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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'm sure its not nearly as comprehensive as this UNIX rosetta stone.
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)
Until then, it's not teaching you jack shit about sysadmin'ing.
Essential System administration by Aeleen Frisch. Covers Solaris, Aix, Linux, HPUX, SCO etc. Alas no OS X.
As a Unix sysadmin for seven years, I'd have to agree with the reviewer that this book is a lifesaver. I find that information tends to dissipate from my head after I absorb it (sort of like Mother Nature's swapping algorithm LOL), so I spend the first day of each month rereading it, and this keeps my skills charged for the rest of the month! I've even gotten pretty good at scheduling major projects for early in the month, when things are fresher in my head.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Damn, I knew all those years experience were a waste of time...
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
I've read a couple of the "Teach Yourself X in N [days|hours]" books. I have not read this one, but my experience with the others is that they can be best considered an "entry point" into the subject, and a reference for only the most basic questions. Anyone who thinks they will acquire even an intermediate level of skill (starting from an unskilled base) by reading these books are, IMHO, mistaken.
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
How many of these books can one own? I have plenty of books, but the mile-wide-but-foot-deep-overview books get old. I have Glass and Ables' "Unix for Programmers and Users" and Oreilly's "Running Linux". I reference there every so often (in fact just yesterday while installing VOCAL), but I'm not sure there is much more I could get out of a book that wasn't specifically about some library or application.
Most of the quick reference stuff anyone needs is on various websites and discussion boards.
sig
> 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.
I would argue that running Linux and OS X does not (necessarily) make someone an "authority" on UNIX. Where's his Solaris, SUNOS, HPUX, IRIX, and BSD experience? Has he ever installed cross-platform software? Only using a few machines, I would doubt he's using NIS or NFS. Has he ever?
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.
On the other hand, a book like this can never make you a GOOD systems administrator as the secret there lies in years of experience, knowing what kind of odd, twitchy little things to look for; and also knowing how to use all these neat little utilities and chain them together in the shell (of your choice) to make them do large, complicated, magical things.
A book like this might very well be the beginning of a beautiful career. The worry is that people will read it and think they're ready to tackle the world. Of course that's why we have certifications, but they only prove one's ability to regurgitate knowledge on command. Handy, but a book like this can give you just about everything non-vendor-specific that shows up on most Unix certs, I'm guessing -- and some of that, too.
On the gripping hand, it used to be matter of course that the sexretary or similar ended up being the one to maintain the mainframe, being sent to Armonk for classes... you know what I'm talking about. Maybe someday some of Unix's quirkiness will be ironed out and that sort of thing will be feasible in Unixland. I'm not holding my breath, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
I've actually purchased a couple of "for dummies" books...
The truth is, they can be a great intro to a subject that you don't know anything about. That said, however, they seem to be one-off books. That is, you read them once, and then never use them again. (The possible exception would be the "cheat-sheets" that some of the books include inside the back flap.)
So I would certainly consider getting, say, PHP for Dummies if I was looking for a quick intro into the basics of PHP, after which I would sell it again and by myself a good look-up reference for when I start getting into the details.
I read book on system administration and find them often times helpful in terms of putting together ideas of different ways to do things that maybe I had not thought of before seeing as I am the only big unix person in my org at the moment.
_ _
However, I despise the title of these sorts of books. I know that other people have said it but you cannot learn something that is in and of itself a profession within simply 24 hours and the title itself is just silly.
I feel that these sorts of books are almost a put-down to people that have spent years honing their craft only to find some dipstick book-maker claims that within a day someone starting from scratch could do the things I do.
The hell they can.
Note to the PFY of the world. Find a crusty old BOFH, be patient with them and learn slowly from them. No book, or certfication comes close to haing a good mentor when learning the craft of system administration. Not even close.
_______________________________________________
ACK
If you remember when it was a different color, consider yourself the BOFH.
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
UNIX System Administration Handbook 3rd ed. doesn't cover OS X, but it does cover Solaris, HP-UX, FreeBSD, and RedHat Linux. I believe the 2nd edition (1995) cover Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, SunOS, OSF/1, and BSDI
Hm, I think I'll pass on reading this book, I'm waiting for Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration In 23 Hours.
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No. But, for all I knew before I googled him, Kevin Spencer WAS a pastry chef.
