Linux Books

I purchased this book recently. Though a little outdated, the concepts covered in this book are invaluable for anyone who wants to understand UNIX internals. I would also recommend Maurice Bach Design of the UNIX Operating System (Prentice Hall Software Series)

Arrange the information for me to purchase the Magic Garden
from india on net

Excellent book on UNIX internals. Somewhat confusing at places. But still a good read for any CS student or programmer.

Kinndly arrange to send the info for purchase this book
within india , city and location OR Bookseller address
also how it will be purchased thru the Cheque /DD
Please tell me i will Go for it at any cost

The entire UNIX OS is expalined in a cogent manner to be understood completely. For any serious kernel writers this book is a great assert to understand the mysterious kernel. Great book to keep in hand.

Great starter book into Pen Testing. Big book with lots of information. Great book to read to prepare to start your CEH or CISSP studies.

If you live and breathe IT security, this books is for you. I would like to somewhat disagree with some of the earlier reviewers. I don't think this book was intended to be "the one and only" penetration toolkit manual. However, what it does do - it introduces one to the world of penetration testing providing enough information and examples on a wide variety of tools. A lot of great subjects are covered, such as reconnaissance, enumeration, scanning, web application testing, wireless penetration and more. It's a very insightful read, even for those who are just researching in the area of security. It will open your eyes on many aspects of information security. The CD itself is a good resource, but you may need to update some applications by now. Nessus signatures do get updated regularly.

At around 700 pages in size, the 'Penetration Tester's Open Source Toolkit' by Johnny Long is a solid reference material which is a nice pickup for anyone that is concerned with this subject matter. As with all Syngress books, you aren't buying these for the highest quality paper or design, but rather the material within. This is a solid book that most users should find helpful in their jobs.

**** RECOMMENDED

If you are going to do any work in the Information Assurance world you will want to add this book to your shelf and keep it handy. The authors of this book know the topics and present information clearly.
Each chapter is a stand-alone lesson, and all chapters build on each other to create a big-picture of exploiting any network and reporting results. The CD that comes with the book gives you excellent tools to start or fill out your library. Some are getting dated as of this writing, but all are still solid tools that you can update once you've learned them.
I highly recommend this book!

Title: Penetration Tester's Open Source Toolkit
Author: Johnny Long, Aaron Bayles, James Foster, Chris Hurley, Mike Petruzzi Noam Rathaus, Mark Wolfgang
Publisher: Syngress Publishing, Inc.
800 Hingham Street
Rockland, MA 02370
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 1597490210
Pages: 678 plus appendix and index

This book not only covers what tools are available for penetration testing but also details how to use them to effectively test the system. Some of the tools, such as whois and ping, will be very familiar to the Linux user and most power users of other operating systems. Other tools are less familiar but very powerful and a real insight into what can be done to gather information on a system before attempting to penetrate it. Part of what makes this book really interesting is the way the authors approach this subject. They don't walk the reader through all the details of a handful of tools but instead they take a task-oriented approach. For example they go first through enumerating and scanning a system, then testing databases, web server testing, web application testing, wireless penetration and network devices. They then end this section with information about writing open source security tools. Chapter 8 starts a section on the Open Source vulnerability scanner Nessus. It automatically finds many problems in the system by trying to penetrate it using various scripts. The results are captured and the generated reports detail the information it was able to obtain. This is a very powerful testing product and one of the most common ones you will find in the marketplace.
The authors detail how to set up a Nessus client and server, scan the system and understand the results. Although almost three hundred pages are dedicated to Nessus it is a very powerful and highly configurable program that can consume a full book by itself to use its full potential. Penetration Tester's Open Source Toolkit is highly recommended, insightful, and very interesting to read and experiment with.

I had a very limited amount of knowledge on SNMP but this book took me from 0 knowledge to the point where I use this as a reference on the job. I'm a network engineer that is in charge of managing our LAN/WAN sites across the US using SNMP based management and I find this book to be indispensible.

Very useful book for learning and understanding the issues of SNMPv3. Lots of examples and pseudo-code for in-depth understanding. Takes less time to read than all the RFC's ;-).

