Reviews for UNIX System Administration Handbook (Computing)

1. A serious, laugh-out-loud geek book!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2002

   There are people in the industry who won't take a UNIX admin seriously if they've not even heard of this book, commonly known as The Purple Book. It is a fantastic book on how UNIX admin should be done, written by people with very strong views on what is The Right Way to do things. They've written it in such a way that it is a very readable book. Something you can take on the tube in the morning and actually get funny looks because you'll find yourself sniggering out loud.

   Covering most flavours of UNIX, with sections detailing the differences between them for each subject, it goes through most of the issues a UNIX admin needs to think about and understand. If you admin, or support UNIX systems in any way, it is an invaluable reference to have and should probably be read, cover to cover, at least once.

2. counterpoint to the other reviews

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2001

   This book has a lot to live up to. Previous editions are almost standard items on sys-admins' shelves. How does this measure up?

   It remains a trove on information. Its contents have been updated (Usenet news is far less important, so coverage has contracted, for example.)

   Its coverage of security is more thorough, and web serving (very important these days) gets a lot more coverage.

   And it has lost the CDROM. How big a loss? In poorer countries, probably considerable. But with the number of security problems found, I wouldn't be happy with old software. Go download the stuff. And get the secure versions. Would you want an old version of SUDO?

   BTW, looking back over the 2ed at the weekend, everywhere I looked, they mentioned ftp.uu.net. The world has changed since then.

3. Good book, poor editing.

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2001

   The Unix info in the book itself is readable, relevant and usefull, but the lack of a CD in this edition is made worse by references to resources on their web site, which don't seem to exist yet, months after the book was published. Given the way more and more of such books relate to the web, surely a minimal check by the editors of links given in the book would have been in order.

4. I don't know any sysadmins who don't have this book.

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2000

   It's the system administration bible, basically. Still current after all these years. But note that third ed is out, and you might want to buy that instead. Personally, I don't see that it's worth the extra [money], but it does depend which unix versions you are supporting. Either way, you MUST have this book if you're a sysadmin. It's one of the very few books that I'd call an "essential" computing reference.

5. Worth it.

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12rd, 2000

   I agree somewhat with dewi.morgan@fullduplex.net that if you have the 2nd ed maybe not worth it. For me the best thing about the book is that I can administer my Linix machine (book's fine for SuSE) and at the same time learn how to do the same task on Solaris or HP-UX - or at least know that the same task is done differently on those platforms.