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Automating Unix and Linux Administration
From the outset, Bauer takes a straightforward and principled approach to problem analysis. Usually starting with anecdotal example scenarios (many of which will have you saying "been there before") and progressing through ideals, goals and consequences, he examines many of the common issues facing system administrators with candor and realism. Almost nowhere in the book does the author assume an authoritarian stance; he questions his own decision making process and encourages the reader to come up with exceptions to his rules. Fundamentally Bauer has one goal -- to develop a comprehensive system for reliably automating the tedious but important tasks that all system administrators face on a recurring basis.
Admittedly, it would be a fallacy for any book to claim complete and comprehensive coverage of all things related to system administration and Bauer does no such thing. When the author touches on topics that obviously require more depth than a single chapter can afford, he is certain to include at least one reference (and in many instances more) to alternate publications without bias to any particular publisher or author. Having said that, the book's scope and depth of topic coverage is impressive. Starting with an exhaustive examination of SSH and progressing through cfengine, NFS, LDAP, RPM and Tripwire (just to name a few) Bauer provides carefully detailed instruction on how to automate tasks ranging from simple network management and software packaging to security, monitoring and backups. The author even goes so far as to suggest methods for efficiently front-ending automation systems for the less technical of users.
Although not expressly stated in the text, the overall theme of the book is walk on the shoulders of giants. Starting with simple example scripts (in both Bash and Perl) and many single-line commands, Bauer builds on the content of each previous chapter as the book progresses. Examples shown in early chapters are incorporated into more complex systems one step at a time. Following along is easy, each script or command is detailed on a line-by-line basis, and because of Bauer's principle-based approach the reader is rarely left wondering why the author has chosen a particular tool or implementation. More often than not the elegance of how Bauer pieces together methods and procedures will excite you about the possibilities for automation of your own systems.
Although Bauer explicitly states that readers are presumed to have more than a modicum of experience in system administration, even the novice administrator, as well as those that are responsible for only a handful of machines, will find this book invaluable. Also included are three appendices which provide an easy introduction to basic shell tools, creating your own RedHat distribution and how to package software as RPMs. These portions of the book alone justify the less than $40 price tag, but for those who run clusters or data centers, this book stands to save you countless hours of repetitive headaches. Published by apress and boasting nearly 600 pages, this lively read has made itself a permanent addition to at least one reference library.
You can purchase Automating Unix and Linux Administration from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Have book reviews on slashdot become about who can get the earliest links to their amazon.com partner site?
This books looks interesting (to me) and I might actually take a trip to the book store to check it out. But the comments (so far) aren't about the book.
No more Micro$oft bashing from me. Its like bashing at the special olympics.
1. Decide that automating takes too much time
2. Do everything by hand
3. Fuck up once too often
4. Decide that automating is necessary
Don't know about the rest of you.
Call me a cynic, but I am under the impression that without knowledged personnel (i.e. who don't need autowhatever) there will be, almost as sure as a natural law, a corrupt server or an autocrash. Don't do away yourself with knowledge - see what happened in the Windows world.
Simple question, that isn't really answered in the review. How much of this book is generic Unix/Unixlike information, how much is specific to a single vendor OS, and how much is specific to Linux?
/sbin/sh, for admin scripting)
I'd like to think that most of this stuff is fairly transportable, but when I hear about "bash scripts," I wonder if it's the reviewer or the book that's pushing Linux-centricisms. (and yes, I know that bash is available everywhere, blah blah blah. It still doesn't make it a valid replacement for
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
If you're thinking of this computer or that computer then you won't make an effective systems administrator. You have to see the network of all of the computers as a single whole and treat them as such.
Once you've got the mindset change sorted, 10, 100, 1000 systems it makes no difference, it's just as simple to manage. You aren't managing individual computers, you're managing an infrastructure.
Course, you actually have to be competent as well... Obviously.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It is definately on my list of Expensive Books (50. Am I cheap?)to Buy.
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