Unix Systems Books

Even though the book is written for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 you can still find in the book something that might help you in your quest for knowledge about Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Overall it is a good book.

I can recommend this book for those, who have just installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (aka RHEL 3) and
are wondering what to do next with it; but have no significant Linux/Unix experience to fall back on.
For the more seasoned RHEL 3 SysAdmin, you'll probably want to thumb through it before deciding to buy it.
This book is notch or two above a starter book on RHEL 3. There are not that many books like this out
there, so for this reason alone it may be worth the purchase.

I read this book back in January 2005. Writing a review about it was easy. Why? Because the authors
repeatedly state throughout their book, what it is they are trying to cover in RHEL 3 and what they
are NOT going to cover. They do a very good job of sticking to their objectives.

The authors cover many of the services and applications which are commonly configured on RHEL 3. They
admit it is not a comprehensive coverage, nor is meant to be. {SysAdmins will have varied opinions on
what should and shouldn't be included in this book. SysAdmins having opinions is a given. :) }
The authors selections are as good as any. They are also trying to deal with keeping the book down to a
readable size, i.e., less than 700 pages. Many of the chapters and topics in this book, are already
separate books unto themselves.

Each chapter is a survey of one or more solutions/services/applications. The authors forewarn you,
these are not all the possible combinations of the same. The authors pick one example and work
through an implementation of it. The examples are a good mix of Command Line (CLI) and Graphic User
Interface (GUI). Most of the time further references, usually URLs are included in each chapter.

I personally liked chapters 4 - 6 on Storage Management, HA (Clustering) and Red Hat's WAF (Web
Application Framework). Storage Mgmt and HA/Clustering are of particular interest to me and the
Red Hat WAF stuff was new for me.

The authors covered NFS and automounting (autofs), but omitted NIS. {Remember SysAdmins' have
opinions.} Manually doing NFS mounts is fine, if you have just a few systems. Once you get over a
couple of dozen systems requiring NFS mounts, then automounting is the next logical step. Its also
equally common to do automounting in conjunction with NIS. Yes, I know NIS is going to be replaced
by LDAP and NIS+ is dead. But using NIS and NFS automounting together is still quite common and
will continue to be for some time. (Security-wise; NIS & NFS are only done inside the firewall.)
The authors also covered file sharing via Samba. But LDAP just got a skimpy couple of pages.
Authors' choice, I guess?

My other curious observations was their coverage of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Python, Perl, PHP...).
They covered LAMP pieces in the book and in the last chapter without actually using the word "LAMP".
One of the authors is involved with LAMP through his company. So why not use the word? To quote
John Madden, "What was that all about?". I just thought it a strange omission, considering...

Red Hat has just recently released RHEL 4. So how long will this book on RHEL 3 be relevant?
Probably at least through this year (2005) and longer and/or until someone writes the RHEL 4 version.
Note, there are still folks out there running RHEL 2.1.

My background is, I've been in IT for over 20 yrs as a IT Mgr, SysAdm, System Architect and System
Engineer. I worked with various flavors of Unix since 1985 and with Red Hat since version 3.0.3
back in 1996. My current Linux flavor of choice is Fedora Core 2 (soon to be 3).

Linux used to be so simple. You went to your favorite book or computeer store and sitting on the shelf was a shrink wrapped red box that contained all you needed. You followed the directions and in a short time you had Linux running on your system. Of course back then we didn't worry much about security. HA (High Availability) was an acronym that hadn't been invented yet. MySQL was a ... Well never mind! The world simply isn't like that any more.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the stable, supported heavy duty version of Linux intended for stable, mission critical applications. This book clearly describes what you get with RHEL and how to utilize these components to build an enterprise level server. It presumes that you have some knowledge of Linux and probably you should have some working experience with some kind of Linux distribution. Given that, if you are a systems administrator and want to learn about RHEL, or you're now assigned a security responsibility, high availability, server farms or the like, this is for you.

A book written in this fashion has been needed for a long time. I found it to be a very easy read and filled with the day to day task that new and seasoned Red Hat administrators come in to contact with every day.

I have spent many hours reading other Red Hat books but never found one particular book to encompass all that I needed. This book does that and more. The newbies will find it easy to understand, as the veterans will find it a usefull resource for those times when an answer is needed right away.

If you are new or a veteran to RH EL 3 GET THIS BOOK, it will save tons of time, and provide the answers you are looking for.

Wrox has picked a winnner w/ Mohammed J. Kabir, I have been a fan of his writing style for a long time, although some may disagree, he writes in a very clear concise manner, which will help the newbs out there to grasp a concept and method.

Bernie Johnson
Sr. Linux Admin

Although this book is based on the 2.2 kernel, a lot of it is still very useful. I've been using Linux for more than 5 years now but I always knew that I need to improve on my networking side of things. I have just started reading this book but I can already see that I will really benefit from this book. The book covers such tools as nmap and tcpdump and also networking concepts in general. A must have for anyone interested in Linux networking.

