Unix Systems Books

What I was looking for in this was a book explaining IPTABLES. What I got was much more. The book starts with overall theory and firewalls in practice, basics off the major network protocols, TCP, UDP, and then moves into the how-to's and breaks down the iptables commands. Script examples are great, already put some of his suggestions into practice.
Would recommend to anyone building a Linux firewall.

The book was very informative. However after finishing it, I was stupified to discover that there is no online errata and/or script download site. (Or if there is one, it is sure hard to find). It seems that Wiley and "RedHat Press" are hopelessly behind the times. This is a serious flaw in an otherwise very useful book.

I was looking for a good book on iptables and this book exceeded my expectations. RedHat Firewalls provides a great description of ipchains, iptables, and also some good sample scripts. In the past, I used the 'Linux Firewalls' book, but if you're running RedHat systems, this is the book for you.

Half of the book was 'into to firewalls' stuff, which may come in handy for someone new to firewalls entirely. I would have preferred more info on troubleshooting.

I wish this book was released a year ago! I spent a great deal of time and energy figuring how to set up and configure a Linux IPTABLES firewall. I did it the hard way. I dug up information from many sources and finally accomplished my mission.

This beauty of this book is that the author has put everything you need in one place. It gives the reader a good conceptual understanding of the concepts and then goes into detail on how to build your firewall. It also contains actual IPTABLES code that you can use with little modification.

Great book! Thanks Bill.

Although I am not finished this book, halfway, I feel compelled to review it. The book has great humor, good info, and makes a very dry read interesting. Although it does not go into great detail on implementing firewalls in the real world, it does have all you need to get moving on your own. I wish that it covered implementation in greater detail but then again most linux guys want to "feel" smarter by figuring it out on their own.

For the Solaris 8 Network exam, this is the only book I would recommend. I come to this decision fairly easy due to the lack of material in this area. It does have very good information but there are about 4 chapters where I found some inconsistencies. The chapter on DHCP was an ordeal, although it did have the best TCP/IP Suite and IPv6 coverage. The book does not have a prep exam the kind you would find in an Exam Cram (hmmm, that could be immensely helpful). It does have 10 or 15 questions after each chapter which were good (minus inconsistencies in some chapters) but it also has two essay form questions after each chapter as well. The intro alludes that these essay style questions are needed for the exam but this is false and a bit of a distraction. I passed the first time and learned a few things so I gave it marginal 4 stars. Study the book, refer to man pages to iron out typos and inconsistencies, purchase a home copy of Solaris 8 x86. good luck

I used mainly this book, along with the New Riders (to a lesser extent), to study for the SCNA. It is most excellent EXCEPT for the DHCP chapter which has blantant TYPOS galore and is just flat out INCORRECT at parts.

So I scored 100% on all sections EXCEPT the DHCP where I scored a big fat 0% -- all DHCP questions were service file location and purpose, no client/general questions (many blank fill-ins too). Since that's 10% of the test, if you want to score more than a 90% (or don't think you have the 10% to spare, 67% is passing....

Overall I thought the book was an excellent resouce. I passed the exam the fist time using only this book as a study guide. Still I was troubled by the number of case typos I found, especially in the DHCP chapter.

I have been waiting for this book to be published, and now that it has, and I have read it I am delighted. I have learnt an lot
and filled in great gaps in my understanding. It contains a few typos and is a could do with more examples in places but overal it is excellent. I have a friend who knows the author and so managed to acquire an early copy for review.
Excellent book Rick.

I bought and started reading Rafeeq Rehman's book, couldn't get past the typos and put it away. I don't mind that he couldn't spell, but I don't trust book editors that can't do a basic spell check, so I lost a lot of confidence. I tried to work my way through Sun's class workbook, but found it dry. In the meantime, my boss was pressuring me to complete my exam. I purchased the (very expensive) Sun online exam and Rick Bushnell's book, studying both for two weeks. I passed the exam the first time (unusual for me), and even managed to get a 66 on DHCP. I'm throwing away Rehman's book, but will keep Bushnell's for future reference - lots of good info, minimal typos, and great conversational style.

