Authors: Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein

Format: Paperback: 1040 pages

Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 2nd edition (October 30, 2006)

ISBN: 0131480049



Review by James Pyles

December 2, 2006



What can I say? The first edition of this book was a best seller. Linus Torvalds wrote the Foreward to the first edition. Most authors would give their eye teeth to have such a successful book on their publications list. Ok, ok...that doesn't mean the second edition absolutely must stack up to the first, but after all, that's what we're here to find out.



'Linux Administration Handbook' is targeting...Linux system administrators. Who else? Actually, while the book does require some prior experience of Linux systems, this is a very useful book for anyone who wants to do more than use Ubuntu as their desktop. All Linux newbies and sysadmin wannabees give a big sigh of relief. This book is not beyond your capabilities and will in fact take you a long way towards understanding and practicing Linux sysadmin tasks.



However, it's not for the absolute beginner. Pages 19 and 20 contain a recommended reading list for anyone who wants to successfully use this book. It's as if you want to sign up for the Linux System Administration 220 course but realize you first must take prerequisite courses Linux Admin Basics 201, Learning vi 205, and Programming Perl 215 (I use the 200 course numbering system because this is administration, not learning how to switch from Windows to Linux in small, easy steps).



This book is over a thousand pages long for two reasons. One, it covers a lot of territory. Two, it covers that territory in depth. Most books usually sacrifice one for the other, either glossing over all of their topics or going in depth on just a few. Happily the Nemeth-Snyder-Hein book does not fall into that trap (the first edition didn't so why should this one?).



The experience of the authors is evident throughout the text. It's as if a collection of warriors from ancient times had exchanged their strategies and hard won victories, documented them and shared them with the world. Where those honored heroes of yore would have written a guide for future generations of soldiers, this group of writers has done the same for Linux system admins.



Basic Administration is covered in the first 11 chapters and it could be a book all to itself. Networking takes another 10 chapters and and 'everything else' is 9 chapters long. Each section covers a wide variety of topics so don't think that Basic Administration is simply how to add a new user and mounting file systems (although they are certainly covered).



Booting and shutting down, root commands, processes, adding hardware and software are all well represented. All of the chapters cover topics and practices that are part of the everyday life of an admin. The book presents a very practical, down-to-earth guide to just about everything you'd need to know about Linux system administration with just the right amount of humor stirred in.



Five major distributions are presented; Red Hat Enterprise Server, Fedora Core 5, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Debian, and Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I don't know if I would have included Fedora and Ubuntu if I were writing this book but it does provide a larger variety of distros to learn from and Fedora and Ubuntu are popular Red Hat and Debian variants.



I don't believe that any one book can be the only source of information you'll ever need...whether about Linux Administration or anything else. If you were able to peruse the authors' bookshelves, I think you'd find a large number of books on subjects related to operating systems, networking, programming, and so on.



There are a number of other texts that would complement this book such as Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide (McGraw-Hill Osborne, 4th Ed., 2005) and A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux (Prentice Hall PTR, 3rd Ed., 2006) which I both reviewed for the Linux-Tutorial site. Having said that, 'Linux Administration Handbook, 2nd Ed.' deserves a place of honor on the shelf of every practicing Linux admin and anyone else who wants to learn. I predict though, that it won't spend many hours on the shelf. It is better used by your side at the keyboard and you learn from its pages.

Title: Linux Administration Handbook
Category: Linux
Sub-Category: Linux Books
Author: James Pyles
Related Link: Find the book here!
Added: December 2nd 2006
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