The Linux Network Administrator's Guide 66
| The Linux Network Administrator's Guide | |
| author | Olaf Kirch, Terry Dawson |
| pages | 450 |
| publisher | O'Reilly & Associates |
| rating | 7.5 |
| reviewer | Christopher Thompson |
| ISBN | 1565924002 |
| summary | A handy reference book for intermediate and experienced Linux networkers. |
Introduction
At long last, O'Reilly has released their second edition of the Linux Network Administrator's Guide. Updated to cover the 2.2 kernel, this book also serves as a handy reference for people using 2.0 or 2.4 kernels.The book covers a wide variety of topics, including TCP/IP, DNS, SLIP, PPP, and PLIP, NIS, NFS, email servers, news servers, firewalling, masquerading, and IPX configuration.
Target Audience
This book is clearly aimed at network administrators rather than Linux newbies. If your network consists of one or two computers, there will likely be little of value here. On the other hand, if you have a more complicated home network or administer an office lan, you will find much of value.
What's Good?
This book is based on the Linux Documentation Project, though the online copy available there is rather outdated. O'Reilly have provided the entire contents of the book online, however, as part of their Open Books Project and should be commended for this.The Network Administrator's Guide provides a great deal of information, complete with background, clear explanations, and examples. Although covering a range of topics, the guide is complete and fairly comprehensive. It is far more convenient to refer to this book rather than scanning through numerous HOW-TOs in order to set up your network. The guide covers each topic in sufficient detail that a reader is unlikely to resort to the HOW-TOs. Furthermore, the guide is a much easier read.
The author has taken considerable effort to ensure the information will not immediately become obsolete. The chapter on firewalling, for example, gives commands for kernels 2.0, 2.2, and the upcoming 2.4.
What's Bad?
Unfortunately, there are some problems with the Network Administrator's Guide, both in what it contains and in what it does not.The guide is mysteriously silent on a number of topics, not least of which are Samba, Apache, and Coda. While O'Reilly sells separate books covering at least the first two of these topics, some basic information on them would have been quite appropriate for this book. Many networks contain one or more Windows boxes and everyone seems to run web servers these days.
Sendmail and exim are covered fairly well but no mention is made of other mail transport agents such as qmail. This can be excused as no book of this size could be entirely comprehensive. Still, some of these choices seem arbitrary.
Also confusing is what the book does contain. There is, for example, an entire chapter on UUCP, as well as several references elsewhere. Although UUCP is certainly not dead, I question its importance for the majority of network administrators.
Dead Tree? Or Online?
So is this book worthwhile? If you are involved in administering a Linux network, unquestionably yes. You may need additional information if your network also contains Windows boxes but this book should still prove valuable.As to whether it is worth the purchase price or whether you should just read it online, this comes down to personal preference. Some people are satisfied with online content but I prefer having the information in dead-tree format, for reference when I am without a network connection. I also find it easier to read a book than a web page. I have no doubt that this guide is worth its purchase price.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. Introduction to Networking
- Chapter 2. Issues of TCP/IP Networking
- Chapter 3. Configuring the Networking Hardware
- Chapter 4. Configuring the Serial Hardware
- Chapter 5. Configuring TCP/IP Networking
- Chapter 6. Name Service and Resolver Configuration
- Chapter 7. Serial Line IP
- Chapter 8. The Point-to-Point Protocol
- Chapter 9. TCP/IP Firewall
- Chapter 10. IP Accounting
- Chapter 11. IP Masquerade and Network Address Translation
- Chapter 12. Important Network Features
- Chapter 13. The Network Information System
- Chapter 14. The Network File System
- Chapter 15. IPX and the NCP Filesystem
- Chapter 16. Managing Taylor UUCP
- Chapter 17. Electronic Mail
- Chapter 18. Sendmail
- Chapter 19. Getting Exim Up and Running
- Chapter 20. Netnews
- Chapter 21. C News
- Chapter 22. NNTP and the nntpd Daemon
- Chapter 23. Internet News
- Chapter 24. Newsreader Configuration
- Appendix A. Example Network: The Virtual Brewery
- Appendix B. Useful Cable Configurations
- Appendix D. SAGE: The System Administrators Guild
The Document in question (Score:1)
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You forgot.... (Score:1)
Proof left as an exercise for the student...
