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The Linux Network Administrator's Guide
Introduction At long last, O'Reilly has released their second edition of the Linux Network Administrator's Guide. Updated to cover the 2.2 kernel, this book also serves as a handy reference for people using 2.0 or 2.4 kernels.
The book covers a wide variety of topics, including TCP/IP, DNS, SLIP, PPP, and PLIP, NIS, NFS, email servers, news servers, firewalling, masquerading, and IPX configuration.
Target Audience This book is clearly aimed at network administrators rather than Linux newbies. If your network consists of one or two computers, there will likely be little of value here. On the other hand, if you have a more complicated home network or administer an office lan, you will find much of value.
What's Good? This book is based on the Linux Documentation Project, though the online copy available there is rather outdated. O'Reilly have provided the entire contents of the book online, however, as part of their Open Books Project and should be commended for this.
The Network Administrator's Guide provides a great deal of information, complete with background, clear explanations, and examples. Although covering a range of topics, the guide is complete and fairly comprehensive. It is far more convenient to refer to this book rather than scanning through numerous HOW-TOs in order to set up your network. The guide covers each topic in sufficient detail that a reader is unlikely to resort to the HOW-TOs. Furthermore, the guide is a much easier read.
The author has taken considerable effort to ensure the information will not immediately become obsolete. The chapter on firewalling, for example, gives commands for kernels 2.0, 2.2, and the upcoming 2.4.
What's Bad? Unfortunately, there are some problems with the Network Administrator's Guide, both in what it contains and in what it does not.
The guide is mysteriously silent on a number of topics, not least of which are Samba, Apache, and Coda. While O'Reilly sells separate books covering at least the first two of these topics, some basic information on them would have been quite appropriate for this book. Many networks contain one or more Windows boxes and everyone seems to run web servers these days.
Sendmail and exim are covered fairly well but no mention is made of other mail transport agents such as qmail. This can be excused as no book of this size could be entirely comprehensive. Still, some of these choices seem arbitrary.
Also confusing is what the book does contain. There is, for example, an entire chapter on UUCP, as well as several references elsewhere. Although UUCP is certainly not dead, I question its importance for the majority of network administrators.
Dead Tree? Or Online? So is this book worthwhile? If you are involved in administering a Linux network, unquestionably yes. You may need additional information if your network also contains Windows boxes but this book should still prove valuable.
As to whether it is worth the purchase price or whether you should just read it online, this comes down to personal preference. Some people are satisfied with online content but I prefer having the information in dead-tree format, for reference when I am without a network connection. I also find it easier to read a book than a web page. I have no doubt that this guide is worth its purchase price.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. Introduction to Networking
- Chapter 2. Issues of TCP/IP Networking
- Chapter 3. Configuring the Networking Hardware
- Chapter 4. Configuring the Serial Hardware
- Chapter 5. Configuring TCP/IP Networking
- Chapter 6. Name Service and Resolver Configuration
- Chapter 7. Serial Line IP
- Chapter 8. The Point-to-Point Protocol
- Chapter 9. TCP/IP Firewall
- Chapter 10. IP Accounting
- Chapter 11. IP Masquerade and Network Address Translation
- Chapter 12. Important Network Features
- Chapter 13. The Network Information System
- Chapter 14. The Network File System
- Chapter 15. IPX and the NCP Filesystem
- Chapter 16. Managing Taylor UUCP
- Chapter 17. Electronic Mail
- Chapter 18. Sendmail
- Chapter 19. Getting Exim Up and Running
- Chapter 20. Netnews
- Chapter 21. C News
- Chapter 22. NNTP and the nntpd Daemon
- Chapter 23. Internet News
- Chapter 24. Newsreader Configuration
- Appendix A. Example Network: The Virtual Brewery
- Appendix B. Useful Cable Configurations
- Appendix D. SAGE: The System Administrators Guild
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send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Hah, reminds me of one of the old contractors at my office. He had "Maximum RPM" sitting on his desk in his own building but rarely if ever went there. He decided to print it (actually he got me to print it because I ran Linux) at my office. Then he went downstairs to the copy shop to get it bound.
Now it's sitting on my desk...
I was interested in this user group thing so I went an dug up the link: http://ug.oreilly.com/
Some notes from that page:
Sounds good! It's nice to see a company whose principles and practice seem really respectable... I haven't really seen any "dirt" on O'reilly, is it out there? I hope not!
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I believe he means "State Of The Art", i.e. cutting-edge.
Reminds me of the first time I heard that phrase. I was calling Digital to ask about the cost of a PDP-8/I (or /L or /E perhaps), and the saleswoman kept saying "we don't sell that model anymore, we sell only state-of-the-art computers".
