CramSession's Mac OS X Administration Basics : Certification Study Guide

Rating:
Summary: A surface-level treatment with errors
Review: I bought this thinking it might help me fill a few of the gaps in my knowledge of OS X administration. Granted, this is called "basics", but it is meant to be *administration* basics, not Mac OS X User Basics or what have you.

Take, for example, the discussion of the root account. The book says, "The owner is automatically given root user access to deal with when using the command line or any Darwin or UNIX issues, as well as an administrator account for the purposes of administering OS X."

Ignore the language mired in ambiguity, and focus on this: this isn't true. OS X has always come without any root account enabled. The owner is automatically an Administrator, and at the command line an administrator is allowed to execute commands with root privileges using "sudo", provided the administrator enters his or her password. (If you would like to enable the root account, launch NetInfo Manager and select "Enable Root User" from the Security menu. You'll need to define a password for root at that point.)

I have no idea if you can return digital books, but I will be asking for my money back. This book has been nothing but a frustration to me.

Rating:
Summary: A surface-level treatment with errors
Review: I bought this thinking it might help me fill a few of the gaps in my knowledge of OS X administration. Granted, this is called "basics", but it is meant to be *administration* basics, not Mac OS X User Basics or what have you.

Take, for example, the discussion of the root account. The book says, "The owner is automatically given root user access to deal with when using the command line or any Darwin or UNIX issues, as well as an administrator account for the purposes of administering OS X."

Ignore the language mired in ambiguity, and focus on this: this isn't true. OS X has always come without any root account enabled. The owner is automatically an Administrator, and at the command line an administrator is allowed to execute commands with root privileges using "sudo", provided the administrator enters his or her password. (If you would like to enable the root account, launch NetInfo Manager and select "Enable Root User" from the Security menu. You'll need to define a password for root at that point.)

I have no idea if you can return digital books, but I will be asking for my money back. This book has been nothing but a frustration to me.

Rating:
Summary: Mac OS X Cram Session
Review: To start, it has not been updated to reflect 10.2. Big difference in 10 and 10.2. Will not be useful. I had trouble printing the book out even though there was not a security for printing. I had to use print range to print past the contents page. It should have had version info. Will not be helpful for the test.