Sendmail and exim (Score:1)
Re:Why books? (Score:1)
It contains all the HOWTOs and MINI-HOWTOs circa 1997, Linux Installation and Getting Started Guide 2.3 by Matt Welsh, Linux Users' Guide Beta V. 1 by Larry Greenfield, Linux System Administrator's Guide 0.4 by Lars Wirzenius, Linux Network Administrators' Guide 1.0 by Olaf Kirsh, and Linux Programmers' Guide V. 0.4 by Sven Goldt, et al.
It's sitting on my shelf. It has occasionally been more useful than the online HOWTOs, but mostly, it just goes to show how out-of-date a 2,000 page book can become in three years. :-)
--
Q: What do you get when a Postmodernist joins the Mafia?
Ironic name? (Score:1)
Is it just me, or is it kind of funny that they have a horse on the cover of a book whose acronym is 'NAG'?
Oreilly Samba and Debian books also online (Score:1)
2/4up (Score:1)
The trees thank you for your support.
Re:NAT for BSD (Score:1)
A lot of FreeBSD issues are documented in a format that is pretty easy for all to understand.
Re:C++ reference? (Score:1)
necessary for anyone (Score:1)
Every book you find (and I've found a lot) has different ways of putting things. Even if you never sit down and read the chapter, you need it to act like a kind of primer to the rest of the book.
If you think you're too high and mighty for the chapter, tear it out. Your loss.
Re:Home Lan, this book and Bliss (Score:1)
You obviously never read UML in a Nutshell
Re:Question (Score:1)
The only potential problem I see with this approach is that an early released free book on a topic might gain defacto common popularity even if it isn't quite perfect, then a subsequent free book on a similar topic might never be attempted, or if it were put out, might not get the deserving attention. The argument against this is that under persistant free availability, time will tell the best apart. However with a technology topic such as this I don't believe that the information is usefull for a sufficient period of time to alow a mass of people to recognize the merit, and with all the attention on the imperfect book should get more updates and grow faster than the better founded book. Somewhat like software really.
-Daniel
NAT for BSD (Score:1)
-Daniel
Re:NAT for BSD (Score:1)
I don't understand why you might have been modded down though.
State Of The Art (Score:1)
Showing the ISBN... (Score:1)
Re:rtfm? (Score:1)
Hmmm... have you even read the BSD License? I would have to say that the GPL is far more oppressive in terms of what one can do with code than the BSDL is. With the GPL, code must remain open; whereas with the BSDL, it doesn't have to remain open (if for some reason it needed to be closed).
And as far as "cumbersome" goes, that caveat goes to the GPL, and not the BSDL - the BSDL states only 2 things: source must display the copyright, and binaries must display the copyright, license, and disclaimer. The GPL states that all derivative works must be under the GPL, source must be available, code can't link to non-GPL/LGPL code, etc.
It's all how open the original author of the code wants his code to be. Both the GPL and the BSDL in my opinion, are great licences, and I would use either one.
The GPL/BSDL bitchfests are idiotic, and pointless - just use whichever license suits your needs at the time.
Oh and before you accuse me of being a *BSD zealot, I use only Slackware, and love it (although my OpenBSD CD for my firewall should arrive in a couple of days). :-
Re:I think he means to the users (Score:1)
What is really needed .... (Score:1)
Re:You forgot.... (Score:1)
http://www.google.com/search?q=women%27s+studies +journal
Turned up 203,000 hits. 203,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong can they?
The Euopean Journal of Women's Studies is one of them. Supported by both SAGE and WISE, they must have something on the ball. The WISE web page gave me an error I had not seen before, "too many java scripts". If nothing else, EJWS has a nice looking cover.
We can imagine other deparments will be equally vocal. I shudder to think of what I might get back for poly sci. Do you get a BA or a BS for that? I don't know!
Humanities (OT) (Score:1)
1. They have more money for it. What else do they have to spend it on? Experimental equipment? Fancy pens? Salary? Ha!
2. They can write.
Re:Cool (Score:1)
Jeremy
Re:All you need. (Score:1)
Re:Why books? (Score:1)
Re:I think (Score:1)
Re:Why books? (Score:1)
I think he means to the users (Score:1)
I have them in paper format (Score:1)
Also personally with the expense of lap tops and their lack of durability (I had a friend in HS who had to use a laptop becuase of manual dexterity problems for handwriting and he went through 2-3 in his education). I will always stick with paper. Cheaper too.
That dosn't appear likely (Score:1)
"Serious theoretical text" (Score:1)
Just because you get a dry thick tome that dosn't explain much dosn't mean it's better.
