Review:Linux Companion for System Administrators

Note: This is a repost of Linux Companion for System Administrators

Linux Companion for System Administrators
author	Jochen Hein
pages
publisher	Addison Wesley
rating	9
reviewer	Jabbo
ISBN
summary	If you plan to deploy a Linux box in a commercial environment, and aren't a veteran Unix administrator, buy this book. It will save you vast amounts of time, and is admirably concise.

The Scenario

Let's suppose you're an administrator. And let's suppose you run Linux. Unless you're either a grizzled Unix admin or an absolute wizard, you will eventually run into problems that seem too complex to take care of, or you might throw up your hands when there is already a perfectly good tool to handle your problem. This book will help you through such problems, and is the only decent Linux-specific administration guide I have seen. I only wish it had been available when I first started running Linux.

What's Bad?

There is minimal coverage of Perl, fvwm is the sole windowmanager covered, awk is the example scripting language, and in the CVS section there is no URL given for the reader to find more information (how about www.cyclic.com for starters?). Coverage of printing is not as thorough as one might like. There is no mention made of RPM, YAST, or other package management tools, nor is there much attention to setting up Apache properly as a web server. It was written in German about a year ago, and has only now been translated, so it is not quite as up-to-date as the 1999 publication date would suggest.

What's Good?

At this point it would be fair to ask why the book rates as a 9/10. The reason I feel so positively towards this book is that its coverage of DNS, NFS, RCS, groups, and kernel reconfiguration is far and away the best I've ever seen in a book with LCfSA's relatively small size and broad scope. The ideal place for this book is on a sysadmin's desk, nestled between copies of "Essential System Administration" and the K&R book, which are probably the mightiest tools an admin can wield. This slim, relatively cheap volume is enormously helpful because, unlike the O'Reilly book, it is Linux-specific -- warts and all. It is hardbound, which is nice for a book that you may end up using for years. There are excellent introductions to "why-not-a-microkernel" and other topics which have shaped the current version of Linux. XEmacs, ssh, and various emulation packages (ibcs, wine, dosemu) are all introduced. The emphasis of this book is heavily on integrating Linux into a heterogenous network, which in my experience is a minimally-documented aspect of Linux. Samba and ncpfs (serving Windows and Netware, respectively) are covered, as are the dangers of the Nightmare File System at large installations. The reader is instructed to consult the various RFCs for networking standards, which is a fine habit to acquire, as is Hein's emphasis on Linux security. Last but not least, Hein mentions slashdot.org right in the preface.

So What's In It For Me?

A relatively green administrator stands to gain the most from this book; if you can set up a DNS server on your lunch break and do a hot backup of Oracle while merging a bunch of RCS branches from inside Emacs, you won't learn much from Hein's book that you don't already know. For newer admins or people who would like to use Linux's stability and modest hardware requirements to augment an existing NT or Netware installation, however, this book is packed full of handy information which is useful in a pinch. Ideally, one should also have a copy of the O'Reilly armadillo book, as this volume is in many respects complementary to that book. However, the more technically inclined could probably get by with just this volume.

To Purchase this book from Amazon, click here.

Table of Contents

-- Preface

Linux -- Operating System of the Future?
The File System Hierarchy Standard
System Start-up
Configuration and Administration
The Emacs Editor
The X Window System
Backup
National Language Support
Localization
UNIX Tools
Tools (not only) For Programmers
TeX and LaTeX Under Linux
Emulators Under Linux
Linux in a Networked Environment
TCP/IP Basics
IP Addresses and Computer Names
Network Applications
Network File System (NFS)
Anonymous FTP Servers
Linux in a Heterogenous Network
Configuration and Operation of a Name Server
Network Information Service
The bootp Protocol
Connection via SLIP and PPP
Linux and the World Wide Web
Network Administration
-- Appendices
The Standard Editor vi
Generating Passwords
References
List of Important RFCs
-- Index

This is an excellent book

[Mike Cornall]

It's just three weeks now since my son and I started running Linux, and we've already accumulated a few hundred dollars in books to go along with our free OS. :)

My problem was that none of my 20+ years of programming experience involved Unix. I thus bought a bunch of books, and started digging. Though most of the books were good, none of them seemed to give me what I needed most, which was a grasp of the basic underlying concepts of how a Unix system runs. This book filled the gap. The book starts at just the right place, by describing the standard directory structure, and the Init process by which Unix configures itself. Lots of books have how-to instructions, but this is the book that gave me the basic understanding that will allow me to make progress.

We haven't gotten far enough along to say how well this book would serve a veteran Linux person, but for an experienced programmer who's new to Linux, the Linux Companion for System Administrators is an excellent book.

LCfSA

[Lproven]

Well, I'm glad it helped you!

I've just read this myself, as research for a feature I'm writing for PC Pro magazine in the UK. I must say that I wasn't very impressed. I've got a fair amount of Unix experience (from years ago), but realtively less of Linux, tho' I've been looking at it since '95.

It's very patchy, and assumes too much. For instance:

o The book suggests using GNU texinfo for help, but it only tells you at around p450 how to call the info command.

o "Check your systems logs!" he keeps saying. He never says what logs, or where, until an appendix.

o Networking coverage assumes, by and large, a Unix network. This doesn't reflect the reality of a Wintel world leavened with a few Macs. They get a couple of sections.

o The translation occasionally falls over. What is a "Life" CD, anyway? ;) I guess they mean "a live filesystem on CD." Not too hard to get right; mystifying unless you already know what he's getting at.

The historical stuff about the WWW, kernels and so on, is fine, but pretty useless really - and easily found elsewhere.

A bit more coverage on editors other than the nightmarish medusa Emacs would have been good.

If it helps, it's working... and it's helped me. So, good. But it's not what I was looking for, or what I hoped for.