If you're going to review a book, tell us who you are. An average Joe? The author's peer? Did you share a room with him at a UNIX conference in Toledo? Do your daughters play soccer together?
Slashdot readers are intelligent people who don't like to waste their time or be told half-truths. Any information about the identity of the reviewer that might allow us to form a more informed opinion of the book should be divulged. This isn't amateur hour. Lots of professionls use this site and as such upholding some basic journalistic tenets is a sound idea.
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!!
Want to learn fast?
read ALL comp.sys.blah postings. Try to resolve them on your own.
get some second hand UNIX gear (HP,DEC,SGI,SUN...) or some cheap PC gear (SolarisX86,RedHat,debian,freebsd,MacOSX...),build a LAN.
make NFS/NIS/LDAP/DNS/SMTP/NNTP/etc. work on your new LAN.
Read the documentation for each of your platforms.
Compile and use all the opensource packages you can find. Start with GCC and the major gnu packages. Do not go the easy out pre-compiled route (compiler for first compiler excluded.)
Make a NFS /usr/local to install all variants into. Make them work on each of your platforms.
Add printers/scanners/disk/peripherals to each platform. Add any bit and piece that you can find.
try to find EMC/compaq/netapp storage gear. make that all interoperate.
make everything work with everything else
Get on the help desk at a LARGE company or university and answer/resolve as many questions as possible.
never stop learning.
comment directly in my journal
I love the SAMS Teach Yourself stuff. The JavaScript and ASP books have been invalueble to me over the last few years. They are not reference books, although I have refered back to them many times. They are a starting point, a cheap starting point.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
It sounds more like you are talking about "how to become an expert at UNIX sysadmining". Now if you are going to be an admin you should of course endevor for this BUT we all have to start somewhere. Being elitest about it gets people nowehere, we were all newbies at one point. the idea of a 24 hour book like this is to try and learn the basics.
Of course experience is the real teacher, but it's hard to start from zero and get experience. You have to know SOMETHING to do anything, and a book is a great starting point. Initally, you know so little you don't even know what questions to ask and what to learn. Something like this can start you out.
I have read several of these, and I have found that they offer a nice introduction to a topic that I'm not sure how deep I want to get into yet. So now I know a little bit about everything(operating systems, programming languages, etc) but I'm not an expert in any of them. Those books, plus a little creativity on my resume makes me look like the perfect guy for the job -every job(well at least entry level).
No, I'd rather have someone in the target audience review the book.
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?'"---
When it comes to technical books, I look for a good publisher first, and a good author second.
A good publisher can help a so-so author (by, for example, good editing, technical and otherwise). A really good publisher can return a rotten manuscript as unpublishable and refuse to distribute the darned thing. The publisher can only do so much, of course, but I wouldn't lightly underestimate how much.
Any author, good or bad, gets a lot of value from the publisher. No book is perfect in the early drafts. A so-so publisher may often put out a very imperfect book.
I've had a little experience (from both sides of the keyboard) with Sams at one point in its history. I don't feel they were a publisher that added a lot of value once the author's work is done. They may have gotten some good authors who put out some good books, but not as consistently as (say) O'Reilly. (I don't know how Sams is doing these days.)
A couple of replies to earlier comments:
"... In 24 Hours" doesn't mean "start at 9 a.m. Monday, be done 9 a.m. Tuesday." It means, "put in a couple of hours a day, be done in about a couple of weeks."
Some people have complained this is an introductory book that's not very deep. Fine; it's not for gurus. It might well be a good book to read before reading the "purple book"; and that's not a bad thing.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
There are about a dozen keystrokes that you need to memorize, and you're productive with vi. If that takes you more than 24 hours, you should have started with a simpler task. :%! is open-ended. But the basics aren't that much to learn. Different from what most people seem to be exposed to before they get to vi, for some reason, but I think that's cultural and not technical in nature.
Of course you can keep learning vi forever, because what you type after
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Great, just what I need, anohter 24 hours book. I remember once when a manager under me hired someone who learned programming from a QUE 24 hour book. He could code, but he sure as hell couldn't think. Just because I tell you how to do something doesn't mean you've LEARNED anything. Any kid can memorize how to DO sysadmin tasks, it takes an EDUCATION on how to IMPLEMENT AND USE what you've learned. Sorry but the DOT.COM area has ended and the BLOT.COM (Copyright 2003) era has begun. Time to go back to 4 year degrees (or 10 years of experience, I'll accept either) and suits. God I miss the days when computer professionals used to wear lab coats and could actually think instead of quote a useless text book.... sob....
