Essential System Administration, Third Edition Reviews

• THE UNIX System Admin. Book

  
  By A91W88F7SOLM5 on 2000-01-31
  From the book--" This book is the foundation volume for O'Reilly & Associates' system administration series...provides you with the fundamental information needed by everyone who takes care of UNIX systems...consciously avoids trying to be all things to all people; the other books in the series treat individual topics in 'complete' detail." This book gives he reader a good understanding of what goes on under the hood of a UNIX system, without getting you bogged down in the details, and also points out the diff. and sim. b/w many variants of the OS(BSD,SCO,AIX,...). You need to know a little about scripts and a few tools to get the most of the book, it's not for complete beginners, but it is very clearly written. I had been using Linux for about 9 months before buying this book, and had worked with SCO and SunOS on the job for about 5 or so years(off and on). Almost every page had an answer to a question I have asked myself over that time. "UNIX Power Tools"(1-56592-260-3)works really well as a companion book to this one. tells the ins and outs of the commands and such.
  
  

• Very useful for beginning/intermediate sysadmins

  
  By A1SS9ZMBNQLA4F on 2000-03-01
  I'm a graduate student in chemistry who purchased this book when I was charged with assisting my department's system administrator. I had previous experience as an occasional Unix user, but certainly was no expert.

  This book was a very useful resource to me in my first few months on the job, and still provides me with answers to occasional problems I run into. The conversational tone and organization by subject matter made the book very readable when I wanted to sit down with it, but it also was modular enough so that I could skip to whatever topics I needed to learn about quickly. The author's descriptions of her own experiences as system administrator have an honest and practical feel to them. (For example, early in the book she gives a time breakdown of her typical day with tasks ranging from setting up new user accounts to moving around office furniture to accomodate new computer equipment.)

  For me, an added strength of this book is that it provides descriptions of how to accomplish the same task on different variants of Unix. This has been especially important for me since I deal with computers running Digital Unix, AIX, IRIX, and Linux. The book does a good job of taking a seemingly overwhelming amount of material and presenting it in a very manageable format.

  Clearly a Unix book can't contain every answer in the world, but I find that this book still is a place I go to first for answers unless I'm looking for a very specific piece of information. I think this book is excellent for the intermediate Unix user who suddenly finds himself or herself in the position of caring for a number of computers. This is the most useful general purpose Unix book that I have purchased, and I recommend it highly.
  
  

• Essential is the word

  
  By A2KW8K3Q5PAO2F on 2001-11-04
  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.
  
  

• The first book to buy for your personal library

  
  By A20W396QWOOR08 on 2000-01-11
  I really liked how the author organized this book by task, and then provided an explanation of each task in Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux, etc. A very well organized, easy to follow reference that should be on every UNIX System Administrators bookshelf. The beginning SysAdmin should find it very educational. Intermediate SysAdmins should find this book to be an essential reference. Advanced SysAdmins may want to teach out of this book. All in all, well worth your time.
  
  

• A must-have, and NOT just for admins.

  
  By A3D1NSB3FMPTMM on 2001-10-02
  Did you know the "-p" option of "mkdir" can create several directory levels at once: "mkdir -p all/these/at/once" ? Or that you can use "cp -p" to preserve the modification times of the original file? Ever use "man -k "? After thirteen years of Unix, I learned many new tricks including commands I never used before but now can't live without, like xargs. I now have a 100% rock-solid understanding of Unix file system permissions, including SUID, SGID, sticky bit, etc. Many formerly nebulous areas are now crystal clear.
  
  Someone criticized this book for harping too much on SCO, a less popular version of Unix. It's true, but those parts are well-marked and quickly skipped.
  
  I have bought some mediocre O'Reilly books, but this one's full of precious tidbits and lucid explanations. It's a major confidence-booster, mandatory for aspiring power users and developers. (If you are really doing system administration then the Nemeth, et. al. book is also a must-have; it's more pure admin. If you feel you must choose between the two books, get off it and buy both!) This will give you some knowledge your local admins don't have. If you work in a competitive environment, this is some serious armament.
  
  
• Good book for the curious.
  By A39FOAO2OB3XOV on 2001-10-20
  I purchased this book as to satisfy my fascination with unix-based systems - I mean, after a while cd, mv, and mkdir just won't do anymore. It is an excellent book explaining the intricacies of unix-based systems and the differences between them. It covers topics such as the management of processes and devices, the filesystem, essentials in administrative tools, startup and shutdown, managing users, securing your system from others, automating your work, backups, system resources, even configuring kernels and TCP/IP Network Management. It explains everything in great detail in a way that's clear to understand while making the reader feel good about him/herself. Even though I didn't end up a system administrator after reading the book, I enjoyed it.
  