The one star rating I gave this book was because I bought this book based on all the people who said this was a great book for beginners to learn SNMP. ABSOLUTELY NOT! If you are a beginner, don't touch this book. Nowhere in the book does it show you how to actually USE SNMP practically. It does throw out some code here and there, but doesn't explain how or why the code works...let alone the most important part...how to implement it. It's just code by itself sitting there. This book may be a good reference for the experienced, but all it is is definitions of the different parts of SNMP. Big waste of time and money for a beginner.

I have been working on SNMP for a while, and have read a lot of SNMP books. This book is definitely the best one and it's written for both beginners and experienced engineers.

This book is the best SNMP book I've seen. It is extremely well organized and easy to read. It allowed me to quickly understand the fundamentals of SNMP v3 and the examples were very helpful in getting my job done. I highly recommend this book.

This book will no doubt be on the shelf next to my desk for the rest of my life. I have been a Unix/Linux user since 1999 and this is by far the best reference book available. I have specifically bookmarked the SED/AWK, Background, Uniq, and Word Count pages. In fact this book is so cheap when purchased used you could afford to give one as a gift to almost every "computer person" you know. Anyone getting started in Unix/Linux should certainly read this book. Time and time again I pull this book off the shelf for 10 minutes to solve a problem. This is essentially the swiss army knife of IT books.

I was transferred to a remote location and, because help was at least a day away, I became the de facto system manager for a UNIX workstation, with zero UNIX experience. The book saved my life through all kinds of minor and major crises, including three reinstalls of the OS. As soon as the second edition came out, I bought it. I plan to buy the third edition, also, even though I now work in a location where we have good support.
As the other reviewers have said, the book nurses you along in the beginning, and continues to be useful as you learn.

I agree with many of the reviewers (esp rpclark), in saying that this is a wonderful introductory book. I can further add that I have owned this book for 5+ years and it is still the reference I refer to most often. I believe, a particular strength of Sobell's book is that it was useful to a newbie and is still useful at the sys admin level.

A user of FreeBSD now for a year, the lights came on with this
book. Certainly, all unix books have something different to offer...this one excels above most. I agree with one of the other posts here that states "...it assumes that you are an intelligent reader", and "doesn't humor you with cute language and humor". However, I don't agree with another post that states that this book "is difficult". I am reading the 1989 copyright of this book, ISBN 0-8053-0243-3. The book does get down to the grit of things, but feeds it to you in a sequential manner. I don't like having to sift through paragraphs of what the author thinks is funny. In contrast to the "Unix Shell Programming" - Kochan & Wood, I found this book to be *to the point* on this topic. "Unix Shell Programming" is one of my favorites, but it takes a while to get to actual script writing. In chapter eight in this book, THE BOURNE SHELL, Sobell gets right to the point--after just 3 minutes of reading this chapter I starting writing "working" scripts---honestly. I keep this one at arms length from the keyboard.

If you don't like being talked to like a "Dummy",
pick this one up!

Just Have Fun!!!

This book was a required text for the Unix course I am enrolled in and I found it to be a very difficult book to learn Unix. The author attempts to explain shell scripting, for example, by providing the script and then explaining what the script does in paragraph form. This made the chapters on bourne, c and korn shell very difficult to learn from. Try Ellie Quigley's book "Unix Shells by Example" for learning shell scripting. Quigley provides plenty of examples to learn from and provides step by step explanations on shell scripting.

Sobell does a good job Chapter 7, networking. Most of this chapter is explaining concepts and not teaching and explaining Unix commands.

I would not recommend this book if you are learning Unix. I think there are books out there do that do a better job to those new to Unix.

Given a choice, I preferred the following:

"Learning the Unix OS" by Oreilly. "Unix Shells by Example" by Quigley, which I highly recommend

I think this book should have been titled more along the lines of "Network Attack and Defense", but that doesn't detract from its contents. This is a great network-focused coverage of some of the things that the bad guys will do to get into your network and, to some extent, what you can do about it. I particularly enjoyed chapters five and eight on wireless recon and penetration, which have great coverage on how to set up various wireless tools on Linux (which can be a daunting task for the uninitiated), as well as chapter eighteen on network sniffing (Practical Packet Analysis makes a good followup to this chapter). The last chapter also tacks on a bit on binary reverse engineering, which seems like an afterthought in the context of the rest of the book, but is still a good read. Overall, another great security book from O'Reilly!