This book presents both basic and advanced information in a practical, common sense format. It is apparent that the author has invested a lot of time and thought into the presentation of the information. I actually enjoyed reading this book and find it an invaluable reference. The CD is pretty cool, it has Red Hat 6.1, Red Hat Power Tools, and most of the other tools discussed in the book.

Red Hat Linux Network Management Tools is practical. You can immediately put to work the tools listed in this book. This includes common tools (with a good understanding of their options) such as tcpdump, netstat, traceroute, arp, ping, ifconfig and others. Ignorant about Networks? This book explains all the way through. SNMP (and so much more) will no longer be a grey area for you. It gives you tools to SEE what's "really" going on in your network. The CDs contain NTOP, Ethereal, Arpwatch, and a score of other tools that make your life as a network manager easy. PLAY with these utilities - at work or at home (just log into the internet). You'll be comfortable (and competant) with networks in no time.

This incredibly useful book explains clearly in a hands-on practical way everything you need to know about SNMP and MIBs to do network device monitoring, including tutorials/overviews/references for awesome Linux tools to gather and display network information. This book and CD-ROM is now a crucial resource in our small corporate lab which tests and monitors routers and DSL network devices, such as DSLAMs.

Particularly cool tools I didn't previously know about are:

- ethereal : GUI-based sniffer (captures and decodes network protocol traffic over ethernet)

- MRTG tool : monitor and graph network traffic from SNMP networking devices, such as routers, switches and DSLAMs (web output)

- tkined : GUI-based full featured network monitoring program. Can dynamically discover network devices. Has a network topology diagramming tool.

- tkmib : GUI-based MIB browser (GUI front end to Linux SNMP tools)

The explanations and reference material for SNMP flavors and MIBs is the first really practical, *clearly explained* and complete-enough-for-our-needs guide to these areas that I've seen yet. Finally I feel confident in being able to test the MIBs in the DSL device we are adding features to (we have no SNMP experts in our group).

The MRTG tool has saved us from having to develop a program to collect and report router statistics.

The CD-ROM contains the collection of valuable tools, which saves time over finding them online and downloading them.

This book is an excellent resource for the system administrator wanting to ensure the uptime and availability of his Linux machine. Iain's writing style makes it an easy book to read, and at the same time, technical enough for the experienced Linux admins. Now that Linux is being deployed on larger machines (like IBM mainframes), reliability is a key focus, and this book does a fantastic job of covering the important areas.

Maintaining 24/7 availability is critical in any server installation; this book really shows how to build in reliability and maintain systems to assure ongoing availability. The most coverage of key topics like risk analysis, fault tolerance, and recovery that I have found anywhere.

I have read may books where the author skirts around the real issue and does not answer the basic questions you had when you picked up the book. This book has lots of real world stuff in it - some of the things he talks about - I have seen and done myself!

Very useful overall, with lots of useful and informative side bars.
Lots of good information - low overhead!

Parts of the book were entertaining to read - a hard thing to say about a technical text!

I think that this would be a resource that every IT Manager should read. This books goes way beyond telling you how it works. It addresses the issues of what happens when it fails. This makes it very different from any other book on Linux out there! About time.

There are a bunch of things I like about this book. First off, I like that the author covers not only Linux, but also Solaris and Mac OS X. By discussing them all, you get a good sense of how different Unix can be on different platforms. It's also the first book I've seen that discusses command-line based Mac OS X administration at all, so that by itself was very interesting (if occasionally weird) reading. The writing style is very good too -- I have read other Unix books by Dave Taylor and he not only understands this stuff inside-out, but explains it in a way that makes this material interesting and fun. Finally, I really appreciated that he emphasizes problem solving (showing how, time and again, to use Unix tools to track down bugs, configuration problems, etc) rather than a bunch of canned solutions. If you're a Unix person, or wannabe, this book is highly recommended, even if you'll never admin your system.

UNIX administration is notoriously difficult and sophisticated because one has to understand many things in their complexity. This books does not provide the complete coverage but there is no book that possibly could. If you found yourself struggling and having a difficulty with reading this one it means you need more background with UNIX to deal with administration. I found here on Amazon "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete UNIX course recorded and it can bring you to the point you will be able to work with book like that.
It is very well written book and it is very important! I had some books on UNIX administration that I simply gave up! This one is easy to read and it makes many things simpler and it is good thing. I use this one as a cross reference volume.

I have seem many different UNIX SA books, but this one is the very best. It covers all the important topics and concepts, and has detailed examples for everything the author discusses. This book is very easy to read and follow.