  
• Shouldn't Be Your First Book...
  By A1NY8K8LNRHKQU on 2004-02-07
  Your first book should be "UNIX System Administration Handbook" by Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass, & Hein. I always turn to that book first. I am not sure I would buy Frisch's "Essential System Administration" again. Definitly try to get it used if you do buy it. Looking in this book is often a last resort, and often if I haven't found the answer in my other two books, then it normally isn't in this one either.

  It is a big book, much of which I feel is fluff, but if this was your only book on the topic, you would still be ok. The wording just isn't as clear as I'd prefer.
  
  

• Great reference, full of examples, for all UNIX/Linux/BSD users
  By A17ZC6BX1JJ1SY on 2005-10-13
  At first glance, this book seems like a typical O'Reilly book: a narrow title, rich in material, and is beneficial to a much wider audience than the title reveals. It covers a wide range of system administration subjects and goes way beyond just the essentials.
  
  Over the years, I have administered several multi-user UNIX, Linux, and FreeBSD servers. I believed that I knew the essentials, because if I did not, I would not have been able to do my job all these years. I wanted to see if the things that I learned by experience, often the hard way, are included in "Essential System Administration". Sure enough, they were all there. Not only that, but they are laid out simply, without much unnecessary technical details, and accompanied by numerous examples and anecdotal encounters by the author. If you read one section, you would be able to apply the knowledge and skills that it describes right away. For instance, you don't need to read the entire manual of procmail in order to write some effective mail filters; chapter 9 has a section on "Mail Filtering with procmail" that covers the essentials.
  
  One impressive feature of this book is that it covers how to do things on a variety of operating system including various flavours of UNIX, Linux, and BSD. In the past, I often ran into a situation where I knew how to do something on FreeBSD, but did not know how to accomplish the same task on Solaris. With this book by my side, I will not have this problem again.
  
  Another feature of the book is that it covers a very, VERY, very wide variety of administrative topics: from every day system management, to operating system internals, to various devices, to backing up, to scheduling, to rebuilding the kernel. I am yet to find a task, whether typical or atypical, that is not covered in "Essential System Administration".
  
  But wait, are not most, if not all, of these topics encountered in a user's daily life? Are mail filters limited only to system administrators? Of course not! Many users organize their email by defining personal mail filters. And what about devices? Every user who uses a Linux-based desktop computer goes through the frustration of configuring devices at some point. "Essential System Administration" is really written to be useful for any UNIX/Linux/BSD user, not only system administrators.
  
  On a second thought, any one who owns a computer running UNIX/Linux/BSD is the administrator of one's system. Not only that, but anyone who uses one of these system must still manage their own account and perform tasks such as scheduling tasks, emailing, and printing. "Essential System Administration" was not written for system administrators in the traditional sense -- someone who is paid to administer an expensive system with hundreds or thousands of users -- but for the administrator in the broad sense -- any user who wishes to perform some management tasks on their system.
  
  "Essential System Administration" is an invaluable resource for anyone who wishes to become an expert in system administration, and is a useful resource for users of these systems. I give this book 4.5 out of 5.
  
  
• THE Unix/Linux Book to Have
  By on 2003-01-24
  This book should be called Indispensable and Complete System Administration. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but not by much. No book will ever be the complete book on Unix or Linux admin, but this one has so much material in it, it will be quite some time before I start looking for material not in the book. Every aspect of System Administration is covered in this book. The material goes into details as necessary, but the author does a good job of not getting bogged down in the details or overwhelming the reader with irrelevant or arcane knowledge that only a handful of people will use. What you will find is broad and thorough coverage of the material in an accessible, easy to read style.
  One of the things I appreciate most about this book is the organization. Rather than listing out a bunch of technical information, each chapter deals with a specific task that a sysadmin needs to be able to do, and the information to carry out that task is contained within the chapter, rather than making references to other chapters or appendices, as is common practice.
  This is another book that delivers the excellence I've come to expect from O'Reilly.
  
  
• The DEFINITIVE guide to learning about UNIX/Linux
  By on 1999-12-06
  I am fairly new to Linux. After being repeatedly frustrated by books such as "Mastering Linux" which offer little in the way of any concrete Linux knowledge, I came across this book at a bookstore. I immediately bought it and was pleased to discover that it essentially answered almost every UNIX question that I had. This book goes in depth where other books fail, and describes how to do things via the command line, where books such as Mastering Linux only tend to tell you how to do things through KDE and GNOME. Don't miss this one; it reads like a novel. I could hardly put it down.
  
  
• A Nice Sys Admin "manual"
  By A2ZB3LUN5X8H1G on 2000-11-22
  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.
  