This is a book that serves its purpose wonderfully.

Its chapters and articles are based on a series of assumptions. First, that the reader won't read the book from head to tail but bit-by-bit. Second, that the reader, although not a complete geek, has a deep interest in computer sciences and computer security, from a practical standpoint.
Given those two conditions, it is a wonderfully easy to read book which will participate in the answering to the following question: "what tool should I use to answer this ____ (fill in the blank) IT Security problem?".
That's a good thing for a "power tool book" isn't it ?

Security Power Tools (SPT) is O'Reilly Publishing's sister manual to their popular Unix Power Tools [&]. It is written as a primer to various security tools, organized within seven sections, covering Legal and Ethics, Reconnaissance, Penetration, Control, Defense, Monitoring, and Discovery. While the target audience of SPT is security professionals, the book weighs in at just over 800 pages and probably has something for everyone working in a technical facet of IT.

Having said that, I really enjoyed reading this book. I read it nearly cover-to-cover, and while I was at least familiar with most of the material in the book, I was still able to find gems of knowledge, even in tools that I work with on a daily basis. Expect to read about some tools that you may already know about, like Nmap, Nessus, and The Metasploit Framework, but keep reading for a heap of other useful applications that you may not be familiar with.

One of the strengths of the book is the varying backgrounds of its contributing authors; just as the book covers a diverse tool set, the expertise of the authors is also diverse. The book was written collaboratively by twelve individuals, made up primarily of Juniper Networks' J-Security team [&]. Despite an opportunity for vendor-bias towards Juniper products, the book remained vendor-neutral. The majority of the book focuses on open-source and free-ware applications, although there is commercial software covered as well. In fact, Chapter 9 - Exploitation Framework Applications covers Canvas [&] and Core Impact [&] exclusively; both commercial applications.

One of the chapters that makes this book unique is the chapter on Law and Ethics, written by Jennifer Stisa Granick. You may recognize Ms Granick from her representation of Michael Lynn in during the Cisco Gate ordeal at Black Hat 2005 (coincidentally, Michael Lynn is also one of the contributing authors of this book). She provides an insightful discussion on not only the legal implications of security work, but also the role that ethics plays in some of those "gray" areas that security professionals may find themselves in.

Another chapter that sets this book apart is Chapter 6 - Custom Packet Generation, which primarily focuses on the use of Scapy. The chapter is written by Phillipe Biondi, the author of Scapy, and he provides an excellent argument to "Decode, Do Not Interpret". He discusses the advantages of writing tools that will provide you with raw decoded information, without an interpretation of that information. For instance, if you scanned a port on a remote host, Biondi would argue that it would be better for your tool to tell you that the remote host returned a RST packet rather than telling you that the port is closed. Beyond this valuable discussion, Biondi provides a very thorough discussion of the uses of Scapy, along with several good examples. This chapter alone makes this book worth buying.

While I liked this book, there were also some problems that prevented me from giving it a 5-star rating. For starters, the preface describes the overwhelming amount of content that was edited out of this book to keep it within size constraints, yet there was quite a bit of content that detracted from the value-density of the book. As I mentioned previously, the majority of SPT is a security primer and should not be considered a reference. Given this position, I believe that there was too much step-by-step installation and setup content. As an example, Chapter 16 - E-Mail Security and Anti-Spam covered the installation and management of the Norton Anti-Virus client. I can appreciate the security-related value of anti-virus software, but I felt that a step-by-step walk through of a Norton product was irrelevant.

Additionally, while I previously stated that the diverse expertise of the authors was a benefit, the varied writing style detracted from the readability of the book. Content aside, I found some chapters to be fun to read while others were boring, due to a particular author's writing style.

In summary, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in an overview of where to get started in researching security tools for a particular purpose. While none of the discussions in the book are exhaustive, they will definitely get you started and arm you with enough information to know what you want and where to get it.

A classic ad for Snap-on brand tools featured the tagline, "I own the best, please don't ask to borrow them." In the new, complex world of IT security, picking the best tool for the job is no easy task. An indispensable reference on the subject, Security Power Tools, brings together a slew of expert authors who detail the best security tools available.