Hope you will publish the contents of the Book with some workarrounds as we can be confident in ordering the book.

I'd recommend this book to any Solaris Systems Administrator/Benchmark Engineer who deals with Performance Monitoring and tuning at this job. The book goes in great technical detail about the various parameters. It is a little old (was published in 1994 when Solaris was still in 2.3) but it helps in understanding Solaris internals from a systems professional standpoint.

Brings the reader upto speed as to the issues which could affect sun systems and networks. This is a murky area and throws light on how a admin can look at each issue judicously and eliminate them one by one and get to the root cause of the problem.

For all the Sun gurus, veterans and newbies: this is for you. As a must-have in one's library, it'll be one of your most worn out references in your serious IT career. It is practical and very illustrative in its approach to solving sample problems.

Great book. I can't say enough good things about Adrian's work. This book has lots of useful information on improving performance on Solaris machines. Really good information on tuning the tcp/ip stack, however, I wish there had been more of it. If you're looking to tune Solaris, this one is a must have.

I do like this book for all things it show to us.. Especially there are treated in a very good order the way how to be connected in a few days with the most usefull commands of Unix. But, the editing joe command not exist./ however really good book..

the book is fine for people in a course studying the Unix OS. For an end user just wanting to get their feet wet it is a little advanced. I found the general information to be helpful but a little more explaination would be needed. Overall it is well laid out but too advanced.

I was one of the guys who thought that UNIX is such an operating systems that's so difficult to understand and work with as a Network OS. I even was disturbed in choosing the NOS that I should work with. Lots of people advised not to use unix because of its difficulties in understanding although its powerfull capabilities. But when I began reading this book, I knew that all of those ideas were rubbish. Although it was writen since 1992, but I guess they replaced 8 by 2 -> 1998 .. GO FOR IT.

This book teaches you UNIX in a very well organized fashion. Unlike many UNIX books that claim teaching UNIX through a light coverage of the basic commands and concepts, this book makes a balanced coverage between daily normal user needs and advanced system concepts in a very clear and understandable language.The examples are very well written and the coverage of concepts such as shell programming or the different system utilities though not very much detailed but enough to put you on track. As a reference, I keep it always beside when I get stuck in poorly written or overly detailed manpages. I don't know if this book is very well known in the UNIX community but for all whom I recommended this book, it was a great delight.

This was not the suggested text for a systems programming course I took, but thank god I used it anyway! The book is very well written in clear, easy-to-understand language (unlike the suggested text). The sample source code really clarifies the concepts he covers. I got to grips with UNIX quickly with Mr Glass' book. I would heartily recommend it to students and users.

The author does a great job summarizing common PHP characteristics and elaborating on PHP 5 improvements, with plenty of well-chosen code examples. Well suited for the established PHP programmer making the transition to PHP 5. For those starting out, use "Learning PHP 5" instead.

A very good choice. PHP5 is a new wave in dynamic web development. It dramaticly improved the handeling of classes and objects. This little book is your quick and easy to use refference of objects, methods, variables, scopes, functions. At Procreative Designs (procreative.ca), the company I work for this one was distributed all over our web development department at the beginning of last month. I personally find this book really handy and useful. Previously I owned PHP4 Refference and it always served me well. Overall its a great choice for quick refference.

I own a sizable collection of O'Reilly books and have found them to in general be very well written and useful. "Upgrading to PHP 5" continues this tradition superbly.

This book is _not_ for new PHP coders; the vast majority of the text assumes good familiarity with PHP 4.x. If you have this familiarity then you will find this book to be a thorough and well-organized primer on the many new features in the new PHP.

The first chapter merely lists the major areas that have changed in the latest PHP, each of which roughly corresponds to a chapter in the book.

Major enhancement to the OOP facilities of PHP are appropriately discussed in the next chapter. Unfortunately, this is probably the most clumsily written chapter due a strange desire to educate the reader in OOP basics (about the only place in the book where this mistake is committed). The result is a schism that imposes redundancy in the material while simultaneously making it unduly hard to locate specific topics.

