Unix System Administration Handbook: Now covers Red Hat Linux!
Unix System Administration Handbook: Now covers Red Hat Linux! by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass and Trent Hein
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Number of Pages:
- 896
- ISBN:
- 0130206016
- Product Group:
- book
- Publisher:
- Prentice Hall
- Publication Date:
- None
- BooksForGeeks.com ID:
- 1740
In the five years since the last version of the Unix System Administration Handbook Linux has changed the Unix world. The previous version discussed six commercial unices. This one has two commercial unicies--Solaris and HP-UX--along with two free ones--Linux and FreeBSD. It looks like a trend.
This information dense book is a surprising mixture of arcane fact and weird humour--with emphasis on the former. The dense facts are leavened by extensive references to the authors' personal experiences with Unix. This hands on knowledge leavens a fairly dry text with interesting anecdote and occasionally breaks into proselytising. For example, when discussing the automount utility in RedHat Linux the authors can barely bring themselves to mention it before telling us how much better amd is--for four pages.
It's interesting that though X-Windows gets a few mentions the desktop environments--such as Gnome and KDE--that run on it get none at all. Clearly real men still don't use graphical interfaces.
This is a working book. It's aimed at those who have to make the system work and keep it working. There's a great deal of emphasis on troubleshooting, and the utilities capable of providing the system information you need to do it. No configuration file goes unmentioned. The authors also emphasise the commercial realities a sysadmin must acknowledge.
Over the last five years there has been an explosion of books on Unix, and especially Linux. Many of these are referenced in the text. But if you need a practical guide to system administration on Unix systems the Unix System Administration Handbook is hard to beat. --Steve Patient
Reviews for Unix System Administration Handbook: Now covers Red Hat Linux!
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A serious, laugh-out-loud geek book!
Rated 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.
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counterpoint to the other reviews
Rated 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.
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Good book, poor editing.
Rated 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. -
I don't know any sysadmins who don't have this book.
Rated 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. -
Worth it.
Rated 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.