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)

The next book will be lighter

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

RH9 is the consumer version, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Also look for....

[redhat421]

Mastering Windows 3.11 from the same author. :)

Bonus Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Headless Server?

[gandy909]

I wonder how this book rates with NON GUI subjects. Of the last several books I looked at on RH8, not a single one touched on command line stuff more than an occasional teaser here or there. When you are using one as a headless server, not only no monitor, but X not even installed, all these GUI centric books don't help one iota. It seems like either the authors don't have a clue as to how to administer one via the keyboard, or they just choose to take the 'easy' way to a quick buck.