Thankfully the subsequent two chapters (on the new MySQL interface and the SQLite database) are uniformly well-written. Especially useful is a (perhaps oddly-situated) section on migration strategies from a PHP 4/MySQL 4.0 platform to a PHP 5/MySQL 4.1 platform.

A chapter on XML follows, but I did not read it in great detail since my applications tend to not require it, so other reviewers are likely to provide greater insights here.

Iterators, yet another feature completely new to PHP 5, are covered next. Unlike much of the conventional PHP fare (even OOP) this topic really does require understanding of rather abstract concepts (especially when debugging the RecusrsiveIterator interface). For this reason, while clearly written it may take hobbiests some time to take this material to heart.

The new error-handling functions are introduced next. I think that the chapter could have benefited from a little more discussion; Trachtenberg seems to think providing code samples is almost self-explanatory. At the end of the day, though, the chapter does its job.

The chapter on streams and filters is another one that I barely perused, so I defer to other reviewers on this topic.

The penultimate chapter provides a very cursory evaluation of a handful of extensions to PHP. While certainly useful to the practicing PHP programmer they are covered in so brief a manner that you will need a separate text to implement them meaningfully. But this chapter does give enough information to at least evaluate the extensions' potential usefulness in an application.

Trachtenberg concludes with an example PHP application. I do not like such examples in books - between space limitations and the complexity of real life this and other examples feel too... contrived... to be worthwhile. But I understand that it is included practically as canon, and do not fault the author for its inclusion.

So, all things considered, this text covers the changes in PHP 5 in detail in a surprisingly brief 300 pages (and small page footprint). A worthy addition to a book collection, provided you already have general PHP reference available.

Being fairly proficient on PHP 4 but looking for more info on version 5, the idea of getting books on PHP 5 that, once again, starts from scratch wasn't exciting at all. This book instead was exactly what I needed, it assume you know PHP 4 and covers only the new features with a good amount of details and a bunch of useful suggestions for code migration. The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is that in the chapters covering OOP and DOM the author try to explain the new functionalities but also attempt to throw in the mix more generic info on this two topics. The end results are somewhat mixed, the coverage of PHP 5 is, in my opinion, very good, but the material about OOP and DOM instead aren't up to the rest and does more harm than good.

This is a fantastic book. I frequently find that when an existing developer buys a book, he/she has to sort through all the garbage review in the beginning. This book assumes you are a competent PHP4 programmer. Then it takes you step by step through new PHP5 syntax and features that are unique to PHP5. It reviews and explains Object Oriented Programming (OOP), then discusses a variety of PHP5-only concepts, like SimpleXML and SQLite.

I recently installed a PHP5 server and this book has been by my side since. All PHP4 developers who expect to use PHP5 within the next year or so should really have a copy of this book handy.

Great book to show the two main pieces of biostatistical studies; choosing the best statistical design for the clinical study, and how to run data points through SAS software to produce statistical output. Calculations by hand for the statistics are also presented, so the reader can see that the software yields the same answer. Best book I have seen showing explicitly how conduct a clinical research statistical study.

This book covers all the SAS procedures applicable in clinical trials. It provides excellent examples to illustrate the methodology and the precise way to produce the results in SAS. It also gives the reader a very clear and detailed presentation of the output. It is so good that when we were validating Version 9 of SAS we took some examples from Walker's book that we tried to replicate. We had to keep in mind some minor differences between Version 9 and Verson 6 which is th basis for Walker's examples.

This book have a lot of examples with sas codes, outputs, and explanations of outputs, which is useful for practitioners. Recommended for practitioners, but not for serious statisticians who seek in-depth and accurate, a little more mathematical treatment of the topics instead of just explanations of sas codes/outputs.

This book is very instructive for those interested in the pharmaceutical field or might already be in, especially for those not having a statistics degree. The different tests are explained and tell you for what situations they can be applied to. Good examples with SAS code and sample data are provided. For most problems, manual calculations are shown before doing them in SAS. This book was not that easy to digest though. Multiple reading will make the material more clear.

