Rating: 
Summary: To start UNIX seriously
Review: This book covers the basis of system administration on many flavours of UNIX, including Linux. It gives you a good explanation of why every thing works or why wouldn't, besides script examples, warnings on methods, advice on treating users and so on. Though there are some terms or even topics that seem out-of-date, you won't get lost. A lot of bibliography is introduced through the text, since this is just for starting: it doesn't cover each topic to the limit. This book is not for the user that just wants to know, say, how to make a symbolic link, but for any administrator and those users who want to understand their systems and get more from them.
Rating: 
Summary: Getting a little long in tooth...
Review: This book tries real hard to be all things to all *nix admins but falls short on some of the details. Don't get me wrong, it is a good book but not my first choice when I need to look up some forgotten admin lore. The author glosses over too many flavors of *nix instead of concentrating on a select few "market leaders" and covering them well. If you're looking for good admin books, check out the Evi Nemeth, et al. Unix System Administration Handbooks (Red and Purple variants) While more expensive, they are, well, more expansive.
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Summary: Crucial topic severely misses the target!
Review: Upon configuring a Solaris Box I referenced this book to, what I thought would, clarify some questions I had regarding system initialization/start-up. Specifically, the section titled "Connecting to the Network" on pg 105 was the material I referenced. This section, which should have been given a lot of detail and attention, due to its importance in a book such as this one, was given only the most superficial treatment! The author starts by mentioning some rather useless information about "ifconfig", continues on for a few sentences, then abruptly, in the same paragraph, jumps to the topic of static routes and the route command! We are left learning almost nothing about the importance of "ifconfig" and its role in configuring networking on a real system. A paragraph before this the author states "The script that starts networking at boottime..." but fails to mention exactly what script(s) he is referring to. These are examples of the poor quality material that the reader is subjected to. To make matters worse he ends these miserable two paragraphs with "Networking is discussed in detail in Chapter 13...". Upon perusing the indicated chapter, I was dismayed at the yet- again poor presentation. The section "Configuring the Network Interface with ifconfig" is given a half of page of almost useless rhetoric. Nothing is mentioned in this section pertaining to system init, which is what the author implicitly promises from the earlier chapter. And where is the "detail" the author states? Networking is an important and crucial part of a sys admin's role. In this book the author gives only the most superficial treatment of any system administration which pertains to networking. Instead he covers things like the, already tired, 7 layer OSI data networking model. Upon closing this book I sit here, my questions remain, and I am off to the man pages and other more useful references...
Rating:
Summary: A Nice Sys Admin "manual"
Review: What I like a lot about this book is not only the usual wealth of information you come to expect with any O'Reilly book, but also the "sidebars" contained throughout the book that offer light-hearded, "common-sense" tips about being a sysadmin. The cover of this book features an armadillo, and I like the analogy. I briefly was a system administrator, and you do need to have a thick skin like the armadillo to do this kind of job! Each chapter is very descriptive of specific commands. There is good info on system startup and the section on troubleshooting system crashes is excellent. Also contained are sections on adding users and groups, system security issues, mounting and unmounting filesystems, data backup and recovery issues, a chapter on writing scripts to do some of the "menail sy admin tasks," and even a chapter on TCP/IP Network Management. The book also explains the "differencies" in various Unix OS's. Different Unix OS (AIX, SunOS, System V, and Solaris have their own little idiosyncracies at times) may have different ways or commands to do a particular task and this book makes a point to explain them all in great detail. Even though the book is a few years old, it still contains valuable information about UNIX system administration.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid Reference Material
Review: This is a solid book which explains basic sys admin functions. This book will not solve all of your issues, however, will increase your knowledge base and give incite into where you should be looking. It's a buy.
Rating:
Summary: The universal reference
Review: The book has an overview of all essential areas for all the major UNIX flavors. If you need to administer different UNIX systems this is the book you need.
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Summary: Buy it and don't lend it to anyone!
Review: Given that the System Admin topics can make for a 3000 page manual, this book does a great job of touching upon most aspects of SA within its page limit. This is greatly helpful when you do not wannt to waste time wading thru pages. Room for improvement - some more verbage can be reduced, and some more commands in action can be introduced. The book is light on commands associated with networking that SA's would have to be good with. Similarly, disk management commands and disk array commands are becoming indispensable for SA's. Great piece of work!
Rating:
Summary: In a hurry? Start here
Review: This book has been recommended for beginners. That is true. You don't have to wade through a bunch of theory to get to the meat of administration. The same is true for experienced administrators. This book will point you in the direction to go when you are using the real manuals. Take some time and slowdown to try some of the examples. Then when you need them you will have already mastered that section. I have several other books now and know a lot of what is in this one. However I would feel naked if this was not reachable. A complementary book would be Practical Unix and Internet Security ISBN: 1565921488
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Summary: This is the book I always go to first
Review: I bought this book just after the 2nd edition was published, I was just starting out as an administrator. It helped me then, and it still helps me now. It is well written and includes information about many unix platforms. This is the book that sold me on O'Reilly. Now when I need a book I look to see what O'Reilly has before any other publisher. Your money is well spent on this book.
Rating:
Summary: This is it
Review: I cannot begin explain just how valuable this book has been to me. I highly recommend it to anyone who is new to UNIX and to anyone who has to support multiple versions. If you're looking for a good book on UNIX system administration, start here.
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