Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed Reviews

• not worth a buck - terribly lacking

  
  By A1I2X1QLUOJ6CZ on 2007-05-12
  I was so excited to see this book come out that I bought it immediately! Then, I read it. Wow. It completely leaves out any detail or mention of major items that are different than the previuos version of Red Hat. For instance, it does not even mention telnet. It doesn't mention XDMCP protocal at all. (So how does one connect to xwindows on Red Hat 5? NO IDEA, because it's different than Red Hat 4, and the author doesn't even mention it in this book.) Hard to believe. I could go on for another 10 pages on what is missing in this book, but then I would have wasted more valuable time, (that I'm trying to recoop from reading this... "book.")
  
  

• Slightly Off but good read

  
  By A2U5PBI9RPUJ19 on 2007-06-11
  I have read about 3/4th of this book so far,most of it is mainly just review for me since the RHEL 5 release. I have noticed so far a few issues mainly with grammar, spelling, and multiple misguided instructions such as the PXE installation method, LDAP setup, and a few other minor things. Overall the book is my favorite linux related book since it gets right to the point and doesnt have all the boring history lessons about 15 years ago when service such and such was developed and how it is completely different etc etc. Any one who's read a linux related book knows what im talking about.
  
  In regards to the misguided instructions, for instance the PXE setup. I have gone through the chapter about 5 times now and slowly stepped through the documentation as it explains but still have yet to be able to get the correct outcome.(a working PXE installation). I have previous experience with PXE so I was able to figure this out on my own with no issue but worry that some new admins to RHEL will have a hard time getting this particular method of installation setup. I'm unfortunetly human so I still may have gotten the steps down wrong and other may find that the instructions are infact correct. If so ... cool. :)
  
  - runlevel -
  
  

• looking forward...

  
  By A214D539AZ0BK1 on 2007-05-17
  This is a RHEL5 book that is looking forward, not back. You really shouldn't be using telnet in 2007 (except maybe to connect to some old equipment); X11 forwarding is covered in the chapter about OpenSSH. What's I'm excited about are the new features: NFSv4 (better security and static ports!), provisioning servers with RHN and kickstart, Oprofile, SELinux, auditd, etc. By the way, the author works for Red Hat and is very active in these technologies. I do wish there was less general linux information in this book since that is heavily covered by other excellect publications.
  
  

• Not very clean

  
  By A23IR4S92Y0SIW on 2007-07-16
  S0me good general info - but watch our for the quality of examples. In my case, I was bitten hard by the "Installing with PXE" section of chapter 1. I found multiple typos in the example commands, file lists, and configuration files. When combined with the fact that error messages for these kinds of configuraitons are sparse - and documentation even mroe so - it was that much more dissapoiinting that the key text wasn't vetted prior to publishing.
  
  

• different from running a Microsoft box

  
  By AG35NEEFCMQVR on 2007-05-09
  Fox's book is perhaps best suited for a sysadmin with some earlier background in any flavour of unix or linux. If you are coming in totally raw to linux, the style of managing this Red Hat version may take some getting used to. Unlike Microsoft's operating systems, the user interfaces available under Red Hat might seem a little sparse. Though to be fair to Red Hat, they've been assiduously building out the UI. A lot of the sysadmin tasks covered in the text are at the command line.
  
  The main linux concepts are well covered. Including that of run level, to which a system will boot into. A nice feature that unixes of 10 years ago often lacked. Another powerful feature is the making of partitions on a hard disk. A fundamental utility that, frankly, you should not often need. But sometimes you do, when installing a new disk. Or when trying to recover from a crashed disk.
  
  Poring over the text, it was nice to see respectful mention given to vi and emacs. These long predate the fancy text editors that Microsoft [and others] came up with. But you can run these under a vanilla text terminal, and they are very lightweight. Without getting into a long running debate as to which of vi or emacs is more useful, you should try to learn one. It doesn't really matter which. If you are going to be maintaining a linux box, there will be times when you have no graphics available, and you need to edit some text file.
  
  Readers who are familiar with Macs might notice that the book has little coverage of video and audio. The Mac runs a version of unix that has applications specially built for those. Whereas Red Hat is for generic linux uses.
  
  

• RHCE Red Hat Certified Engineer Linux Study Guide (Exam RH302) (Certification Press)
• A Practical Guide to Linux(R) Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming
• Red Hat Linux Networking and System Administration
• Fedora Linux Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for Fedora, CentOS and Red Hat Power Users
• Linux Administration Handbook (2nd Edition)