  

• Long on generalities, short on being thorough.
  By on 1999-09-02
  I have been an NT admin and have found myself in the position of having to learn Unix administration. I chose this book based on the recommendations herein and was extremely disappointed with this book. While it gave a good general overview of how the many flavors of Unix are organized and structured, it lacked in its explanations as to how to manipulate the environment as an admin. Tons of examples and scripts are presented, without going through and expaining the entire script, or showing what its output would yield. It has wonderful advice on key elements of system administration and politics, but these are essentially the same as they are for NT. I was looking to learn, in detail, the Unix commands that need to be mastered fully, with all their parameters, in order to be a top notch admin, not just a few hand picked examples of commands in various arenas of the admin world. In order to fully understand the explanations given for the examples in this book, you already need to be quite proficient with Unix: and if that's the case, you shouldn't need this book.
  
  
• Crucial topic severely misses the target!
  By on 2001-01-16
  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...
  
  
• Out-of-date, Tries to cover too many flavors of Unix at once
  By A2QNZXWDM74W5A on 2001-02-04
  The book is much too broad to be very useful. Though it has a few good chapters, too much time is spent on trying to make sure that an example is handled for every different style of Unix, especially some of the older or more off-the-beaten path Unices, such as Irix or SCO. It also doesn't help that when you get to a topic that you get interested in, you're just given the suggestion to buy another O'Reilly book that discusses it. The Nemeth book (UNIX System Administration Handbook) is much better, because it covers examples in more popular versions of Unix, and because the latest edition is much closer to today's view of the Unix world.
  
  
• Essential System Administration
  By on 2002-01-12
  Had to buy this book for a Sys. Admin class. My opinion about the book is it is a good reference book for someone with Admin experience or currently working as an Admin; but as a green student I found the book overwhelmingly obtuse. While reading for class assignments the book made me feel how much I didn't know instead of teaching me something. Hence my original thought it read more like a reference book.
  
  
• The New Edition is Great
  By A16MOD1XLBL66M on 2002-09-14
  Well, it was a long wait, but the new third edition is great. Covers a couple of Linux distro's, FreeBSD, and your standard Unix platforms. More complete coverage of networking and security. More readable than the previous edition. Good for anyone with minimal Unix experience or those who have worked with it for years.
  
  
• Linux users need this book
  By A63WV90IOYG01 on 1999-04-26
  I am fairly new to Linux, and started by purchasing a number of O'Reilly's other titles on Linux. Some of them were very good, some of them not so good. While I have two working Linux boxes on my company network, I still had many unanswered questions about why things worked the way they did. I initially avoided this book because it was for Unix system administration, however, in a fit of desperation I purchased it and it has been *the* most useful general purpose book I have purchased for using Linux.

  Certainly there are a number of specific purpose books that cover many of the topics presented here in greater detail, however, for an overview of the entire system--how it works and why it works the way it does this book is indespensable.

  All you Linux users out there should get this book!
  
  

• Excellent overall view of unix System Administration
  By A2SX2NRS4HE70Y on 2001-07-03
  As a general view of Systems Administration and as a guide to Unix systems in general, this book is simply the best. Unless you are fortunate to be the administrator of a single Unix system, this book is a tremendous help as a starting point for trouble shooting and performing those mundane tasks that have to be done on a routine basis.

  The book is excellently written. She has covered a rather large topic in 700+ pages (excluding index.)
  
  

• A pretty useful book.
  By A5I71U0KBKNFO on 2003-05-11
  This book is generalized, but in a good way (for once). Instead of a lot of fluff and only touching a little bit on various software and how to do the most basic stripped down installs of things that have little to do with Unix, other than it can "run" on a Unix system, it actually covers a lot of ground. It covers a lot of topics and aspects, like it should be expected. There's parts that could be improved and it's biased towards some platforms over others, but for general knowledge and insight, it can offer a lot.
  
  
• Hard to follow unless you already knew
  By on 2003-09-02
  This book is hard to follow unless you already know about Unix. I think myself as intermediate user at least since I am using Unix since in engineering school. This book is still not quite easy to follow sometimes.

  On page 80 (about find): "The specified permission mode is XORED with the file's permission setting" I do not know what the author means (I don't know if it is error. ). It seems to me her presentation is more hard to understand (I am foreigner and it makes more difficult to me!) This is just one example. There are many examples which is not clear (My feeling is the author does not think very carefully when she wrote or how to present the materials better). If you already know the stuffs, you will be fine. If not, then you spend ton of times to figure out what the auther really means.

  So if I a file permission 777
  find / -perm -777

  So 777 XORed 777, I got 000. (The author said the specified permission mode is XORED with the file's permission setting). I don't follow what she means.