Collections strong in web design and programmer's guides know that rootkits have a negative image - but DESIGNING BSD ROOTKITS provides all the information on how to overcome any bad image and problems to develop effective rootkits under the FreeBSD operating system. This instructional is actually a tutorial, so it may also be used in programming classes: it explains how to maintain root access and how to hack Free BSD, using many examples which assume no prior kernel-hacking knowledge. Code is described, analyzed, and linked to real-world scenarios for maximum understanding, making for a perfect programmer's guide.

I loved Designing BSD Rootkits (DBR) by Joseph Kong, and I'm not even a kernel hacker. Rather, I'm an incident responder and FreeBSD administrator. This book is directly on target and does not waste the reader's time. If you understand C and want to learn how to manipulate the FreeBSD kernel, Designing BSD Rootkits is for you. Peer into the depths of a powerful operating system and bend it to your will!

DBR covers much of the same sorts of material found in the earlier Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel by Greg Hoglund and James Butler, except Kong's book is all about FreeBSD. I actually read the Windows text first, but found Kong's more direct language and examples easier than the Hoglund/Butler text. After reading DBR I have a stronger understanding of each of the main chapters' techniques, i.e., kernel modules, hooking, direct kernel object manipulation, kernel object hooking, run-time kernel memory patching, and detection mechanisms. I particularly liked the author showing his sample rootkit's effectiveness against Tripwire, simply to demonstrate his methods.

DBR follows another tenet of great books: it credits previous work. Several times in the text Kong says where he learned a technique or what code he's modifying to do his bidding. This should serve as an example to other technical authors. Kong also does not treat his subject matter as a dark art practiced by people in long black coats at Def Con. He is professional and mentions where certain techniques like run-time kernel memory patching are used by commercial operating systems for "hot patching," as happens with Windows.

I have nothing bad to say about this book, although to get the absolute full learning experience it helps to know C programming, some assembly, and FreeBSD kernel internals. The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System by McKusick and Neville-Neil (another excellent book) is helpful preparatory reading. The fact that Kong provided all of his source code for download is also very much appreciated. Bravo! I look forward to your next book.

--- DISCLAIMER: This is a requested review by No Starch Press, however any opinions expressed within the review are my personal ones. ---


This enjoyable readable book gradually and very systematically evolves around hacking the kernel of a BSD system.

Chapter 1: Loadable Kernel Modules 22p.
Chapter 2: Hooking 13p.
Chapter 3: Direct Kernel Object Manipulation 20p.
Chapter 4: Kernel Object Hooking 4p.
Chapter 5: Run-Time Kernel Memory Patching 27p.
Chapter 6: Putting It All Together 26p.
Chapter 7: Detection 8p.

Its written in a style that allows also non-developers to grasp the main procedures and steps involved for modifying a systems kernel (assuming the attacker got access to a privileged system account).

Chapters 1 to 5 explain the several methods for modifying the kernel.

While the book is divided into 7 chapters, its most value really is the Chapters 6 which has many of those WoW effects included.

All or most technics described of chapters 1-5 will be used in chapter 6 for show casing how to circumvent an HIDS. Here is where all learned technics finally come all together.

So the reader dabbles with the author from an initial "simple" idea of bypassing an HIDS from one issue to the next. First the system call is hooked, so technically its kind of working, but then we realize that in order to make it perfect we need to hide the just created file (which contains the execution redirection routine). So the next obvious step is to hide the file so we dont leave a footprint on the system, just to realize that we need to hide the KLD (Dynamic Kernel Linker). So now everything is hidden but we forgot about the change of the /sbin directories access/ modification and change time, so we have to go after that too...

Its technically very interesting to learn how the author approaches the issues involved in order to avoid being detected by the HIDS or commands the user might use. That the author is technically on top of things is also shown f.e. by some info included in the book which is already referring to FreeBSD 7.

To get the most out of the book you ideally have programming knowledge of C, assembly etc. and debugging software systems. So I think its most valuable to system administrators, developers and security consultants.

I don't do a lot with BSD nowadays.. a lot of software customers want is only for Linux, and although sometimes it could be ported, the customers seem to want Linux. However, I cut my teeth on old SunOS, so bsdisms are familiar and friendly to me.