The main portion of the book is divided into six sections comprising 23 chapters that cover the following aspects of network security: reconnaissance, penetration, control, defense, monitoring, and discovery. The chapters cover tools for major operating systems from Unix/Linux, to Windows and Macintosh. The book is organized and progresses in a logical sequence that parallels real-world security scenarios and application of the tools.

Each section and subsection covers the subjects at hand, and then lists the appropriate tool for the job. The book not only lists and evaluates top tools but also explains how to access all of them, many for free, by downloading them from the Internet.

Many of the hacking countermeasures listed in the book may, however, require specific legal permission before use. Perhaps for this reason, the book opens with a chapter on legal and ethical issues. Yet the chapter does not read like a legal disclaimer--quite the contrary--it's both engaging and fascinating.

This book is written for experienced security professionals who need an authoritative resource for finding the best IT security tool for the job. At nearly 800 pages, the text covers nearly every available security tool known, making it the de facto reference to such tool selection. Readers will find it an invaluable guide

I am probably the first reviewer to have read the vast majority of Security Power Tools (SPT). I do not think the other reviewers are familiar with similar books like Anti-Hacker Toolkit, first published in 2002 and most recently updated in a third edition (AHT3E) in Feb 2006. (I doubt the SPT authors read or even were aware of AHT3E.) SPT has enough original material that I expect at least some of it will appeal to many readers, justifying four stars. On the other hand, a good portion of the material (reviewed previously as "the most up-to-date tools") offers nothing new and in some cases is several years old.

I'll begin with my favorite sections. SPT started very strongly with Jennifer Grannick's chapter on law as it pertains to security issues. She is an excellent writer and I would like to see her create her own book on the same subject. I liked Philippe Biondi's work in Ch 6 (Custom Packet Generation) although his coverage of Scapy (while great) is not for the beginner. (Just try as many examples as you can -- Scapy is cool.) Ch 7 (Metasploit) provided a great discussion of Metasploit 3; I learned quite a bit. I was pleasantly surprised by Ch 15 (Securing Communications). It was very practical. I should mention that some of the chapters appeared to be good, but they were outside my expertise and beyond my skill level. These included Ch 10 (Custom Exploitation), Ch 22 (Application Fuzzing) and Ch 23 (Binary Reverse Engineering). I was initially inclined to skip the section on BO2k in Ch 11 (Backdoors), but I didn't know the tool had been updated in Mar 07 and could be considered "viable" in the age of botnets.

Readers may also like SPT because it mixes coverage of open source and commercial tools. For example, Ch 9 (Exploitation Framework Applications) covers CORE IMPACT and Immunity CANVAS. Ch 3 (Vulnerability Scanning) describes WebInspect. Ch 17 (Device Security Testing) describes Traffic IQ Pro. Other commercial tools are mentioned in SPT but these were covered with more than a cursory overview.

The major problems I had with SPT involved indications of old material and lack of originality. Ch 20 (Host Monitoring) doesn't include any URLs for the tools it mentions. Tool versions are incredibly out-of-date, with references to 2006 or even 2005, despite versions from early 2007 (pre-publication) being available. (Examples: Afick 2.10-1, 17 May 07; Samhain 2.3.4, 1 May 07; Tripware Open Source 2.4.1.2, 18 Apr 07). Ch 19 (Network Monitoring) mentions ACID as a Snort console; BASE replaced ACID in Sep 04! The script to download and update Snort rules uses snortrules.tar.gz, which also (besides not working now) dates it to late 2004. Ch 22 says @Stake's WebProxy is a great tool, but it's been unavailable for several years. Ch 23 mentions SoftIce, but it was discontinued in Apr 06. (Unfortunately the same chapter neglects covering PaiMei "since it will probably change" -- although the Web page lists 22 May 07 as the last update.) Ch 2 (Network Scanning) lists PortSentry, but that tool hasn't been supported since '03 and is now replaced by Mike Rash's Psad. Ch 13 spends a lot of time talking about IPFW as a BSD firewall, even though Pf has been the preferred tool for several years. Ch 5 (Wireless Reconnaissance) seems to ignore that AirPcap is a viable solution for wireless sniffing on Windows. Ch 21 (Forensics) offered absolutely nothing new or advanced.