:) )
REAL QUOTE FROM A RECENT MCSE HIRE
While working with a lacky on fixing an Exchange server we had to disable several features in the registry. When I ask him why he didn't disable the keys himself he said,
"It never mentioned in the textbook how to do that."
I would gladly take a smart recently converted AMISH FARMER over ANY MCSE that has been certified in the last 2 years. I can always teach a smart person what I need them to do (and hire them at a lower pay rate initially to boot!
Here is a simple quiz on how to find a SMART person. Use this!
"A deaf and dumb (mute) man walks into a hardware store and wants to buy some nails. He approaches the store owner and places his left hand on the counter and starts pounding with his right hand, as if holding a hammer.
The store owner gets him a hammer.
The deaf man shakes his head and uses two fingers on his left hand and does the same pounding motion with his right hand.
The store owner nods and gets several nails for the man to pick from. He picks two nails and buy a couple of boxes.
The next day a blind man comes in. How does he ask for a pair of scissors? (What is you guess, think about it then read on.)
Now if your employee makes a scissors motion with his hands I would move him (or her) to the bottom of the stack. Why? The man is blind, not mute, he would simple ask for a pair of scissors. It's this kind of INTELLIGENCE that is needed in the work place that isn't being taught in most schools. I did this test to several instructors at universities to see what kind of staff they had. Most fail. To give credit where credit is due I discovered this test in Issac Asimov's book "The Realativity of Wrong" when Asimov was presented with this same test from... his automechanic. Asimov failed also it seems (in his younger years). This test show that there is more to intelligence than simply memorizing and regurgitating information, it's listening and applying what you've memorized, something a Blah in 24 hours book cannot teach.
P.S. No time for spell check. Later.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
As an aside, Sun just published what should be considered the 'Rosetta Stone' for Solaris. If you get into wrestling matches with Sun systems and need a good comprehensive introduction, you need to download this one RIGHT NOW.
I am not the "Kevin Spencer" you reference.
I am Kevin H. Spencer, author of one modest, now-somewhat-antiquated book on getting started with Mac OS X programming.
I am a technical editor and occasional contributing writer for a few Mac-oriented computer books from the old Dummies Press, Pearson Education, and Premier Press publishers. I make my living by supporting Macs and PCs, and have probably done so for longer than you have lived.
Aside from receiving a copy from which to make this review, I don't get a thing from this.
And, if I didn't find it more useful to explain who I am for benefit of the article, I would've used my mod points to hack your karma for making such bad presumptions. There's also a "South Park"-ish Canadian cartoon with my name in it, but I doubt he's a UNIX expert, either.
No book is a perfect reference, but this is a good one if you are getting started with system administration across various platforms. Don't knock a book due to the title. It's actually quite detailed and deeper than what the title implies.
For a relatively new system admin for Mac OS X systems, this worked for me, and it might work for others with similar skill levels.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
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?!
One microsecond of downtime (for a daemon re-start) re-starts the uptime clock in my book. Claiming continuous uptime just because the kernel hasn't been re-started measures very little indeed.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
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?
Honestly, my bookshelf is ready to collapse with number of administrative related books.But if I was trying to get someone up to speed realtively quickly, I'd recommend the following:
;-)
Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide 2nd Ed.
Author: Shaw, Steve
Really, the best migration book for Windows users to the Linux world that I've seen to date. Wide, but shallow, but that does not need to be bad. It's a good primer, but it does tend towards "cookbook" solutions. Get a deeper book once you've read through this. (3rd edition is due out in November, BTW. Makes a good Christmas gift to a Windows user that you know is trying to "covert")
Linux Administration Handbook
Author: Nemeth et al.
Opinionated. Polemic. A touch of arrogance, even. But this book and read it cover-to-cover. They obviously are biased against Windows servers. So will you after using *nix as well. Mine's dog-eared and highlighted to hell.
Essential System Administration
Author: Frisch, Aeleen
Dear God, if you don't own this, please go and buy it. Honestly, a definitive book on *nix. Twice as dog-eared and worn as Nemeth. You'll get this book when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Add a few specialty books to the mix, and you're more than set. Just read BOFH and develop the neccessary arrogant, anti-social attitude as you go
Cheers.
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.