Unix Systems Books

This book is good for the "newbie" to the UNIX OS. It explains concepts very clearly starting from the simple ones and goes onto the more complicated concepts. Ive given 4 stars since it lacks the quality on the SED chapter - v. little material and v. complicated too. Need to use simpler examples in the beginning. OTW, its an excellent beginners book.

A very well written book for the beginners trying to understand Unix. Much better than many other Unix books competing for the same audience.

Don't let the 1994 publish date scare you away. This book is pretty good. One of the few books that isn't filled with Linux hype/fluff. Looks pretty SunOS/Solaris based as far as screen shots. But covers 4.3BSD. The examples are clear and concise.

This book reminds me of the Turbo C Bible by the Waite group. It has example code for every function or library call. This is a great companion book for any textual Unix programming book.

This is one of the best unix / c reference books I've seen. It covers everything in a consistent and clear manner. Very useful.

Maybe I don't have the background to appreciate the subtlety of the author's arguments; but it seems to me there is a great deal of assertion and not enough explanation. The author generally does not introduce or explain terms, including obscure acronyms (fortunately there is a good glossary). Often, by the time I have looked up the terms and acronyms and put the author's statement together for myself there is nothing left to understand - in other words it appears the author would be adding little value for a reader that actually has the knowledge he assumes. The index is generally poor and the text obviously has not had the editorial support it deserves. The author does cover a lot of ground and touches on many topics, and the book consistently addresses a technical professional reader. This book could have value as a resource or reference, as one member of a library; by itself it occupies an unusual middle ground, neither introduction nor deep discussion.

How long have you sit in your seat and can not find out a solution to your network design? It is a step-by-step guidebook to tell you where you are and where you should go. A wonderful book that can save your time and money on network design.

Really a good book, with a good and simple explanation of all topics. A lot of images which drives reader in a simpler use and configuration of system. A valid alternative to the online documentation if you don't want to tire your eyes

Its a good book for a linux beginner, like i am. The book covers many of tha basics but more advanced linux users will find the book useless. I was able to have a fairly good knowledge of caldera open linux within a week or so. To sum up, this book is a newbies dream but the advanced user won't need this

What I don't like:

There is no errata for this book, so when example it does not work - you will loose time until you find out what is wrong, your code or if there is a typo in the book.

Very short explanations for the examples. The Author should make a bigger effort to explain what he is doing.

He uses some techniques in examples - but he does not elaborate them. Example: He uses in one example (page 109) "GetTickCount" but there is no explanations for what GetTickCount does. There are many situations like this in the book where the Author does something (uses some methods or properties) - with no explanations.

What I like:

Subject! This is the only book that I found on this subject.

This book is an essential addition to every beginning and/or intermediate Delphi programmer's arsenal.

After a long struggle to fully understand the power of the TClientDataSet, this reader experienced what could loosely be referred to as a religious experience after reading chapters 3, 4 and 7. These chapters alone make the book worth many multiples of its price.

This book is quite well written. Using one application and building
it in the course of a book is a good idea. However, it's a bit thin
(189 pages) and it doesn't address too much content out of the scope of the project under construction. There were a lot of time I'd like to have seen some more in-depth information.

I really can't think of anything negative about this book -- maybe that it's not thorough, but I'd rather credit it for it's introductory treatment of the K environment. If you prefer K over Gnome, then I'd say this text is a NECESSITY. If not, well, it probably WON'T convert you.

Worth keeping on your bookshelf, though ...

This is one of the best beginning linux books I have ever seen. Having said that, I wouldn't trust this book alone as a single resource for any test. Mr. Smith uses a fantastic pedagogical style throughout the book that makes the toughest linux/ UNIX concepts fun and easy to understand. I heartily recommend this book to any person wishing to know more about linux in general, even if they have grown up in the windows world.

On the downside, this book does try to "re-invent the wheel" by presenting an all-encompassing book of linux commands and progs. O'Reilly's /*Linux in a Nutshell*/, /*Using Red Hat Linux*/, and */Using Debian*/ all performed that function better than this a long time ago. The "Linux Beginner's Handbook" is also an important book [...] that this one valiantly attempts to replace.

Still, I cannot get over the fact that Mr. Smith is a good teacher and a very gifted writer. The format is accessible and tye book leaves the reader feeling smart and capable as opposed to confused or frustrated. This is what computer books ought to be.

I gave it three stars because there is no substitute for years of work in on UNIX or linux mainframe. In those cases, a good pocket reference from O'Reilly was what we used.

I think that this book does deserve a place among the great linux documents written since 1993

This Book is a great book if you are looking for a class on Linux. It is easy to read and the instructions are great. It is more of a hands on work book then an actual book to read.

Although the subject matter is not the most advanced and sometimes the tasks are oversimplified it does help one prepare for certification or teach them basic linux skills well. That after all is what this book claims to be. If you complete all the tasks you will be well on your way to knowing linux although it can take a while.



