Linux System Administration: Solve Real-life Linux Problems Quickly

If you are sys admin and do more than windows AD (that is Active Dictory in short hand form) Then you need this book. Linux is the bomb, it is the OS that runs and runs and runs.

I've just finished reading O'Reilly's latest GNU/Linux title, LinuxSystem Administration (full disclosure: I was sent a reviewer's copy).Bottom line up front: it's a handy introduction for the beginnerGNU/Linux sysadmin, and a useful addition to an experienced sysadmin'sbookshelf.The book is essentially a survey of various Linux system-administrationtasks: installing Debian; setting up LAMP; configuring a load-balancing,high-availability environment; working with virtualisation. None of thechapters are in-depth examinations of their subjects; rather, they'reenough to get you started and familiar with the concepts involved, andheaded in the right direction. I like this approach, as it increasesthe likelihood that any particular admin will be able to use thematerial presented. I've been working with Apache for almost a decadenow, but I've not done any virtualisation; some other fellow may haveplayed with Linux for supercomputing, but never done any web servingwith it; we both can use the chapters which cover subjects new to us.I really like some of the choices the authors made. A lot of GNU/Linux'administration' books focus on GUI tools--I've seen some which don'teven bother addressing the command line! I've long said that if oneisn't intimately familiar with the shell--if one cannot get one's jobdone with it--then one isn't really a sysadmin. Linux SystemAdministration approaches nearly everything from the CLI, right from theget-go. Kudos!The authors also deserve praise for showing, early on, how to replaceSendmail with Postfix. In 2007, there's very, _very_ little reason to useSendmail: unless you know why you need it, you almost certainly don't.Postfix is more stable and far more secure.Another nice thing is how many alternatives are showcased: Xen & VMware;Debian, Fedora & Xandros; CIFS/SMB & NFS; shell, Perl, PHP & Python andso forth. One really great advantage of Unix in general and GNU/Linuxin particular is choice--it's good to see a reference work whichimplicitly acknowledges that.The authors are also pretty good about calling out commonpitfalls--several got me, once upon a time. It'd have been nice to havehad a book like this when I was cutting my teeth...Lastly, I liked that the authors & their editor weren't afraid to referreaders to books from other publishers, in addition to O'Reilly's(uniformly excellent) offerings. Not all publishers would be soforthright; O'Reilly merits recognition for their openness.The book's not quite perfect, though. I wish that PostgreSQL had atleast been mentioned as a more powerful, more stable (and often fasterin practice) alternative to MySQL, and one doesn't actually need toregister a domain in order to set up static IP addressing. Still, theseare pretty minor quibbles.I'd say that the ideal audience for this book is a small-to-mediumbusiness admin who'd like to start using Linux, or who already is butdoesn't really feel confident yet. It covers enough categories that atleast a few are likely to be relevant. Even an experienced admin willprobably find some useful stuff in here.

I was a little disappointed with the book. I was looking for something lower level and comprehensive, more like "Essential System Administration". While this book is useful, it is not as useful as some others.

I had basic Linux understanding and wanted to expand my horizons. This book got me there. All sorts of good info. Now I can better understand what is happening on my server and how to manage its care and feeding. This book goes on the shelf next to the server.

Pocket guides are a nice addition to any IT toolkit. I have students purchase this book for the intro to Linus class and the all say it's the best book.

I got this to get me more acclimated with our Linux systems. I have only had very limited exposure to Linux and the apps you run on it. This is a great book for giving a technical person a good understanding of basic administration. I would recommend based on the book description and who the intended audience is for.

I shelled out the full price for this at a local bookstore with the hopes that it could help me setup a new Debian LINUX server. Normally, O'Reilly books have a very high level of accuracy and detail, this one deviates from that standard quite a bit. I used to admin BSD boxes many moons ago and thought this would be the perfect refresher course for me to get back up to speed with the current technology. From the beginning of the book, I started running into problems and was getting confusing errors that were not at all mentioned in the book. For starters, this book is based on older software packages that aren't included in the current distribution, so you have to use your favorite search engine to find out what the current version and installation package names are. Next, the configuration files the authors tell you to modify are in many cases wrong or non-existent. They have you comment out lots of lines in various config files only to discover later on in the book that you have to uncomment them so things like PHP will actually work. On top of that, the ISPCONFIG setup fails, as there is some sort of problem with the PHP installation. AARGH! I think I spent more time playing Sherlock Holmes on the web than I did reading the book. Which, I actually recommend that YOU do if you are in a similar position as me... To add to my frustration with the authors, their website is basically vacant. My opinion is they cashed the check from O'Reilly and forgot about the rest of their commitments to the readers who are spending from $29 to $44.99 USD on a copy of this outdated and confusing waste of paper. There might be a few useful tidbits here and there, but the web is your best resource for this information. I gave it 2 stars because it does point you in a general direction of how you might want to set things up, but the explanation of it all is generally wrong.