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Mastering Red Hat Linux 9
The book starts out with an introduction to Linux, and has a good chapter on preparing to install, including hardware checklists. This is followed by a very detailed step-by-step explanation of installing Red Hat, both locally and via network. A nice part of this is a troubleshooting chapter for solving installation problems. Part Two explains the basics of using the command line, how filesystems work in Linux, and using the shell for various tasks.
Part Three includes chapters for administering users and groups on your new system, and how the RPM software package management process works. Other chapters in this part explain the bootup process and how to configure it, various ways to perform system backups, and other common administration tasks such as cron jobs and logs. Especially useful should be Chapter 12 which explains how to update/compile your own kernel. There are very good examples of the myriad kernel options, mostly by using the xconfig utility.
The next several chapters go over how to configure and use the X Window display system, including good examples from the XF86Config file. This is followed by detailed explanations of configuring and using the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. The KDE discussion is very good, considering Red Hat is more known for its use of Gnome as the default desktop. Chapter 18 introduces many of the more commonly used graphical applications in Linux, such as OpenOffice.org, Gnome Office, and the KOffice suite. Chapter 19 should be very handy for Linux/RH new users, as it outlines the Red Hat graphical configuration utilities which allow customization of the desktop look-and-feel and other system preferences.
Chapters 20-22 cover basic Linux networking. The first part of this section gives a very understandable primer on TCP/IP and network terminology. This is followed up by excellent discussions on how to setup and manage networking on your Linux computer, including security recommendations and firewall/masquerading methods. Once you've got your network running safely, there are additional chapters which cover topics such as remote access and xinetd services, and various server applications installation and operation. These include DNS, DHCP, CUPS printing operations, FTP servers (and clients), NFS and NIS, and mail servers (sendmail). Some of these services are probably more than most home users would need, and the sendmail operation in particular is a little difficult to understand.
Chapter 29 (Using Samba) will probably be a great help for people desiring to integrate a Linux system with existing Windows computers on a network. It offers an excellent tutorial on how to share files and resources across the LAN, and includes an explanation of the SWAT configuration utility which greatly simplifies initial setup for newcomers. The final chapter in the book explains how to install and setup a basic webserver using the Apache software. The appendix of the book is a relatively short section called the Linux Command Reference. There is some handy information in this, although it seems to be organized somewhat haphazardly. The book's index, on the other hand, seems to be very complete.
Overall, I found this book to be a very useful reference tool. It is basic enough for most beginners to get all the help they need, and has a good amount of usable knowledge for more advanced Linux users. One thing I realized is that much of the information here is not necessarily Red Hat-specific, so it can be helpful to users of other Linux distributions as well.
You can purchase Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
RedHat is off the user linux market. All your skills are belong to us. Should've pursued MCSE or a degree from ITT Tech.
Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9
"Mastering Red Hat Linux 10" will be a thin, very complete leaflet to Red Hat Linux 10 that will have "Switch to Debian now!" written on it in big blood-red letters.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Mastering Fedora Core 0. I mean, hey, get people used to the idea.
You are not the customer.
Man, sucks to be the author. Put months of time into your book, then have the vendor pull support.
Of course there is another side: since there won't be version 10, this will always be the book on the latest and greatest version of Red Hat Linux!
Step one: Install a version of Microsoft Windows, since Linux is not ready for your desktop yet.
This has been a Red Hat approved statement(tm)
with this entire series is that they're very unwieldy and come with a 'orrible binding...the pages usually separate out within 3-4 months.
"The Complete Guide to Microsoft NT4 Internet Services" and "Push Technology: The Future of Content Distribution".
It must suck to publish and have the product EOLed within six months.
-jaded- walking the earth as a living corpse is in somewhat questionable taste
Linux books get charged a sales tax and a SCO tax?
Mastering Windows 3.11 from the same author. :)
Episode 3: Revenge of Redhat
Unknown to the Linux Masters, Senator Redhat makes a secret deal with Microsoft to bring doom and destruction to Linux. As the plan unfolds, the masters realize that they have been betrayed by redhat, but it was too late.
Microsoft's apprentice, SCO, seeks out the linux masters. SCO battles it out with linux, the fight looking unfavorable to sco. Then FreeBSD steps in and knocks the piss out of both of them.
Rumored to be the most powerfulest unix in the universe, The Little D.Mon Master proceeds to show who is the master of unix to sco and linux.
After the fight, the one left standing is D.Mon. D.Mon now angry that a little unknown linux master named Gentoo claimed to be a BSD Like and uber fast and all powerful.
The Freebsd master chuckled, and showed Gentoo masters a little document showing that there is actually a performance loss if one does "-03" compared to regular "-O". The gentoo master refused the truth, but couldnt fight due to emerge not functioning correctly. Instead, the gentoo master was busy trying to get its nvidia drivers working, and recovering from the crasy of "oh darn, -O3 made my system unusable"
FreeBSD took pitty on gentoo, and decided to give gentoo a copy of 4.9 and a nifty handbook, that explains everything, and what a true master unix behaves like.