Overall, you will probably find something to really like about SPT. I would take a much different approach in the future. Trying to coordinate so many authors probably resulted in some authors finishing their sections in late '05 or early '06. They waited until the remainder finished so the book could be published in Aug 07. I am not convinced another mammoth book is needed -- maybe smaller books on focused topics would be worthwhile. I would also not bother to cover tools addressed elsewhere --especially in other O'Reilly books.

This book sucks! The jokes & crap in it are very distracting, we want the facts not the fluff. Everyone in my class hates it*

This is a great book for intermediate users. So many useful tips that can save you a lot of time. The writer chose C shell as the primary shell for examples. But he didn't forget about korn shell. That's good for people like me who use bash on Linux. The only thing I don't like is the writer's attitude towards vi editor. However, his humor really makes this book easy to read. Get this book and you won't regret it.

Excellent book. very well informed and very easy to read...Made the mundane job of learning about unix, a pleasureable experience.After reading this, you shouldn't need any other book to learn about the unix system! Highly Recommendable to both novice and intermediate users.

This is one of those books that's simply fun to read. On top of that, it's pretty darn good about answering the questions you pulled it off the shelf for. UNIX masters may find few new tricks here, but it's a great book for the enthusiastic novice. The worst danger of reading this book is that you'll get sucked into a chapter other than the one you need to get an answer out of because something funny caught your eye.

I bought this book in '95 when it first came out and I needed to learn UNIX for my job. I was able to self-teach myself using the book and a shell account our sys adm guy set up for me. My only background before this was DOS.

Today I still refer to the book even now and I recommend it to anyone trying to get a handle on files, script files, vi and all those other funs parts of UNIX.

Really good product, absolutely to buy if you really want to understand how your Mac Os X works...interesting for everyone which like Unix-like systems!!
Be careful with the edition since I bought this one valid for mac os x 10.2 instead of the new one, good for version 10.4!

It is never easy task to learn new things and studying UNIX isn't an exception. It takes much of effort to go through all of the details, often unnecessary, to grasp the core subject. This book deals with the most difficult stage of getting into UNIX: the beginning.
UNIX as probably any other operating system is a system: it means it is complex and not really easy to comprehend. To learn something about it you have to know something about it already and so on. This book is very nicely, didactically organized and facilitates the transition from subject to subject. I used this book and "UNIX Essentials" DVD thanks to someone's review and for 3 months they made the very, very nice and efficient couple.
You have the smooth consistent info with the book and then you have the workflow with the DVD. Highly recommended!

I like easy to read book and I also had assumed that learning UNIX is not necessarily has to be a struggle. This book stood up to my expectations almost perfectly bacause it is very well written. OS X is very nice and cool. It is most bueatiful OS ever! I also followed an advise in someone review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete OS X UNIX course put on DVD. These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, there is a chance you will surprise many people around!

Very good book to get up to speed with the unix side of OS X.
But: there are too many errata in the book, especially with figures or tables that contain inconsistencies with the accompanying texts.

I came to Mac OS X with almost 10 years of experience with mainly GUI operating systems; this book above all the others I looked at provided just the right all-round introduction to Unix on OS X. I cannot explain how a *Visual* QuickPro guide was so good at providing information about arguably the least visually rich aspect of the new Mac OS. It seems like an absurdly inappropriate format but somehow, it works perfectly - Mr Enzer gets things just right. There's no fluff and no overly chatty silliness to make the book an enormous doorstop. Nor is it ever tough going or unreadable - it's always well spaced, with excellent tips and notes sections and carefully paced.

It's probably about time that it was updated for Panther, which was released almost 7 months ago as I write this but the author has already provided the relevant information for bash users (a clean Panther installation uses bash by default) as well as csh and tcsh. (Don't worry if you don't know what these are - all becomes clear in the book.) Yes, there's a good Unix section for beginners in Mac OS X Panther Unleashed, too (Willam & John Ray) but this one easily tops it and provides much more useful information, good as the other book is on Mac OS X in general. There are other books that talk to Unix geeks about the Mac - this one is the best I've come across at doing the opposite.

