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Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration In 24 Hours
The Big Picture As you might get from the title, Sams Publishing's "24 Hours" book series attempts to teach specific tasks or steps within 1 chapter per hour. UNIX can get pretty complex, so it would seem that this format would limit the effectiveness of this book. Not so.
Topics from the book include:
- Unix Installation
- Documentation
- File Ownership
- Disk Usage
- Account Management
- Package Management (including the Fink system for Darwin)
- Process and System Controls
- Network configuration
- Web Server Management and shell scripting
Almost every chapter views how a particular task is handled with Linux as its normal focus, where many commands are shared between Solaris and Mac OS X. When functionality differs, Taylor downshifts to show how matters are handled in each respective operating system. As someone very experienced with Mac OS X, I found Dave Taylor's discussions on Mac OS X idiosyncrasies in contrast to Red Hat and Solaris very useful, particularly where Darwin overrides the traditional dotfile preference configuration, substituting the convoluted NetInfo services.
What to Expect Dave provides a Q & A section after each chapter. In an early chapter, Dave answers a typical geek question, "What Unix distributions do you run on your own systems?" Dave provides a very geeky answer--his Apple PowerBook G4 is running Mac OS X (with Darwin as its core, of course), along with a PC running Windows 2000, Linux Mandrake 8.1, and a web server running Red Hat Linux 7.2--a varied assortment that shows Dave puts the author in authority. In a later chapter, Dave touches on emulators such as WINE and Virtual PC as options for additional operating system support.
What makes the book work is that Dave provides a very conversational tone throughout the book, almost as if you're sitting with him in front of a system, talking while you do your thing. Humorous moments are scattered in appropriate moments to make things less dry (this is UNIX, after all).
Questions that weren't answered for me as a beginning UNIX sysadmin in another book by Dave Taylor, Learning UNIX for Mac OS X , were available in droves in this book. Topics such as scripting with perl or from the shell, disk quotas, crontabs, rlogin, managing system logs, and the like--all answered. Ever wondered how Mac OS X handles system init states? You'll discover that its a tad different from other UNIX systems, but not too much.
The Bad and the Upshot I ran into several layout problems in the book that were somewhat annoying, such as where tables or notes were sliced between pages, making them difficult to read. It wasn't a showstopper at all, but I hope that a later reprint will pass muster.
If you're still getting your feet wet with a few basics, or have a really mixed environment of UNIX flavors, this book may be very useful to you. I'd recommend this book to any Mac OS X technician who wants to take advantage of its UNIX underpinnings. Beginning Linux users should also find this a strong general reference. The book's cost ($25) is very reasonable, even a bargain for a book of this depth. Overall, Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours makes for a very well rounded reference, as well as a tutorial book. Perhaps the title should be shorter--it's quite a tongue twister.
You can purchase Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 24 Hours from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
I hope my sys admin isn't really reading this book.
(I hope he's already obtained these skills)
Does it come with a musical workout montage when the blonde popular admin challenges you to a ski off?
Until then, it's not teaching you jack shit about sysadmin'ing.
Why this supposed "Rosetta" stone was made for a Microsoft browser is a mystery. (Requires IE 5)?
Damn, I knew all those years experience were a waste of time...
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Could it be this book was secretly published by Microsoft to try and produce a glut of sloppy sysadmins and therefore diminish the security and credibility of Unix, much as inventing the C programming language was actually a backfired cold war plot to set back Soviet computer science?
Note for the humor impaired: It's a joke, not a troll...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
not :-(
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
those "Teach Yourself ${whateverThing} in 24 Hours" books aren't worth the paper they're printed on...the 30 days ones aren't bad for just learning the nuances of a language ( like GTK+ ), but you can get more sysadmin knowledge from buying your sysadmin 8 pints, listen to him rant and rave, and then take him back to the computer room hell-bent on vengeance w/ a screwdriver in hand...actually, you might have his job if you can talk him into a little cathode ray tube repair ( those suckers pack a lot of voltage )
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
Ummm... It's called peer review. Would you rather have a pastry chef reviewing Unix books?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
sooo.. this is the UNIX equivent of an MCSE?
Trolling is a art,
*Disclaimer* I have not read the book in question and the above is simply a joke, but the thought of teaching UNIX system administration in 24 hours seems unlikely....covering basics, maybe...most of these books seem to serve that purpose and are great as a reference in alot of cases.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
"Yeah, sure buddy, you're hired. Here's the root password and here's some old user accounts we need cleaned up. And would you mind replacing our sendmail install with qmail, we've been getting a bunch of calls lately from wackjobs screaming about some sort of "open relay" problem. Who knows...I'm sure you'll get that all figured out."
If you ever get stuck in a text editor and you can't quit, type [ESC]:q[Enter]
After this first encounter, you'll hate that editor. But you will change... slowly...
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
For the impatient there is 'How to screw-up your system in 5 minutes'.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Well, it certainly isn't as slashdotted as that one is....
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Does it have "Don't Panic!" written on it, in large, friendly letters?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Hm, I think I'll pass on reading this book, I'm waiting for Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration In 23 Hours.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
The job market is bad enough as it is - I, for one, don't want any extra competition out there.
The last thing I need is my developers reading this book, then thinking they don't need me around any more!!
Teach Yourself How To Stay Up For 24 Hours in 24 Hours
Woohoo! I'm finally a BOFH! Sorry. What I meant to say was:
"BOFH, eh? What's your username again?"
--
Mando
Somethingwicked started to choke violently on his drink.
"What a wonderful exciting cough," said the little man, quite startled
by it, "do you mind if I join you?"
And with that he launched into the most extraordinary and spectacular
fit of coughing which caught Somethingwicked so much by surprise that he started
to choke violently, discovered he was already doing it and got thoroughly
confused.
Together they performed a lung-busting duet which went on for fully
two minutes before Somethingwicked managed to cough and splutter to a halt.
"So invigorating," said the little man, panting and wiping tears from his
eyes. "What an exciting life you must lead. Thank you very much."
He shook Somethingwicked warmly by the hand and walked off into the crowd.
Somethingwicked shook his head in astonishment.
Slashdot readers are what??? *grin*
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
An excellent list I must say and quite useful, however I think there is one important item that is missing...
<sarcasm>
</sarcasm>
Truly, the list in the parent post is a good way to pick up these skills. But believe you me, it will cause some grief fumbling around trying to figure out the nuances of all the various types of systems and getting them to interoperate.
Are you bovilexic? Moo!
Thank God for this book! I've been learning UNIX system administration for years on my own, but now in just 24 hours I can learn to be a UNIX guru! Where was this book all my life?!
If a service goes down in the middle of a cluster and no client connections arrive before it comes back up, does it make any downtime?
Unix Administration in 24 hours
Programming C++ in 24 hours
Programming Perl in 24 hours
Administering Oracle Databases in 24 hours
SQL in 24 hours
Then I'll take off the weekend. Maybe go sailing - yeah, that's it - I'll sail from Florida to California on Saturday and back home on Sunday.