  Unfortunately, there are not many choice for Unix books. Either I have to dig very deep into the Unix OS which I don't have time to do it right now (I mean to learn the Unix OS from the C structure and implementations)
  
  

• A sub-par entry from our friends at O'Reilly
  By on 1998-11-26
  Last year I bought two system admin. books before taking on a Unix network as part of a new job. I found this book pathetic, especially compared to the treatment in Unix System Adminstration Handbook (Nemeth, et al.).

  Frish's treatment might be useful as a guide for advanced users, but for really tackling day-to-day adminstration issues, I found Nemeth (or the web) to be the only useful resources.
  
  

• Want to understand Unix and not just use it? This is the book.
  By A3QGY1QF1QEP44 on 2005-06-30
  This book is for the reader that wants to move beyond the basic, high level overview Unix book and truly understand the Unix system and why it invokes passion from it's fan base. This book could be used by the beginning user, but the novice or casual reader may find this book overwhelming in the sheer level of information it provides. If you are a system administrator, you will find this book is THE book you refer to the most, to the point you may end up keeping this book close to your Unix system at all times. Don't let the 2002 publication date think the book is out of date. The book covers the information that any system administrator will need, which do not change as frequently as the applications that run over the operating system.
  
  
• Buy it and don't lend it to anyone!
  By A25YFC31CSMZL9 on 2000-09-27
  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!
  
  

• Getting a little long in tooth...
  By AXEV8WGL08CNY on 2001-03-18
  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.
  
  
• To start UNIX seriously
  By AVV7VCHCFY3BI on 2001-04-12
  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.
  
  

• Why didn't I read this earlier? Very Comprehensive
  By A987W7WUQE2RP on 2001-05-06
  Many books on Unix/Linux will cover a wide array of aspects, but nearly all of them will touch those topics, and give a brief overview. This is great for the casual user, but for the system administrator, you need a more thorough grounding in Unix.

  This book is the answer.

  This book is very comprehensive because it includes every major flavor of Unix, even more obscure ones (like SCO Unix) and covers each aspect in fine detail. When it talks about filesystems, it includes all kinds of relevant details a SysAdmin will need to know, and even some extras to make life more convenient.

  The best part of this book is Aeleen's personal touch. Being a SysAdmin of many years, she puts all kinds of personal (and relevant) anecdotes as well as her philosophical view of System Administration. I like the 7 virtues of the System Administrator. This is a clever touch that one should keep in mind when administering a Unix system.

  In short, this book is a must have for all Unix System Administrators. I can't imagine a better book on this subject. Hopefully you will enjoy it too. :)
  
  

• Great, but needs FreeBSD support and more admin commands
  By on 2002-03-28
  I've had this book for years and it's great. I like that it serves most Unixes rather than just one flavor. However, to do that properly, it needs to be updated to accomodate FreeBSD.

  Another thing it needs is a lot more discussion of admin tools so of which have shown up more recently, such as systat, truss, tput, gdb, ktrace, lsof, ssh, killall, zcat, iostat, fstat, pstat, sysctl, etc, etc. And in spite of O'Reilly's TCP/IP book, there's no excuse for not mentioning traceroute, dig, nslookup, etc in this book.

  Another thing it badly needs is an appendix with a command summary, since the "Unix in a Nutshell" book carefully avoids all admin commands.

  I'm hoping the next edition addresses all of these issues. Obviously, though, I still like this book.
  
  

• The swiss army knife of UNIX books...
  By A1XLJC6RUZUZ8B on 2002-10-04
  From the MOTD to kernel configuration, it's covered. No this book will not replace a bookshelf full of other references (and on my shelf they're mainly other O'Reillys), but if you have to carry only one book with you and operate in a heterogenous *nix environment, then this should be it. I've also owned copies of the first and second edition, and in my opinion the third edition warranted purchase.
  
  
• Most useful sysadmin reference
  By A2X08UMO908KKX on 2004-03-18
  I use this book more than probably all my other reference materials put together. This book provides information across most UNIX platforms ie Linux,AIX, Solaris, HPUX etc. This is a must have for Sys Admins of all levels.
  
  
• Very complete
  By A121CJQ6D8C09S on 2005-05-26
  I agree on the fact that it is a bit outdated, but one must understand that it must be a very tiedous task to update this kind of content. I agree that maybe too many flavours of Unix have been covered. Hopefully, some will be dropped for the next edition (AIX, and TRU64 especially). However, this book is very well written and covers all the basics of sysadmin.
  
  

• Essential System Administration Pocket Reference
• UNIX System Administration Handbook (3rd Edition)
• Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition
• TCP/IP Network Administration (3rd Edition; O'Reilly Networking)
• Classic Shell Scripting