Linux System Administration

Bob Uhl writes "I've just finished reading a review copy of O'Reilly's latest GNU/Linux title, Linux System Administration. It's a handy introduction for the beginner GNU/Linux sysadmin, and a useful addition to an experienced sysadmin's bookshelf. The book is essentially a survey of various Linux system-administration tasks: installing Debian; setting up LAMP; configuring a load-balancing, high-availability environment; working with virtualization. None of the chapters are in-depth examinations of their subjects; rather, they're enough to get you started and familiar with the concepts involved, and headed in the right direction." Read below for the rest of Bob's review.

Linux System Administration
author	Tom Adelstein & Bill Lubanovic
pages	279
publisher	O'Reilly
rating	3 out of 4 stars
reviewer	Bob Uhl
ISBN	0-596-00952-6
summary	Good survey of various Linux software and technologies

I like this approach, as it increases the likelihood that any particular admin will be able to use the material presented. I've been working with Apache for almost a decade now, but I've not done any virtualization; some other fellow may have played with Linux for supercomputing, but never done any web serving with it; we both can use the chapters which cover subjects new to us.

I really like some of the choices the authors made. A lot of GNU/Linux 'administration' books focus on GUI tools — I've seen some which don't even bother addressing the command line! I've long said that if one isn't intimately familiar with the shell — if one cannot get one's job done with it — then one isn't really a sysadmin. Linux System Administration approaches nearly everything from the CLI, right from the get-go.

The authors also deserve praise for showing, early on, how to replace Sendmail with Postfix. In 2007, there's very, very little reason to use Sendmail: unless you know why you need it, you almost certainly don't. Postfix is more stable and far more secure.

Another nice thing is how many alternatives are showcased: Xen & VMware; Debian, Fedora & Xandros; CIFS/SMB & NFS; shell, Perl, PHP & Python and so forth. One really great advantage of Unix in general and GNU/Linux in particular is choice — it's good to see a reference work which implicitly acknowledges that.

The authors are also pretty good about calling out common pitfalls — several got me, once upon a time. It'd have been nice to have had a book like this when I was cutting my teeth...

Lastly, I liked that the authors & their editor weren't afraid to refer readers to books from other publishers, in addition to O'Reilly's (uniformly excellent) offerings. Not all publishers would be so forthright; O'Reilly merits recognition for their openness.

The book's not quite perfect, though. I wish that PostgreSQL had at least been mentioned as a more powerful, more stable (and often faster in practice) alternative to MySQL, and one doesn't actually need to register a domain in order to set up static IP addressing. Still, these are pretty minor quibbles.

I'd say that the ideal audience for this book is a small-to-medium business admin who'd like to start using Linux, or who already is but doesn't really feel confident yet. It covers enough categories that at least a few are likely to be relevant. Even an experienced admin will probably find some useful stuff in here.

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Pitfalls....

[iknownuttin]

The authors are also pretty good about calling out common pitfalls -- several got me, once upon a time. It'd have been nice to have had a book like this when I was cutting my teeth...

I bet you never forgot the problem again. That's the thing, by researching these problems, you come across similar problems and pitfalls and you learn more looking it up.

The second thing is, many times, these pitfalls disappear after a release or so, so having them documented in a book that's updated after several releases can be a waste. On the other hand, when you have a boss/customer breathing down your neck, learning be damned, you got to get this sucker up and running!

sendmail vs postfix

[rossz]

Postfix is more stable and far more secure.

Excuse me? Based on what? I would have been able to accept the argument that "postfix is easier to configure than sendmail", but questioning the security of sendmail is complete bullshit. In the last 10 years sendmail has had how many critical security flaws?

Re:sendmail vs postfix

[Anonymous Coward]

Based upon past history.

Re:What about monitoring ?

[Meorah]

Viewed as too expensive/unnecessary by executives, adds no features, most smaller businesses can resolve their issues without installing monitoring software by overworking their admins instead.

What are the reasons for Sendmail?

[Bromskloss]

I don't know why I would need it, so I probably don't, but it would be interesting to know.

Re:What are the reasons for Sendmail?

[e9th]

The last time I needed Sendmail I was using a MicroVAX II as a DECnet/uucp gateway.

Re:What are the reasons for Sendmail?

[brunascle]

for sending mail. that's my guess, anyway.

Re:sendmail vs postfix

[kyliaar]

I run sendmail for my organizations inbound mail service. I spent a good amount of time tweaking it, enabled amavisd with spamassassin, writing custom access rules and milters to protect our outdated Exchange network, etc. I constantly used the O'Reilly sendmail book to figure out how to do things as sendmail configuration is anything but simple, intuitive or user-friendly. In my years with working with it, I have not found any sort of inherent security flaw that wasn't quickly fixed with a security patch. Most distributions have a pretty good base configuration for it as well.

One could argue that the benefit of sendmail is the amount of configurability it gives the admin. This is true. If you want a mail environment that is anything but vanilla with a lot of custom tweaks, sendmail is a good choice because it lays it all out for you pretty much. Postfix has similar features as well though.

This discussion is an easy one to get very biased on. What is the better choice will depend on what the specific needs for the organization are and what experience the administration team has. However, working with Postfix has a lower entry point than sendmail does. This point alone would probably make me choose Postfix for a new system design because it will reduce cost and increase flexibility in the future.

I do think it is flamebait and a sign of ignorance and/or arrogance to assert that sendmail is less secure than postfix or that no one really has a need to run it in 2007.

However, I will probably buy this book based on the review.