Any major differences? (Score:1)
That's a good thing (Score:1)
SOTA? (Score:1)
Thanks (Score:1)
You're not cool (Score:1)
Re:fp (Score:1)
Re:Brings up a good question...? (Score:1)
UUCP dead? Getting there... (Score:1)
Ideally, though, it should not have been included as a major point, and Samba should have. Although, you do have to keep in mind that this book was probably finished months ago and is only being published now. That mitigates things slightly, but only slightly.
Kierthos
Palm version (Score:1)
Too many chapters (Score:1)
Too many chapters, not enough words.
Re:rtfm? (Score:1)
Re:Why only for large installations? (Score:2)
--
Re:I think (Score:2)
Now it's sitting on my desk...
Re:All you need. (Score:2)
I was interested in this user group thing so I went an dug up the link: http://ug.oreilly.com/ [oreilly.com]
Some notes from that page:
Sounds good! It's nice to see a company whose principles and practice seem really respectable... I haven't really seen any "dirt" on O'reilly, is it out there? I hope not!
--8<--
Re:SOTA? (Score:2)
I believe he means "State Of The Art", i.e. cutting-edge.
Reminds me of the first time I heard that phrase. I was calling Digital to ask about the cost of a PDP-8/I (or /L or /E perhaps), and the saleswoman kept saying "we don't sell that model anymore, we sell only state-of-the-art computers".
I had no idea what she was talking about. I was just a kid who really, really wanted the computer in the pictures on the computer books he'd been programming from (and imagining sysadmining from -- the sysadmin guide for TSS/8 being my first such guide, and being my first big "fantasy book" ever ;-) for awhile.
It is really just amazing what we're now able to buy and install in our homes, computer-wise, and make available to friends all around the world to use in various ways.
Fortunately, I don't lose so much sleep over the possibilities as I did as a young teenager...!
Re:Why only for large installations? (Score:2)
The HOW-TOs were useful as well, but without a notebook computer, HOW-TOs don't really travel on a plane well. I do feel that some of the stuff in the book is irrelevant (setting up dial up services) but that it ONLY because it doesn't apply to me setting up my DSL/Cable modem LAN at home. I'm sure it would be very useful to somebody else.
One thing I was disappointed in was the lack of coverage of DHCP. Having recently moved to a new apartment and switching from static IP-DSL to DHCP-cable modem, this book wasn't all that helpful getting me hooked up to the Net. It helped in getting my internal LAN up, but New Riders Linux Firewalls [bookpool.com] is much better for dealing with DHCP. My $.02.
Bottom Line: A few MINOR flaws, but anyone that uses two or more Linux machines should have this book.
-psxndc
Re:I don't think they left anything out... (Score:2)
It would make sense to cover Samba--if NFS, why not Samba? Apache is a bigger topic, but if Running Linux can have a chapter on Apache and a couple sections on Samba, I suppose the NAG in the future might too. As for the choice of mailers, we just felt that Exim was more visible in the Linux community, partly because it's the Debian default.
Anyway, the wrong way to create a book is to think of every possible useful tool and try to throw it in. Substantial coverage takes a long time (and maybe more expertise than any one author can have); books that cover too much usually end up being superficial.
Accept this posting is as just a lilttle peek through the window into the complicated decisions an author and editor have to make; decisions based on their current knowledge, their judgement of readers' needs, the amount of time they have, etc.
OT:C++ reference? (Score:2)
I guess it depends on the person, as for good C++ books, I never did find one that I really liked...
Re:Brings up a good question...? (Score:2)
Re:C++ reference? (Score:2)
I highly, highly recommend Essential C++ by Lippman. Its less than 300 pages. If you can digest that, the books you want on your shelf are C++ Primer, also by Lippman, and of course The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup(the inventor of C++).
There are no greater authorities on C++ than the two authors I mentioned. Essential C++ is hands down the best book on learning C++.
Re:Question (Score:2)
Re:Brings up a good question...? (Score:2)
Because HOWTOS, FAQs, and READMEs don't cover all (Score:2)
Also I want you to show me a online document that is better then the printed version of some major thing. Look at the comp.lang.c++ faq. They have a great deal of infommation but they lack in all the detail that the published book has by the same name. That's why.
So in conclusion until we get *good* online alternatives of conventional informational services people who want to know buy books.
Brings up a good question...? (Score:2)
Re:Why books? (Score:2)
Cause when you're fixing a problem on-screen, it's a real pain to keep swapping. I glance around my workstation and see 30 or 40 custom pages stuck up, a dozen of which I use daily. On my desk top I have four sheets showing for just my current project.