I'm withholding one star only because so many errors made their way past the proof-reading stage. (Easily fixed - go to the Peachpit Press site and save a copy of the online Errors & Corrections page for this book.)

If you are new to Unix or have the most basic of skills and you use OS X, this will give you exactly the grounding you need using just the right kind of language. It's beautifully done. Just don't forget to visit the Errors & Corrections page at Peachpit.

Programming UNIX or Linux networks is a piece of cake with these books. You need the set, Vol 1 & 2.

As a professional programmer of 20 years I use the book as a refernce for all my new programs. I have used the books to break into the world of VoIP and audio CODEC network programming.

I cannot fathom a guess as to how many times the books in this series have saved my in project work over the years. The only drawback with this series is that some publisher should endeavor to keep them up to date. Serious Unix system programmers must have copies of the complete series.

Since anyone considering buying a technical book always needs to know what it covers, here's the table of contents:

Part 1. Introduction

1. Introduction

2. Posix IPC

3. System V IPC

Part 2. Message Passing

4. Pipes and FIFOs

5. Posix Message Queues

6. System V Message Queues

Part 3. Synchronization

7. Mutexes and Condition Variables

8. Read-Write Locks

9. Record Locking

10. Posix Semaphores

11. System V Semaphores

Part 4. Shared Memory

12. Shared Memory Introduction

13. Posix Shared Memory

14. System V Shared Memory

Part 5. Remote Procedure Calls

15. Doors

16. Sun RPC

Epilogue

Appendix A. Performance Measurements

Appendix B. Threads Primer

Appendix C. Miscellaneous Source Code

Appendix D. Solutions to Selected Exercises

Bibliography

Index

This is the third and least of Stevens' three books on UNIX programming (he also coauthored a multi-volume work on TCP). It is the not the least because it is necessarily the worst, but because it has the shortest and has the narrowest application domain.

Having said it is the least, it remains a work of the highest quality in an industry that is notable for the huge quantity of bad books that it produces. The structure of this book will be familiar to readers of his prior two books: the lowest-level building block around which Stevens structures the book is the individual function call. For each call (or minor variations on a single call), he provides the C prototype, and then, in text, explains what the function does, what it's arguments are for, and then provides a small C program that demonstrates it in action (all of the sample programs can also be downloaded from the web). These function-level building blocks are arranged into related sets, each of which is a chapter in the book. Each chapter has a wrapper that explains the basic concepts behind the functions in that chapter, and some review exercises at the end. The chapters in turn build on each other, with the most basic ones at the beginning and the more difficult ones towards the end.

In spite of the book's many positive qualities, one thing that this book brings to light, however, is that there is a thread-sized hole in Stevens' UNIX writings. "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" had a great deal of information about processes, but nothing about threads. "UNIX Network Programming: Volume 1", discussed multi-threaded socket programs, but didn't go into any depth on threading. This volume, although it discusses thread synchronization, only touches on general threading issues. Thus, the works, taken as a group, go into some of the important issues and uses of threading without giving the reader a solid grounding in the subject. As threading increases in frequency, this deficiency has grown in importance.

Another difference between this book and its predecessors is that it deals with an area where standards are much weaker than the others; thus, the chapters often have to explain different implementations for accomplishing a task rather than building a basic-to-advanced sequence. This obviously is in no way Stevens' fault, but many readers will find that half the book, which is already the thinnest of Stevens' programming books, is concerned with API's which do not exist on their platform of interest.

To sum up, while this review clearly shows the reservations I have about this book compared to its predecessors, it must still be stressed that Stevens' is a technical author of the highest level. If you do have a need to understand any of the subjects in this book, you won't find a better teacher from which to learn it, and that is why I am still giving the book five stars.

The real power of UNIX or any application for that matter is in interprocess communication. I found early on that to accomplish any large project would require the cooperation of interprocess communication. Now I find that simple administration skills also require knowledge of this interprocess communication.

My first foray into the field was to use semaphores to flag processes to run at the proper time. Later I needed to use pipes for a front-end in communication to SNA. Again I found IPC's could help inform and control processes that were in canned packages and not accessible any other way. The list of useful tools can go on and on. I also had to find the NT equivalent as it became popular.

