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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.
i fought the mods and the
mods won
that would be fantastic.
if not, i still love you.
That is BULLSHIT. I will take that book and shove it up your ASS.
need to become 'net enabled? instead of having to learn something complicated that is usually of no use to you, you could investigate ready-made ecommerce sites. no need to be suspicious, since we've been listed as one of the "Top 10 Companies of 2002"(tm) [msn.com], on fuddle's search thingy.
almost everything's gnu now. talk about easy fashion [easyfashion.com]? ecomability [ecomability.com]? there's more...
beat DOWn from trying to be a billyunheir/keeping your job? you may want to try some nice ktea [kombucha.org]. it's not snake oil, but it's still good for you.
e:
cd i386
winnt
Many times I have *taught* UNIX system administration in only twenty-four hours. Ususally it was in the first twenty-four hours following me telling my boss to go fuck himself.
I haven't read the book, but the review says it includes a discussion of rlogin. Unless that discussion consists of "Do not use rlogin; use ssh instead" this book is obsolete. FACT: rlogin, rsh, rexec, and all other remote access utilities that do not perform cryptographically strong authentication and offer at least the option to encrypt the session are OBSOLETE. By extension, so is any book or document that considers such utilities viable.
And don't forget the ever popular:
Teach yourself brain surgery in 24 hours. Now complete with suggested self-experiments!
AND
Teach yourself Eye Surgery in 24 hours. Including a Reference CD Which Doubles As a Mirror for your Self-Practice Sessions in Chapter 16: Cataract Removal
rocket science is easy. Some basic chemistry, Newton's laws, the gas laws, and maybe some materials science, so the thing doesn't produce thrust in all directions at once (if you see what I mean).
Rocket engineering on the other hand...
Not any more! OMG, OMG, OMG, you... !!! Killed it.!
Port of Doom? Is that a cheezy goth-version of Ports of Call?
you want to spend your life paying off your wife's credit card bills. Seriously, don't do it. A fucking woman is a financial black hole; your money goes in and never comes out. It's ok for her to go on trips with her fucking mother and get massages and facials and fucking pedicures for thousands of dollars, but spend $40 on beer for your buddies once and month and she hits the fucking roof. Next time you think about getting involved with a woman, just jack off and set $5000 on fire. You will be just as sexually satisfied and will have spent a hell of a lot less money.