[Tutor] python-based system programming and admin?

[Neal McBurnett]

I'm an experienced linux guy, with lots of python interest and some
python experience.

I'm helping a colleague develop software to run on our linux server.
He has python skill, but doesn't know the shell or linux very well at
all.

I'd like to give him a secure, safe, flexible development environment
on the serve, (which does audio streaming and other fun things).

At the moment, he has an account and can connect from his mac via ssh,
and copy files back and forth (ftp-like stuff - I forget which ssh
client).  But he doesn't want to log in to a bash shell and learn a
whole new way to do things.  But he does want to run programs.

Editing python scripts spawned by cron is one of the goals.
But developing them by waiting for cron to fire and send the output
via email is pretty painful....

The server currently doesn't need to run a web server, and I'm
reluctant to introduce new services that have much security risk
associated with them, but something like that seems like a
possibility.

One idea that just popped in my brain is to give him a python login
shell on linux - any advice on how to do that?

Other possibilities, I guess:

 - An https-based web server with and mod-python, somehow configured
   so that his jobs run as him.

 - a pure-python server (via twisted?) running as him

 - moinmoin or the like

 - zope or plone (not sounding very simple any more, but I've done a
   bit of this ....)

What would be the safest, simplest solution that was adequate for
providing a reasonable development environment?

Any ideas I haven't thought of yet?

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
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