Essential System Administration Pocket Reference

Rating:
Summary: This book ROCKS!
Review: Ahem. I know this is only the "pocket" version of this book, but Essential System Administration Pocket Reference is the best system admin book I've seen in a long time. Now, I'm relatively new to Unix system admin, but I've knocked around the industry for over ten years now, so I know a thing or two about sysadmin work. Usually, what I look for in a reference guide is either something quick and simple or with miles and miles of depth. If I'm new to a system, or I only administer it as a backup or "once in a blue moon", the quick guides suit me well. In this case, that was precisely what I was looking for in a Unix system administration guide. Essential System Administration Pocket Reference provides this to a "T".
Without getting bogged down in lengthy descriptions or philosphical discussions of which tool to use when, this pocket reference lists the basic administration commands, beyond GREP (though it lists that, too!), with a short description of what it does. It's easier to read than the MAN file, usually gives me few examples, and I don't have to open a second terminal window to use it! Seriously, I really reccomend this guide to anyone new to Unix, including Linux, system administration. Or, like me, is getting back into it for the first time since, well, since the Dark Ages. It's a great guide or refresher and it literally does fit in your pocket!

Rating:
Summary: This book ROCKS!
Review: Ahem. I know this is only the "pocket" version of this book, but Essential System Administration Pocket Reference is the best system admin book I've seen in a long time. Now, I'm relatively new to Unix system admin, but I've knocked around the industry for over ten years now, so I know a thing or two about sysadmin work. Usually, what I look for in a reference guide is either something quick and simple or with miles and miles of depth. If I'm new to a system, or I only administer it as a backup or "once in a blue moon", the quick guides suit me well. In this case, that was precisely what I was looking for in a Unix system administration guide. Essential System Administration Pocket Reference provides this to a "T".
Without getting bogged down in lengthy descriptions or philosphical discussions of which tool to use when, this pocket reference lists the basic administration commands, beyond GREP (though it lists that, too!), with a short description of what it does. It's easier to read than the MAN file, usually gives me few examples, and I don't have to open a second terminal window to use it! Seriously, I really reccomend this guide to anyone new to Unix, including Linux, system administration. Or, like me, is getting back into it for the first time since, well, since the Dark Ages. It's a great guide or refresher and it literally does fit in your pocket!

Rating:
Summary: Essential is the word
Review: If you are performing any level of system administration on any varient of Unix then this is a great book to have on your desk. It covers just about all aspects of system administration necessary for small to medium systems and networks.

Each topic is dealt with first by an approachable description of what is going on, a discussion of the differences between different systems and some examples of commands or configuration files together with a discussion of what each example is doing and how it does it. It really is an easy way to work out what you need to do on your own system.

The structure works equally well as an aide memoir or as a tutorial to a new topic and this is backed up by an effective index which seems to guide me to the right part of the book much more reliably than is the case in many computing texts.

Although the book, even in its second edition, is now several years old, it is still relevant. The basics if the task do not change and, even if the task in hand has changed a little, reading and understanding the section in the book will leave you well placed to sort out minor variations which is not something that you would get from just plugging away at the man pages.

The main thing that is missing as a result of this is coverage of completely new material, don't expect to find anything about IPv6 or running a webserver for example. That is not such a big problem though as if you are dealing with these issues, you will almost certainly need books on those subjects as well as a general admin book.

For me, it is simple, this is a book that lives on my desk and not on my bookshelf. It helps me out with my mixed network of Linux, Solaris, SunOS and FreeBSD.

Rating:
Summary: Review: This book contains a lot of very useful information for every UNIX admin on very little space. When I bought this book, I thought that I would only use it as an aide-mémoire but a learned a lot of new things while reading this booklet.

The organization of this book into several topics that comprise a certain area of system administration like e.g. "Networking" help, if you want to gain a good overview of the commands, configuration files and specialties (e.g. device files) for this area.

A booklet of this size can of course not replace all the books and UNIX man pages that dig very deeply into each of the subjects mentioned in this book. As an overview book this was not the intention of the author anyway. This is meant as an overview book only that mentions the important details. You will not find many examples in this book (if any). This book is not meant for beginners or for learning the subject of UNIX system administration. If you want to learn this I recommend the big edition of this book as a good starting point.

I especially liked the following about this book:
- The different options for the UNIX derivates (Red Had Linux 8.0, Suse 8.1, Solaris 8 and 9, Free BSD 4.7, AIX 5 and HP-UX 11) can be found next to each other, this is really helpful if you work with more than one version of UNIX at a time
- Not only the commands the but configuration files and the device files on the platforms are covered
- The coverage of commands is surprisingly big (e.g. I did not expect DHCP configuration instructions in the book)

"Essential system admin pocket reference" covers some of the GNU commands. Unfortunately I am missing coverage for the following commands that are very helpful in problem analysis:
- lsof (list open files)
- truss / strace / trace (trace system calls)
- top (CPU and System Monitor)

This book has the perfect size for a reference book to carry around.

Rating:
Summary: <Extremely compact information for UNIX System administrator
Review: This book contains a lot of very useful information for every UNIX admin on very little space. When I bought this book, I thought that I would only use it as an aide-mémoire but a learned a lot of new things while reading this booklet.

The organization of this book into several topics that comprise a certain area of system administration like e.g. "Networking" help, if you want to gain a good overview of the commands, configuration files and specialties (e.g. device files) for this area.

A booklet of this size can of course not replace all the books and UNIX man pages that dig very deeply into each of the subjects mentioned in this book. As an overview book this was not the intention of the author anyway. This is meant as an overview book only that mentions the important details. You will not find many examples in this book (if any). This book is not meant for beginners or for learning the subject of UNIX system administration. If you want to learn this I recommend the big edition of this book as a good starting point.

I especially liked the following about this book:
- The different options for the UNIX derivates (Red Had Linux 8.0, Suse 8.1, Solaris 8 and 9, Free BSD 4.7, AIX 5 and HP-UX 11) can be found next to each other, this is really helpful if you work with more than one version of UNIX at a time
- Not only the commands the but configuration files and the device files on the platforms are covered
- The coverage of commands is surprisingly big (e.g. I did not expect DHCP configuration instructions in the book)

"Essential system admin pocket reference" covers some of the GNU commands. Unfortunately I am missing coverage for the following commands that are very helpful in problem analysis:
- lsof (list open files)
- truss / strace / trace (trace system calls)
- top (CPU and System Monitor)

This book has the perfect size for a reference book to carry around.