UNIX is still out there in many forms and if one is to survive in the field an understanding of interprocess communications is imperative.

The Abbreviated Table of Contents:
Part 1. Introduction
1. Introduction
2. POSIX IPC
3. System V IPC
Part 2. Message Passing
4. Pipes and FIFOs
5. Posix Message Queues
6. System V Message Queues
Part 3. Synchronization
7. Mutexes and Condition Variables
8. Read-Write Locks
9. Record Locking
10. POSIX Semaphores
11. System V Semaphores
Part 4. Shared Memory
12. Shared Memory Introduction
13. POSIX Shared Memory
14. System V Shared Memory
Part 5. Remote Procedure Calls
15. Doors
16. Sun RPC
Epilogue
Appendix A. Performance Measurements
Appendix B. Threads Primer
Appendix C. Miscellaneous Source Code
Appendix D. Solutions to Selected Exercises
Bibliography
Index

One final note is that with systems dispersed globally Remote Procedures Calls are taking precedence in Interprocess communications.

This book is a must own for every serious programmer on the unix platform. It provides an insight on various forms of IPC APIs available on the unix platform. It provides coverage of both System V and POSIX standards, there is no match to it as far as IPC is concerned. The Appendices in the end also provide a performance comparison between pipes, FIFOs, posix message queues, System V message queues, doors and Sun RPC. I have not seen another book provide such a wide and deep coverage of this topic. What more - it all comes from the GURU himself!

Well this isn't the first time i have tried to learn Linux. Being a long time Windows user, it's always been a struggle to get Linux under my belt. One of the biggest hurdles has always been hardware support. Compared to Windows, Linux can sometimes be a real chore to get drivers for. I recently tried OpenSUSE and was really impressed with what i saw. But my first stumbling block was the wireless driver. My house is just not set up to have CAT5 running around. I HAD to get the wireless working. I was struggling with this for weeks, following all the online advice, nothing was working. I decided to order Beginning SUSE after reading some of the reviews. I'll be darned if Mr. Thomas' advice didn't get me over the hump. It was very exciting to see my wireless activity finally kicking in!
I have now read the book cover to cover and picked up a plethora of skills. My system is now dual booting with Linux/Windows XP, networked with my household Windows computers, printing to a shared Windows printer... It's a very exciting change and i must say for me, Mr. Thomas' book is what made the difference.

If you can put aside the Microsoft bashing and just go through the material it has just about everything you want in a beginner book for SLED. I recommend this book to friends and colleagues looking to take their first jump into the world of Linux.

Unlike other SUSE books I've read, this has answered all my questions so far.
There is even advice on improving Linux fonts and an entire chapter on the BASH shell (with an appendix of BASH commands). Also, a short history of Linux and OSS. Book has a somewhat pro-Linux anti-MS tone. Makes a handy reference for looking things up.

I bought this book from Amazon after reading the good reviews and hearing good things about SUSE linux; after a week I returned it. The version of SUSE that came with it is OK, but definitely not as wonderful as Mr. Thomas has stated in this book. The main reson that I returned it is because the book is not a very useful reference to keep on the shelf. Mr. Thomas has an obvious ideologial disagreement with Microsoft and allowed his personal opinion to interfere with his ability to communicate useful information. Furthermore, many of the other reviews posted here for this product seem to be very biased; almost like a few of Mr Thomas' buddies made mock reviews to help him sell books.

Prior to trying SUSE I'd been a mostly satisfied Fedora user for over a year thanks to the Red Hat Fedora Linux Bible by Christopher Negus. Negus' presentation of Fedora is far superior to Thomas' presentation of SUSE. After trying SUSE for a week I went back to Fedora with an upgrade and still find Negus' Bible very helpful. The main problem with the version of SUSE that ships with this book is that package management is convoluted. It's like SUSE is trying to use a combination of old and new software. Mr. Thomas' suggestions for resolving this issue did not work. I suspect newer releases of SUSE have fixed this problem, but 10.1 was a little disappointing.

The bottom line is that there are much better books than this one to learn and master linux.

Install was easy. I do have a problem with the DVD player and the codex instructions, but other than that everything installed easily. My install was dual boot with XP. The partition and dual boot tools worked fine. The book is clearly written and easy to follow. If you are looking at LINUX for the first time I would recommend this book.