Working through this book was fun and informative. You can download sources from [....]

The concepts apply equally well to Linux, of course, and I also realized that some of the areas explored come up in ordinary application work and especially in system troubleshooting, so this isn't entirely about subverting systems for evil purpose.

Recommended for Unix programming (Linux, too) students and serious programmer wannabes.

This is a useful book for those who need in-depth information on GCC, but needs more effort in both writing and editing. There are numerous copy-paste-itis errors (contact me for a list), which shows that it was not properly proof-read. It also has passages in various chapters which are nearly duplicates of each other, e.g., two "Multiple Source Files to Executable" passages (pages 70 & 106), and five on "Creating a Shared Library" (73, 110, 132, 144, 165). Admittedly some of the details vary from language to language, but there's no explanation of what these differences are; the passages are merely repeated with minor changes.

There are larger but similar problems with the organization of the book. For example, I would have greatly preferred a logically-organized listing of command-line options to a merely alphabetical order. A reader who wants an alphabetical organization can already get it from the manual. This arrangement also leads to problems with the exposition, e.g., the definition of -MQ assumes the definition of -MT, which it precedes. There are other problems with the order of exposition; for example, there's a two and a half page sample of RTL code on 367-9, which is incomprehensible before the explanation of RTL on pp. 387-417, and badly in need of more detailed exposition even afterwards.

The author is knowledgable enough that one would assume he single-handedly developed GCC. Any doubts to his authoritativeness were quickly dismissed as I finished the introduction in this behemoth of a reference.

The Book is divided Into 3 parts(4 actually).

The first part delves into the reasons as to why? and what? regarding the creation/use of GCC. It also covers some incentives to continue through the book, which are later examined in detail. Installation, configuration, and usage is covered here. And covered quite well!

The second part details the mechanics of the compiler with tests and examples that take you through the workings of it. Mixing of different languages into one native-executable, experiments and understanding of the compiler's built in extensions/pragmas, and demystification of the command-line switches are all covered in this section. Also this section covers this in great detail as with the first part!

The third part of this book gets right into the fun stuff of learning how to properly set up configuration and make files. It covers a *great* deal of extra resources commonly found on systems with GCC installed and makes haste to demystify these as well. This was my favorite part of the book. I had no idea in the nine hells to even begin creation of 'configure' scripts manually(try reading the man/info pages for make and autoconf and watch your hairs get pulled out by your hands!). This section is concise and to the point!

Part 4 is an extremely important part of the book. This part covers ALL of the command-line switches and directives for use with GCC(and it's family of compilers). You learn where, when, and how to use the advanced functionality. A section in this part also covers all the environmental variables; this helps greatly when you are trying to figure out a perfect function/class/struct/call to do a procedure that ends up taking months...then you see here that a single variable contains actual data/info already!

All in all, this book is concise. I love it. It currently sits next to my Stroustrup(C++ Programming Language), Josuttis(C++ Standard Library), and Sedgewick(Algorithms in C++ 1-5). This book is upstanding. The only reason as to why I gave it 4/5 stars is because of the formatting. It reminds me of something you would find in a Prima Tech "Game Programming" book: large font, bulky, and divided. This is not the authors fault though since this same tasteless formatting is used in all other Osborne "Complete Reference" books.

NOTE: Do NOT get this book to learn C or C++. This book is for the intermediate to advanced programmer wanting to better optimize their usage of the GCC package.

When you are new to a platform you want to get a book that explains the big picture on how things work in this platform; you also want to get enough information on how to get started, not just the easy stuff that you can figure out yourself. This is that book for the GNU platform. If you are already a GCC guru, you probably will find little new here, but if you come from another compiler this book will give you a great introduction with enough information so you can start working right away and be productive from the first day.