I'm not sure what the 1-star reviewer's problem is. Who wants to wade through MAN pages for hours? The whole reason I buy books is to compile the information in one handy place. This is a useful source to fill in general holes in your knowledge. If you already know this stuff cold, I'm not sure why you'd be interested in the book at all (either to praise or pan.) Bottom line: good, general book for those who want to bootstrap themselves.

This resource was a real find! As someone with no experience with Linux, this book was perfect as it allowed me to gain a real understanding in a short period of time. I highly recommend it.

I've used the SAMS teach yourself series to get started in many different fields, from web design to basic programming, and I've found them to vary widely in terms of quality. This one happens to be among the best I've ever read. The pacing is just right. It starts with a quick overview of some of the issues involved in making the jump from Windows to Linux, followed by a quick tour of each application in the suite. Thereafter, the book quickly proceeds to tackle each application one by one.

The coverage of the applications is where the book really shines. The material progresses from rudimentary tasks to very advanced topics with respect to each application. The hours dedicated to WordPerfect 9 and Quattro Pro 9 were particularly helpful. The Quattro Pro material is simply the best spreadsheet application tutorial I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The hours build on each other very nicely, and everything is carefully explained and presented in the screenshots. There's also quite a bit of good humor here, too, which keeps the material from getting too dry.

Sometimes you've got to take the "24 Hours" reference in the title with a grain of salt. Not this time. I managed to work my way through each chapter in about an hour, usually including the exercises that appear at the end of each hour. Although I've had to go back to certain material to refresh my memory, the index is well-done, making the book very useful even after you've read it cover-to-cover.

All in all, an excellent, and relatively concise, introduction to using the most powerful office suite on the Linux platform. The authors' enthusiasm, knowledge, and teaching ability really shines through, making this a great tutorial for users of all levels.

Making the transition from the windows environment to Linux was not as smooth as I thought it would be. Particularly in using applications for word processing. Alan Golub's book on Wordperfect 2000 was a pleasure and made the entire process fun and exciting.

With clear, consice writing, Alan Golub has solved the mystery of Linux and WordPerfect Office 2000. As a newcomer to the Linux world, I approached this book with trepidation. I was a Microsoft junkie - Windows and Office were my foundation in personal computing! But, this book held my interest with its descriptive information, screenshots and exercises. It is an easy read and anyone with a foundation in Windows can easily make the transition to Linux. I highly recommend it!

O'Reilly books are always excellent sources. I'm a technician and work on UNIX systems with the SCO interface, so I use this book a lot. Any time I can't remember a command, I can thumb through the book or look in the index for what the command does and have it at my fingertips. Thanks, O'Reilly for all your great books of which I have many.

I would recommend this book for ANY user of SCO Unix, from the novice to the sys admin. It nearly every command and option from SCO System V Release 3.2, Version 4.0. In addition, this book also covers several important Unix utilities such as the vi editor, sed, awk, etc.

I would give this book 5 stars except SCO OpenServer has advanced well beyond this level (this edition is from 1993). Most of the information remains accurate, but there are some issues that exist. Keep in mind that there are some additional commands and additional options to existing commands that are not listed. Also, but more rare, there are commands or options that have been removed or changed in the OS. This is not as serious as it may sound as these issues will probably only be noticed by the more advanced users in rare circumstances.

O'Reilly has done it again, bringing Unix users a priceless reference book. The book is well organize into different shells and is easy to read. This book list all the commands with options and an example for it. Novice to SCO Unix should add this to their bookshelves.

This book contains all the basic commands needed by system analysts in an easy to find format. I recommend this book to all SCO Unix technicians and system analysts of SCO Unix systems.

Great book, I used it to prepare for the Solaris 10 Network Admin exam. Read this book, learn as much as you can about the IP Filter implementation on Solaris 10 (lots of questions about IP Filter), have considerable hands on experience with Solaris 10 and you should pass the exam. The exam is not easy, but this book provides a good starting point. Hopefully someone will write a exam prep book for the SCNA exam for Solaris 10. Thanks!

Aimed at getting you through the exam, the best book for the job by far. Make sure you have been working with the product for a while, read a couple of good texts and then top it off with this book for the exam.

well, most people buying this book will not be coming into it blind. still it's the small things that trip you up.

what this book does is remind you what those small things are, and gives you some valuable tips on how to maximise your marks.

i think this increased my marks by about 15-20%, enought to allow me some comfort...!

Top marks for a simple read, good structure and sensible advice. it's nice to know what the experts think..!

this is the only book I used the pass my SCNA. everything is in there but you have to read very carefully. It's a small book so you tend to read it fast but take your time and be patient.

again, I passed the exam only by using this book!

I would describe the books as concise, precise and extremely readable. The authors use fluid language and use the right technical terms in the right places. One of the best Computer Science books I have ever read. Definitely a good reference(though the book is not a comprehensive Operating Systems book) for a beginner who is looking to gain conceptual knowledge about Operating Systems in general and Multithreading in particular.