I had no idea what she was talking about. I was just a kid who really, really wanted the computer in the pictures on the computer books he'd been programming from (and imagining sysadmining from -- the sysadmin guide for TSS/8 being my first such guide, and being my first big "fantasy book" ever ;-) for awhile.
It is really just amazing what we're now able to buy and install in our homes, computer-wise, and make available to friends all around the world to use in various ways.
Fortunately, I don't lose so much sleep over the possibilities as I did as a young teenager...!
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
The HOW-TOs were useful as well, but without a notebook computer, HOW-TOs don't really travel on a plane well. I do feel that some of the stuff in the book is irrelevant (setting up dial up services) but that it ONLY because it doesn't apply to me setting up my DSL/Cable modem LAN at home. I'm sure it would be very useful to somebody else.
One thing I was disappointed in was the lack of coverage of DHCP. Having recently moved to a new apartment and switching from static IP-DSL to DHCP-cable modem, this book wasn't all that helpful getting me hooked up to the Net. It helped in getting my internal LAN up, but New Riders Linux Firewalls is much better for dealing with DHCP. My $.02.
Bottom Line: A few MINOR flaws, but anyone that uses two or more Linux machines should have this book.
-psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
It would make sense to cover Samba--if NFS, why not Samba? Apache is a bigger topic, but if Running Linux can have a chapter on Apache and a couple sections on Samba, I suppose the NAG in the future might too. As for the choice of mailers, we just felt that Exim was more visible in the Linux community, partly because it's the Debian default.
Anyway, the wrong way to create a book is to think of every possible useful tool and try to throw it in. Substantial coverage takes a long time (and maybe more expertise than any one author can have); books that cover too much usually end up being superficial.
Accept this posting is as just a lilttle peek through the window into the complicated decisions an author and editor have to make; decisions based on their current knowledge, their judgement of readers' needs, the amount of time they have, etc.
Although Off-Topic, I do agree that those Deitel books (at least for C++) suck big time. I had to use that book for a C++ class and I hated it. OTOH, I have some collegues that swear by the Deitel books.
I guess it depends on the person, as for good C++ books, I never did find one that I really liked...
Try floppyfw. It's free, easy, works on a cheap box with no hard drive and is available here.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I highly, highly recommend Essential C++ by Lippman. Its less than 300 pages. If you can digest that, the books you want on your shelf are C++ Primer, also by Lippman, and of course The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup(the inventor of C++).
There are no greater authorities on C++ than the two authors I mentioned. Essential C++ is hands down the best book on learning C++.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Yepp, the book's downloadable for free. Here's the link: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linag2/book/index.h tml
The book I'm using is Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls (published by Wiley) and I recommend it to anyone getting started with firewalls. It is very well written and is set up in a way that allows to set up a firewall quickly and THEN go back and read about what you've done. I have found it extremely valuable in learning the ins and outs of securing a small network. This book may have even been reviewed on /. at sometime, but I'm too lazy to look right now. I found this book because I've been looking into using OpenBSD for certain tasks, and when I searched at both Fatbrain and Amazon for "OpenBSD", this was the only book that returned. I took and chance and got it, and I'm VERY pleased with my purchase.
Well after looking for things online and not finding them at all or even sparsely I have to concur with the AC who replied to you and also add my own observations. Personally I would like electronic copy of all books in ASCII format that I own. That would be cool and might possibly last longer. That will be my next project when I have a scanner. One of the benefits of having books is that you can take them anywhere you want, mark them up, dog ear them, physically enact your revenge, etc.
Also I want you to show me a online document that is better then the printed version of some major thing. Look at the comp.lang.c++ faq. They have a great deal of infommation but they lack in all the detail that the published book has by the same name. That's why.
So in conclusion until we get *good* online alternatives of conventional informational services people who want to know buy books.
Respond to s
Seems like a decent enough read. I wonder if there is a text available (in a deadtree format) that can provide a get-into-it type of method for people like myself: Familiar with Linux in only a superficial way, but really keen to set it up for simple network tasks because of its stability. I've been aching to set up a Linux proxy/firewall but I don't even know where to start.
-in a fast german car im amazed that i survived... an airbag saved my life!-
Cause when you're fixing a problem on-screen, it's a real pain to keep swapping. I glance around my workstation and see 30 or 40 custom pages stuck up, a dozen of which I use daily. On my desk top I have four sheets showing for just my current project.