Most HP-UX professionals recognize Marty Poniatowski as the premier source for system administration guidance. Now, Marty helps us understand the new field of Virtual Partitioning. His book is a perfect guide to "vPars", showing not only how to configure them, but also showing why you need to learn about this product. Marty points out the many benefits organizations can gain by splitting one physical system into several smaller virtual systems. Among these are increased system utilization, server consolidation, and the ability to easily migrate between a development and production environment.
I work with an HP Channel Partner and can say that several of my customers have implemented vPars on equipment that was underutilized. For example, servers that were only running at 20 percent of capacity are now running several instances of HP-UX and utilizing 60 to 70 percent of their capacity.
Marty not only gives you the commands you need to configure vPars, but helps you understand the prerequisites for partitioning a system. He also guides you through many other system administration tasks which you must modify in order to best utilize your "virtual systems".
I can't say enough in this space to do justice to this book. Read it, YOU and your company will benefit.

This book was exactly what I was looking for - clearly written, technically detailed and accurate. Plenty of practical information and examples.

The book has a nice intro section which would be useful to readers who are new to the concepts of Virtual Partitioning of server resources.

Marty has written this with several other experts. He has lots of practical experience and it shows in his explanations.

Lots of useful screen shots and a bunch of additional technical resources provided.

I just recently acquired, much to my delight, Poniatowski's latest HP-UX Virtual Partition creation, and this gentleman has outdone himself. I am amassing a library collection of Poniatowski's UNIX resources, and HP-UX Virtual Partitions is my newest acquisition, and it is superbly written. Achieving such outstanding publishing is nothing new to Poniatowski. He is the quintessence of UNIX pundit-gurus. My introduction to Poniatowski's UNIX Administration was initially through my purchase of his UNIX User's Handbook, another outstanding and superb volume text.
Poniatowski is extremely thorough, clear and lucid, and
has a highly brilliant writing style. His brilliance is demonstrated by his taking technical data from his stratosphere-level of competence, and expressing it in such a lucid fashion
as to make it easily understandable and useful for relative
newcomers to UNIX. Hard as I may try, I cannot recommend
either of these works too highly. Poniatowski is par excellence

with UNIX Administration. Any serious UNIX Administrator cannot
afford to pass up his books, which are absolutely priced at
a bargain by any standard. HP-UX Virtual Partition is a must-have for any HP 9000 User, and the concept of Virtual Partitions
is both efficient and brilliant. Don't Miss !!!

Having already read much literature on Vpars, I found Mr. Paniotowski's Virtual Partition Book to be no more than adequate on the primary subject matter. At 1000+ pages there is a enormous amount information dedicated to all things HP-UX - and most of this is non-vpars specific. Not that I don't appreciate the lagniappe, but the book reads like an "HP-UX Guide to Systems Administration" rather than a "Guru's Insight Into Virtual Partitions". If you are looking to gain insight into Vpars and the SuperDome, you'll get a whopping 14 pages dedicated to this subject matter as Paniotowski based nearly all of his work on the L and N class systems. On a positive note, after reading the few chapters that were actually dedicated to vpars, I did learn a few things that I had not come across in other literature. Paniotowski needs to produce a 2nd Edition of this book that focuses exclusively on Virtual Partitions and has far more subject manner dedicated to the SuperDome.

This book is nicely organized and well-written, but many people may be better served by online tutorials or a more modern book on their specific OS/distribution. I bought this because a course I'm taking requires us to ssh into the University's Linux server and program in the *nix environment. This book is great for learning your way around a free shell, the terminal of your favorite distro, or even cygwin. However if you are looking for a book to teach you to use a modern Linux distro, complete with GUI, this is probably not the book for you. And since much of this info is available on the net, I wouldn't recommend paying the list price.

Not a flashy book at all. The unix Andersen gives you is largely the traditional workhorse version, text-based. Because that is still the focus of many unix users. Though the book has a discussion of CDE - Common Desktop Environment. But you should use that only to get to a terminal emulator. Within which, you are shown the power of many useful unix commands.

Take care to understand a key idea. Many unix commands are modular, letting you pipe output from one to the input of another. Which is why shell scripting has proved so easy and popular.

A very easy to learn book for people who are new to Unix.

This is an excellent beginner's guide to UNIX. The book explains the basics very well and the excellent exercises at the end of each chapter, helps a person apply the new knowledge to use.

I would recommend this book to anybody learning UNIX for the first time.