This was an excellent book with detailed coverage of threads programming even down to how various hardware architectures affect multithreaded program behavior. However there is a more current edition under a different name (Multithreaded Programming with Pthreads) by the same authors that is more current that I would recommend instead (everything in this book is in the newer book).

A well written book that clearly explains the concepts and issues of thread programming. It provides the neccessary background information to understand the overall thread context and then describes the specific issues in turn. It does not over whelm the reader with technical details but concentrates on one issue at a time. It's a great book that I highly recommend!

This book, true to other Solaris and Sun manual style, is concise and to the point. This is probably the best introduction to Threads Programming in existence. Lewis and Berg's style is almost reassuring as you learn the basics to threads programming, even for non-Solaris users. If the world of computing and how-to books were written in this style, the reader could learn anything.

I originally bought this book back in 1997 and used it to aid my development into writing client server (mostly server) applications running under UNIX.

This book has been heavily used, and many of the server applications I wrote under unix (up until working with windows 3 years ago) using examples from the book on Signals, Pipes and Sockets (while also using Avanced Unix Programming).

Today I dusted off the book as I wanted to write a quick TCP server program using Winsock. I took the example from the book in Sockets and with a couple of very minor tweaks and the stuff to setup winsock I wrote a very simple windows console server application.

OK, some of the commands, like close is closesocket, have changed for windows BUT the majority of code came from the book. This book is still aiding me even today.

This maybe an old book but well worth that cost (and these days its a fraction of the cost I bought it for).

This book has very nice explanations. Sometimes they almost seem too simple, but you can count on it not being over your head. It has lots of illustrations and is fairly easy to read. I think the author takes a complex topic and explains it very, very well. It's also a lot shorter than some of the books by W. Richard Stevens. Both this book and Stevens's "UNIX Network Programming" are too old to include POSIX semaphores. If you get your hands on a book on UNIX distributed programming, look in the index for "sem_init" or posix to see if it has the latest technology. I think everyone who programs in a unix environment should read this book to get a broad introduction to this topic. If you have the time to read 2 books on this topic, I recommend this one 1st to understand the concepts and another book with more examples to get more ideas for coding.

This book has helped me a lot with my assignments in a graduate distributed systems course. Even if you are not familiar with UNIX distributed programming, after reading this book, you will start writing excellent programs for UNIX distributed environment. (You need to be familiar with programming in C)

Chris Brown has written a clear book on the Distributed Progrmming under the UNIX environment. When I started to look into this subject I faced so many barriers cause of lack of clarity and easiness of the other books and materials covering this subject. I have to admit also that I sometimes decided to give the whole thing up. Fortunately, I came across this book and it revived my hope. It is really a good book to start with and deserves of studying. Particular attention should be paid on Sockets. I would however suggest some matterials on the web which could be covered before reading this book. Many examples have worked for me. The way he provides the code examples (which are in C) is also comprehensive and anyone with experience in C should not have problems with understanding them. I would, however, recommend other books (such as Stevens Unix Network Programming and Advanced Programming under the UNIX environment as well as Comer's and Steven's Internetworking with TCP/IP III) to read as a flow-up manuals. One should also test available code (the coplete ones) to have some hands on experience on the subject. Some of the thing did not seem consistent with the author to me.

I've tried many times to find a book that clearly explains Unix in a friendly manner. I should have realized that the Apple ethos was the missing element in all the terse, disjointed treatments I found elsewhere. This book is a dream come true: a book about Unix that is as close to being enjoyable to read as the subject allows. It may not have everything there is to say about unix (I found a few things missing or covered too briefly for my tastes), but the book walks the reader through Unix so gently that I never once felt the blinding frustration that quickly overwhelms me during previous attempts. After this introduction other books (more comprehensive, less humane) can be read as references. Well done!

I have a working understanding of UNIX and am a Mac user. In my experience, this book is ideally targeted for someone like me that wants to improve UNIX skills and prefers to do so on a Mac. Other texts I've consulted seem to jump too fast between really elementary subjects to needs of a system admin. The depth here is still rich, but the reader has time to digest the information before getting to more complex constructs.

For those who are new to Unix, never fear, you won't find a better way to start. This book is very clearly written, easy to understand, and covers more than enough of the shell environment to give the user plenty to work with. Buy it! Get the most out of your Mac.

I loved the first edition of this book, but was thrilled when the updated version was released. (The original book was written before Mac OS X adopted the bash shell by default, so many of the examples were out of whack with later releases of the OS).
I use this as my primary Unix reference at work - where we do not use Macs! It is a comprehensive and easy reference.

I recommend this and O'Reilly's Learning Perl as the two best books (especially if you have a Mac at home) to build your professional Unix chops quickly.