I do read FAQs, Howtos, and Readmes. I also have 11 apps open: My Excel sheet runs 3 pages each for seven tabs; Generally three or four panels per Unix window (4); And customized mainframe session currently running six windows. All running on a monitor that couldn't display all those simultaneously in anything other than 1 pixel/character.
Sometimes, you have to whack people over the head to make them recognize what _should_ be obvious. Books (and paper) have some serious advantages over computers. Easily transportable, modifiable , lower power requirements, and can display more info simultaneously.
Because my 19" Viewsonic hurts my chest when I lay on the couch to read with it=) And I look even sillier on the train going to work=) I agree, I like using the PC for almost any short (although you can't call some of the how-tos short) documentation I can find, but find it cumbersome for something like a whole book.
To fail is human, to blue screen MS!
I couldn't agree more. For network configuration and admin, ORA's TCP/IP Network Administration is almost essential for multi-vendor networks. For Linux specific issues, I use ORA's Running Linux. Between those two, there is not much new material that is covered by The Linux Network Administrator's Guide. While it is a good book in itself, I found that the information contained in it was already covered by other ORA books I own.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
What a book which is a "Guide to Network Administration" says to me is that it's a guide to what you have to check up on before you go looking for problems in your applications. I firmly believe that this book should stop immediately before the in-depth books on the topics begin. If you include quick cheatsheets on apache, samba, and coda, where do you draw the line? At what point do you cut things off? "Well, my xfrisk server isn't working, why isn't there any data on it in this fine ORA publication whose contents are exactly as stated on the cover of the manual?"
And if you think just a checklist isn't enough, then how much data do they put in the book? It's important to recognize that ORA is in the business of selling books. At the point where they start making their other books less important, they have to worry about whether they're going to be able to sell them or not. So it makes sense from both an organizational and a business standpoint to keep that data seperate.
Of course, ORA doesn't have to worry, we all know they're the best source for documentation on just about everything. Rock on, ORA.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can't say enough good things about this book.
I recently put together a home network and this book certainly helped me a lot. It helped me set up a server running NIS, NFS, and Sendmail as well as guide me through a number of other minor networking issues. "Using Samba", "MySQL & mSQL", "Oracle Database Administration", and "Linux in a Nutshell" were my other closest allies in this little project.
I still haven't met an O'Reilly book I didn't like.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
The above sentence just isn't true. Even on a home LAN, even if there's just one user, isn't that user important? If I don't back up my work, then some day I am going to lose it. If I don't secure my gateway machine, then some day an 3l33t h4x0r is going to 0wn it.
When I started working with Linux, I didn't want to learn admin stuff. (It's not that I'm too stupid/lazy to learn, it's just that I had other priorities.) I had to anyway. I'm still a borderline-novice too, and that has had some unfortunate consequences at times. I really don't think there's any way around it. You have to learn this stuff, even if your box has one single user.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The Practical Guide to Solaris by Mark Sobell is good. But yeah, there are FEW good Solaris books around.
The second addition of the Network Administrator has been out for some time. The second edition is also on the LDP website and can be found here.
There is also a great book on security and optimization (which the NAG doesn't cover). It is called Securing and Optimizing Linux: RedHat Edition. It can also be found on the LDP Website. It can also be purchased from LinuxCentral.Com or LinuxPorts.com and comes with two CD's.
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
If you're using a simple network setup, or are learning the network side of system administration, this is a great book. It's the only network admin I've ever needed to use for Linux.
Just a note on O'Reilly, if you don't have a user group in your area, set one up. The user group gets free books, discounts on conventions and conferences, and lots of pre-release input and useful information. There's a link on their website, but you have to dig.
O'Reilly and Associates
-- build a man a fire and he'll be warm all day. set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Though this is a good idea to write abook about complex Linux-based networks, I'd like to highlight the fact that in real-life, the most frequent situation a sysadmin might encounter consists of complex hybrid networks, i.e. gathering tons of different machines together like (in my case) Digital Unix, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, Windows NT, etc.
There is an ORA book about this which I venerate : Essential System Administration, 2nd Edition.
It not only covers most situations (though more aimed at single machines) but is also written a very pleasant way by a woman: AEleen Frisch.
I especially appreciated when ORA asked a French(-speaking) woman: Céline Valot to translate it to French, thus preserving the typical flavour of the original author's feminine humor.
It is one of my fery few French computing books.
ESA2 not only covers most aspect of all the different unices but also implicitely conveys its reader to uniformize the way each machine has to do each job, hence making the resulting network even more homogeneous and easy to administer.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
that my company is going to have their print queue occupied for the next couple of hours.
Sig it.