Although the name is scary, the ideas inside are simple to understand and implement, yet very powerful.

I especially like their way configuring terminals and backup solutions.

Make this the FreeBSD book you buy after you've got a basic understanding of the operating system. In other words, this is a very useful "sidekick" BSD book. It's full of creative and practical hacks, and the price is right. Highly recommended.

Originally reviewied for the Lower East Side Mac Unix Users Group:
http://lesmuug.org/reviews.html

OVERVIEW
--
There is a type of information that I consider to be a gem, a kind of information that doesn't really fit anywhere formally. It's too small, or perhaps too esoteric, to fit in most places.
This makes it hard to find- though these info-gems can often can be the source of wild hacking inspiration, or solve my un-solvable problems in some elegant manner.

This kind of information sometimes gets collected and recorded, Some of us at LESMUUG have really enjoyed the Mac OSX Hints book, spawned from macosxhints.com website,

http://lesmuug.org/reviews.html#Anchor-Mac-49575

BUT, after plowing repeatedly it's one UNIX chapter in Mac OS X Hints, I found myself craving more...

A Problem with BSD books:
One of the quietly great things about the BSD family of UNIX Operating Systems, is the terrific documentation. The quality and consistency of the man pages, across every BSD I've ever touched, I painfully appreciate when I use man pages on other non-BSD systems.
The FreeBSD world has the FreeBSD Handbook project, a printed and free online resource which sets the bar for every fat FreeBSD book out there. OpenBSD and NetBSD both have amazing online tutorials and documentation projects as well. Even the fledgling DragonFly BSD project has a full-blown Handbook, modeled after its FreeBSD lineage.
In the OpenDarwin and OSX world we enjoy the legacy of solid man pages and solid HowTo's online from our BSD heritage, and of course free registrations to developer.apple.com to boot.

With all that great documentation, it's really tough to find a BSD book that's really valuable, especially for experienced users, and Dru Lavigne has made a valuable and fun resource with BSD Hacks. The book is an impressive compilation of BSD gems, and as it's written for newbies and hardcore hackers alike.

Dru is a Canadian BSD Rockstar, well known in the BSD world for her articles with O'Reilly online, including the FreeBSD Basics column for ONLamp,

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/73

so who better to write a book that doesn't fit into traditional documentation?! Someone who KNOWS BSD.


ABOUT THIS BOOK
--
The Book is comprised of so many disparate yet complete ideas, It's hard to sum up exactly what's in there. From networking, to gems on system maintenance, and gems about basics that really get lost in man pages. There's information about things like keeping up-to-date, giving a tutorial-level big picture of what can be done to keep your UNIX system running smoothly, boot and Login gems, some good Security Hacks and hacks about system customization and shell tricks. There's even a tutorial for how to create YOUR OWN man pages.

For Mac/Darwin users, the majority of the book applies directly to Darwin UNIX! A section which by its nature is OS-specific, would be the hacks about various port and application-distribution systems. This includes a good how-to for DarwinPorts, right along with the usual ports systems for other platforms. The section on filesystems doesn't have anything on hfs+, but that can be excused, insomuch as many mac-centric texts do it the same injustice.

Check out the TOC online for a full description of the book contents:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bsdhks/toc.html


CONCLUSION
--
If you are a UNIX user who loves info-gems like I do, or you're a Mac UNIX user who digs macosxhints.com, (and the books published from it), I feel BSD Hacks will provide many weekends, and workdays worth of BSD gems- all written by a great technical author. This book now sits next to my printed FreeBSD Handbook, and since much of these gems are fairly timeless, I believe it will stay with me for a long time to come.

Whether you are a beginner or an advanced user, you will find this book extremely practical. Dru's solutions make building a BSD server from start to finish a snap. Buy this book as a supplement at the very least. 5 stars!

I just thought this book is not really that good. Most were not even hacks, but just basic usage. The only hacks book I really liked was by Rob - Linux Server Hacks. I would really recommend that one, even if you use bsd as it has true hacks with tar/ssh/etc. Try the Absolute OpenBSD book too. That is quite good and has a lot of info.