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Linux Clustering
Bookman emphasizes a central piece of wisdom that no system administrator should ignore: redundancy. In the case of high availability clusters, parts redundancy is the name of the game, but one should not forget the human component; no administrator should be caught with only a cell phone -- keep a pager just in case. However, in a post-modern turn that might seem brilliant if it were applied in a work of fiction rather than a technical book, the author seems to apply the concept of redundancy to the text itself.
That the book began not as a book but rather as a collection of talks or presentations, or some other smaller format, is evidenced by the repetition of information between chapters and sections. Such nearly poetic repetitions also occurs within sentences and paragraphs (e.g. "nightly backups each night" on page 25).
An editor never looked at Linux Clustering; the book had two "technical reviewers" but their contributions seemingly didn't include fixing mangled syntax and strained style. On page 14 in the second paragraph a large segment of a sentence from the previous page is pasted into another sentence, resulting in a nonsensical block of text. The number of hyphenation, syntax, word choice, and subject-verb agreement errors is atrocious and makes the book difficult to read.
Some of the misinformation in the text appears to be unintentional (but ignorance is no excuse for a UNIX systems administrator); some is due to the fact that the author deals only with old (2.2) kernels (though the book came out 18 months after the 2.4 kernel release), old versions of journaling filesystems, and old distributions; and yet other misinformation is the result of misplaced attempts at humor (such as stating that GNU stands for the Gateway Naming Utility; one can only hope that this was intended to be funny). Other jokes often misfire, but do point to the intended audience (consider, for example, the section heading "Space: The Final Frontier").
In the Introduction, the author indicates that the book should be read by "Linux enthusiasts and users who want to get a Linux cluster up and running with the least amount of fuss." The organization of the book will not, however, aid this enterprise, for there is little "how to" information provided, but rather a great deal of background information on compiling kernels, various types of journaling file systems, and RedHat's Kickstart (perhaps inappropriate considering that the book specifically states that basic information will not be covered). Another section or two deal with basic networking and security. Various types of clusters are discussed, as are a few of the types of clustering software (e.g. Condor and Mosix) available.
The book, however, is clearly intended for administrators of clustering systems; a special emphasis is high-availability and load-balancing clusters. Parallel computing and the types of applications end users would wish to run receive far too little discussion.
Almost all technical books regurgitate the contents of freely available FAQs and HOWTOs to some degree, yet the good ones summarize the relevant points, make dry documentation more accessible, and give the reader some new insights. Because Bookman's Linux Clustering suffers from heinous spelling, grammar, and style errors; deals primarily with outdated software; contributes little new to the discussion; and doesn't speak to non-admins, I can only recommend that those interested in Linux clustering stick to online FAQs and HOWTOs.
You can purchase the Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Why is it so tough to find a decent book on this topic? Even O'Reilly failed here.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
How bad was it? It came with a CD-ROM that was supposed to automate the process of setting up a Beowulf cluster. None of the software on the CD-ROM worked. Running the install script printed out a message telling you to go to a Web site and download the newest beta version of the software. No such software was available ... ever. O'Reilly shortly withdrew the book ... and, reportedly at least, fired the editor who approved it for publication.
Want more details? Here you go. Waiting for this book, and then discovering slowly just how awful it was, set back a clustering project at my workplace by several months, by the way.
For somebody who wants to learn about Linux clusters. I've played with Mosix and was impressed. What are good books and sources to learn about Linux Clusters?
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
Not to mention he knows *nothing* of relational theory:
It seems that a large majority of MySQL users also know little or nothing about relational theory. The MySQL core developers fought a long time against including support for foreign key constraints. Thus not knowing anything about relational theory may not be a drawback in writing a book about MySQL; it matches the target audience, even if it fails to educate.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
The topic reads: "O'Reilly's worst dud: MySQL & mSQL"
/. archive. What was so bad about this book?
MySQL&mSQL was my first O'Reilly book, back in my old days in school. I spend many nights reading it and many classes trying out the things I read.
I still like it although it has become completely outdated now (at least my edition).
Maybe I should have a look at the
So I read online, whatever I found that was up to date and settled on the satisfying OpenMosix and... it works ! :-)
Non-Linux Penguins ?