitHub repos

Other Hosted Python

Replit - cloud-base IDE with AI to generate code from ideas
Glitch - good for prototyping small webapps
fly.io - code execution sandbox, runs any Docker image
Code Ocean - for scientific bioinformatics and R&D

Troubleshooting

Python Fault Handler

Prints stack trace on crash.

Useful for debugging native-level crashes, C extensions, system calls, OS signals.

Activates handling of signals like:

Signal	Description
`SIGSEGV`	Segmentation fault
`SIGFPE`	Floating-point exception
`SIGBUS`	Bus error
`SIGABRT`	Abort signal
`SIGILL`	Illegal instruction

Normally, these signals cause Python to crash without much useful information, but with the fault handler enabled, it'll output a traceback before the crash to help debug.

Minimal performance overhead, but bigger logs, and possibly dumps sensitive info.

Enable Python Fault Handler

export PYTHONFAULTHANDLER=1

python -X faulthandler "file.py"

import faulthandler
faulthandler.enable()

Alpine `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pip._vendor.six.moves'`

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pip._vendor.six.moves'

Fix:

apk del py3-pip py-pip
apk add py3-pip

Small vs Big Integers - is vs ==

Consider:

> a = 10
> b = 10
> a is b
False

> a = 500
> b = 500
> a is b
True

This is due to caching small integer objects but not integers over 256.

This is rarely an issue in practice though since the == comparison operator works as expected and most people will only use that.

Instead, people should try to maintain open source Python over a decade of bloody code changes and trying to keep it working in different CI/CD systems to try to retain portability across different environments...

Python maintainability makes Java Null Pointer Exceptions look like the cheap “billion dollar mistake”.