Mastering Red Hat Linux 9

Dan Clough writes "Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9. It's over 900 pages, and includes the "Publisher's Edition" of RH9 on 2 CDs. It is written in a style which should accommodate Linux newcomers and more experienced users alike. There are a lot of examples, code snippets, and screenshots throughout the book. In fact, sometimes the abundance of these tend to make the material a little long to wade through. Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though." Read on for the rest of Dan's review. Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 author Michael Jang pages 942 publisher Sybex rating 8 of 10 reviewer Dan Clough ISBN 078214179X summary Good summary for operating a Linux system; though it uses Red Hat, it's not Red Hat-dependent.

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.

Comments

eol

[chef_raekwon]

good thing this book came out before the End of Life for Redhat 9, in 5 months.

(yeah, I guess this is a troll)

Re:eol

[Rinikusu]

I was going to post something similar, but then realized that at the very least, someone may get something out of it. Basically, the publishers/writers can get an idea of what they got right and what they can work on for the next Mastering (Fedora?) book. The biggest problem facing publishers is similar to the dilemna that RedHat was facing: RH spent all the time getting a distro out, then working on the documentation, and by the time everything was out, the distro looked dated by the overwhelming numbers of "new releases" in the software they distributed. Compound that with the latency involved in writing a big book on that distro rendered "obsolete" within a month or two when a new version of that distro is released. Such is life on the bleeding edge. (and for note, it's not just Linux.. Something I found interesting was that Real World Bryce 4 came out just shortly before Bryce 5 and still hasn't been updated...)

Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[Space cowboy]

...given that Fedora is going to be based around Redhat 9, I suppose the (rather poor :-) timing isn't an issue.

I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian now that RH9 isn't a 'hold-your-hands' upgradable system (assuming you buy RH update :-)

Simon.

RHCE books?

[rootnl]

I am/was busy studying for RHCE, I started out with RHL8, at that point only RHL7 books were available. In due time, RH9 was released and I found myself running 2 versions behind plus Red Hat is very proud of the fact that they switch their exams quickly after a new product release. This was one of the books that I was looking at to use as a study guide as it came highly recommended. Pity about the switch Red Hat has made.At this point in time there are no study books available for RHEL and you might as well forget about RH9.

This could be a VERY good thing

[Gorignak]

The way I look at it is, with the lack of constantly revising the kernel, maybe now they will come out with some standards, an API toolkit, and support for hardware made in the last five years. Yes, that's not completely true about the hardware, but have you tried to install any version of Linux on a new machine and had all the devices work right out of the box. I have access to a large variety of laptops, most of them being Toshiba models, with some Dell, Hitachi, and Compaqs. I gave up after trying to install on 12 different models of laptops. All of them had some problem with graphics, sound, chipsets, controllers, or network interfaces. The manufacturers refer you to the parts makers, the parts makers refer you to XFree or some other linux group, and the linux groups refer you to the manufacturers. It's seems like noone cares if it doesn't work on your machine, you should get a different machine. I've actually been told to write my own drivers if I wanted it to work. Hmmm, Microsoft has never asked me to write drivers before, but of course, they actually work with the parts makers and equipment manufacturers.