Netscaler 12 Firmware Now Includes Python

While recently upgrading my lab Netscaler to version 12, I noticed Python was getting installed so thought I would do a little looksee to see what’s available.

What’s Included?

Python is installed at /var/python/bin/python but isn’t part of PATH

export PATH=$PATH:/var/python/bin

Now we can easily run Python without the entire path.

Looks like the installed version is fairly old but it’s nice to have a modern programming language included now!

Also the path includes Ansible which is interesting and opens the doors for a lot of automation.  If you try to run Ansible it looks like Python is trying to run from a different path.

Let’s fix that with a softlink

ln -s /var/python/bin/python /usr/local/bin/python

And now we can run Ansible correctly.

More Possibilities

The current install also includes PIP which allows downloading and installing of packages.  For example we can download a quick bandwidth tester.

pip install speedtest-cli

And since the Python path exists within /var the packages remain even after reboot!  

Conclusion

The Python install isn’t all that user friendly and not exactly sure what the main purpose is since it takes a little work to get it to work.  Nonetheless, I’m excited to see what Citrix continues to add around this and think it’s a great option for administrators to have available.