Now Redhat, responded to the threat of FreeBSD, it incorportated a new weapon called "RHEL". RHEL has a deadly weapon called of "I can run linux apps". Freebsd chuckled, as it said "so can I, but even faster"
Redhat starts to cry, and shows it's new apprentice.. Fedora. Fedora, if you didnt know, is a redheaded stepchild, that was born out of "lets dumped the user".
Meanwhile.... Novel, the old master of File Services, is chuckling....
(continue the story)
Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though
well thats a nice feature but won't that soon be the entire book??
About two weeks ago I decided to try and install Linux on my old K6-2 450mhz machine gathering dust in the basement.
A friend of mine gave me a few cd's that had something called 'Mandrake' on it.
He said "This is supposed to be the most user-friendly 'distro' out there. Give it a try."
So with trepidation about wiping out my beloved win98se install on the old machine, I jumped right in.
On firing up the install disk, the Man-drake installer asked me if I wanted to remove the win98se partition
that already existed. After pondering this for several minutes I though, 'what the hell, I can always
reinstall it!' So I let it fly.
After what seemed like 45 minutes of swapping cd's in-and-out of the drive, the man-drake (isn't that some sort of bird?)
installer ask me what I wanted to use this linux machine for. So many choices! games, office, mail server,
web server, about 2 dozen choices flooded my screen. This is madness! So after carefully considerating my options
I decided to choose them all! I would be a Linux power-user to end all linux power-users!
So after this decision was made I waited. And waited. And waited. During this I started to wonder. My Windows XP
Home intallation on my other Peecee didn't ask me thse kind of questions, and it easily has the all the abilities
that man-drake advertised to have. After all, I paid for WinXP Home. Sigh, I guess this it the price one pays
for being part of the linux elite.
Approximately 50 mintues later I get another prompt from the man-drake installer asking me what kind of GUI I wanted
to use, KDE or GNOME. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! I selected both and let it fly.
After only about 20 mintues this time it appeared the install was completed. The mandrake installer told me it
was going to reboot and then I would revel in Linux goodness. I waited with baited breath while the reboot
churned away, eagerly waiting the opportuntity to use the KDE/GNOME interface. Page after page of command line
stuff flew by my screen, seeming to get faster and faster as the time of my linux deliverance approached. Then,
the screen flashed black (kinda like those scenes from the movie Wargames). I gasped and was presented with
something like this:
bsh: blah/blah/blah/ ____
What the hell was this? Wasn't this man-drake linux supposed to be user friendly? Instead of the friendly
confines of a WinXP like GUI instead I was given an ugly DOS like prompt, which looked supiciously like
the TRS-80 system I first learned BASIC on in high school. Is this all the farther the great open-source
movement has progressed?
After serveral minutes of sobbing and knashing of teeth, I came to a decision. All the linux fags out there
were not going to defeat me! They were not going to cry "Bend over WinXP boy, you're going to take linux OUR
WAY and like it!".
I quickly found my old musty copy of 'Unix in a Nutshell' from my college days and got to work. In a few hours
I found out how to start the KDE GUI. This made life so much easier. After several days I was able to get the
machine's 14.4 internal modem working with man-drake and connected to the internet, using a browser called
Mozilla. Where oh where were the glorious pop-ups that appeared as I was surfing porn sites? Those bastards!
After several more days I was starting to feel somewhat comfortable. Using something called Gimp to manipulate
my growing collection of adult images was becoming a habit. And because I was ashamed to let my friends and
neighbors know I was using a gasp! free operating system like mandrake, I kept the pee-cee in the basement. Now
my girlfriend things the sounds emanating from below are me just woodworking or lifting weights. I guess linux has
freed me after all!
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Sir, you need to be enlightened. Read the Unix Hater's Handbook. Unix will never be simple. It is a never ending pit of shame and self loathing. Chastise yourself before the One True OS. Hate yourself for not understanding how to use the code snippet in the man page. Stab yourself in the thigh with an X-acto knife when you cannot get functions to pass pointers correctly. And never try to fix the problems in the BUGS section of the man page! The BUGS have been there since 1978, and they are features. Seriously, you will break Unix if you try to fix the bugs. Every program *depends* on those bugs to run... er... feed themselves to the linker...
Unix is worthy of all pages ever manufactured from pulp. Hit yourself between the eyes with the 900 pages! Again!
Buy twelve year old hardware just to run Unix on it! DO IT NOW! Try to make modern software run on original SunOS! The GNU people that dropped support are *weak*! They don't understand their Master.
Keep changing jobs until they let you put Unix on all of their Windows servers! They don't understand. You must do the bidding of your Master. Don't use Nero Burning ROM! Use cdrecord, and sacrifice many cd's to Unix, the One True OS.
Install Unix on every computer you touch. You can just sneak on Zipslack, no one will ever know. But you will. And so will Unix.
Keep typing fgrep in a Windows CMD shell. It will always error, but keep typing it.
Buy as much hardware as you can, and install Unix on it over and over, in as many ways and combinations as you can. Saturate the T1s with every version of every distribution you can find. Keep trying to get Minix to boot. Do incessant CVS checkouts. Clog your mail server with mailing lists. Get time and date stamped commentary on every typo fix to the source!
Hit yourself with the 900 pages again!