I do read FAQs, Howtos, and Readmes. I also have 11 apps open: My Excel sheet runs 3 pages each for seven tabs; Generally three or four panels per Unix window (4); And customized mainframe session currently running six windows. All running on a monitor that couldn't display all those simultaneously in anything other than 1 pixel/character.
Sometimes, you have to whack people over the head to make them recognize what _should_ be obvious. Books (and paper) have some serious advantages over computers. Easily transportable, modifiable , lower power requirements, and can display more info simultaneously.
Re:Why books? (Score:2)
Re:ESA2 (Score:3)
I couldn't agree more. For network configuration and admin, ORA's TCP/IP Network Administration is almost essential for multi-vendor networks. For Linux specific issues, I use ORA's Running Linux. Between those two, there is not much new material that is covered by The Linux Network Administrator's Guide. While it is a good book in itself, I found that the information contained in it was already covered by other ORA books I own.
I don't think they left anything out... (Score:3)
What a book which is a "Guide to Network Administration" says to me is that it's a guide to what you have to check up on before you go looking for problems in your applications. I firmly believe that this book should stop immediately before the in-depth books on the topics begin. If you include quick cheatsheets on apache, samba, and coda, where do you draw the line? At what point do you cut things off? "Well, my xfrisk server isn't working, why isn't there any data on it in this fine ORA publication whose contents are exactly as stated on the cover of the manual?"
And if you think just a checklist isn't enough, then how much data do they put in the book? It's important to recognize that ORA is in the business of selling books. At the point where they start making their other books less important, they have to worry about whether they're going to be able to sell them or not. So it makes sense from both an organizational and a business standpoint to keep that data seperate.
Of course, ORA doesn't have to worry, we all know they're the best source for documentation on just about everything. Rock on, ORA.
Home Lan, this book and Bliss (Score:3)
I recently put together a home network and this book certainly helped me a lot. It helped me set up a server running NIS, NFS, and Sendmail as well as guide me through a number of other minor networking issues. "Using Samba", "MySQL & mSQL", "Oracle Database Administration", and "Linux in a Nutshell" were my other closest allies in this little project.
I still haven't met an O'Reilly book I didn't like.
Why only for large installations? (Score:4)
The above sentence just isn't true. Even on a home LAN, even if there's just one user, isn't that user important? If I don't back up my work, then some day I am going to lose it. If I don't secure my gateway machine, then some day an 3l33t h4x0r is going to 0wn it.
When I started working with Linux, I didn't want to learn admin stuff. (It's not that I'm too stupid/lazy to learn, it's just that I had other priorities.) I had to anyway. I'm still a borderline-novice too, and that has had some unfortunate consequences at times. I really don't think there's any way around it. You have to learn this stuff, even if your box has one single user.
---
Practical Guide To Solaris (Score:4)
Re:Brings up a good question...? (Score:4)
Another tip I can offer on the firewall side is check out www.bastille-linux.org. Its an automated script that walks you through securing a Linux box. This can get you up and running pretty quickly and safely.
Oh, one more tip, check out www.securityfocus.com there are some great resources for beginners there too.
Does slashdot pay attention at all? NAG2E is here. (Score:5)
There is also a great book on security and optimization (which the NAG doesn't cover). It is called Securing and Optimizing Linux: RedHat Edition. It can also be found on the LDP Website [linuxdoc.org]. It can also be purchased from LinuxCentral.Com [linuxcentral.com] or LinuxPorts.com [linuxports.com] and comes with two CD's.
All you need. (Score:5)
If you're using a simple network setup, or are learning the network side of system administration, this is a great book. It's the only network admin I've ever needed to use for Linux.
Just a note on O'Reilly, if you don't have a user group in your area, set one up. The user group gets free books, discounts on conventions and conferences, and lots of pre-release input and useful information. There's a link on their website, but you have to dig.
O'Reilly and Associates [ora.com]
ESA2 (Score:5)
There is an ORA book about this which I venerate : Essential System Administration, 2nd Edition [oreilly.com].
It not only covers most situations (though more aimed at single machines) but is also written a very pleasant way by a woman: AEleen Frisch [oreilly.com].
I especially appreciated when ORA asked a French(-speaking) woman: Céline Valot to translate it to French, thus preserving the typical flavour of the original author's feminine humor.
It is one of my fery few French computing books.
ESA2 not only covers most aspect of all the different unices but also implicitely conveys its reader to uniformize the way each machine has to do each job, hence making the resulting network even more homogeneous and easy to administer.
--
I think (Score:5)