If your looking to for a book that will build you linux skills then this is a must have for your libary.

Bookspecs:
70+ plugins described !!
464 pages


The book (in a typical No Starch Press style) gives a clear, concise rundown about Nagios in general.
As such it is a well written and sound introduction to the Nagios topic.

After having read No Starch*s Nagios book you will know exactly how Nagios works inside.
The thorough explanations, flow charts and many tips and tricks leave no doubt that after you
finished the book you know your way around any Nagios installation.

What is remarkable is, that even though the Nagios topic is fairly young, the authors manage
to describe more than 70+ plugins. !!

One of the features of this book was for me basically a new level of "Usability" - or should I
say "reading quality" ? The text contains virtually "links" to related or refered to sections in
other chapters. That allows the reader to quickly jump back and forth to follow up on something.
A BIG time-saver and from my point of view much appreciated.

Beginners or junior system administrators will find No Starch's Nagios book an excellent choice.
It doesnt come with all the latest bells and whistles but it certainly covers more than 80% of
what the average joe sysadmin needs to know.

>> Please find a more detailed review and book comparisons by deploying my profile. <<

I recently received review copies of Pro Nagios 2.0 (PN2) by James Turnbull and Nagios: System and Network Monitoring (NSANM) by Wolfgang Barth. I read PN2 first, then NSANM. Both are excellent books, but I expect potential readers want to know which is best for them. The following is a radical simplification, and I could honestly recommend readers buy either (or both) books. If you are completely new to Nagios and want a very well-organized introduction, I recommend PN2. If you are somewhat familiar with Nagios and want detailed descriptions of a wide variety of Nagios plug-ins, I recommend NSANM.

NSANM strengths lie in the depth of coverage of certain elements when compared to PN2. PN2 devotes 7 pages to host checks, while NSANM's Ch 7 offers 21 pages. PN2 supplies 8 pages on service checks, but NSANM's Ch 6 gives 46 pages. This level of detail can be very useful. For example, NSANM's explanation of check_squid also shows to to configure Sguid to allow access to its cache manager.

NSANM shares more information on certain background protocols like SNMP. PN2's SNMP section is about 7 pages, whereas NSANM's Ch 11 is 36 pages. NSANM demonstrates more aspects of Nagios' Web interface and the CGI programs generating pages. I thought author Wolfgang Barth made very effective use of diagrams, like the network topology explanation in Ch 4, the service checks in Ch 5, and notification in Ch 12.

NSANM includes some material not mentioned in PN2, like using Nagios with Cygwin. Sometimes the books are very complementary, as shown by PN2's discussion of NSClient++ and NSANM's overview of NSClient and NC_Net.

NSANM is lacking coverage of security, redundancy, and failover, however. PN2 does address these critical issues. Beware the some of the "chapters" in NSANM are very short -- like Ch 8 (2 pages!) and Ch 19 (barely 6 pages). I think short sections like those should have been integrated into longer chapters or moved into the appendices.

Overall, NSANM is a very good book. I believe new Nagios readers should read PN2, and strongly consider NSANM as a complementary reference volume.

The ultimate programmer stocking stuffer, this book takes readers beyond what is found in other beginning-intermediate Perl books by providing more than 50 Perl scripts to do useful things, such as tricks with CGI, handling Palm data and using XML. CD-ROM is filled with more than 50 Perl scripts readers can download and use right away to do useful work.

I'm familiar with Perl, but I'm no Perl guru. For me, the book had a lot of new material in it, including two items (XML::Parser and Archive::Tar) that I really wanted but didn't even know I should be looking for.

It is full of twists and tricks for UNIX/Linux and Microsoft versions of Perl (can't comment on Macs as I'm not a Mac user), although it does not always make it clear whether a utility will or will not go under a particular operating system. The bits which are clearly platform specific are found at the back of the book in their own section, and the URLs are given for important sites.

I kept typing modified examples in - just to see if things really were that easy - and I wasn't disappointed. I should really have got the CD out earlier and saved myself some typing :) This one is living on the bookshelf over my PC, and its CD is going in a proper jewel case.

its a nice book to have, but not very easy to understand..atleast its not for me

I use this book every day. It is the most complete reference on the Korn shell that I have ( about eleven ) and points out the differences between ksh versions and ksh and bash. There arn't any answers I didn't find in this book; when I looked for an answer or to refresh myself on a subject. A major difference between this and other books is that it also shows things that do not work or should not be used and shows why. There is no fluff in this book, it sticks to the facts and even the utilities that are included (and are more useful than most) are presented in a page, not a chapter. It is no bigger than a lot of other books on the subject, smaller than some, yet it covers subjects that the others don't even begin to touch on like dtksh, the posix shell, and how to extend ksh. It even squeezes in a quick reference showing the syntax of Unix commands that are used with the shell so that you can use them properly.