Your complete single source for HP-UX system administration!

• Completely updated for HP-UX 11i!

• Day-to-day HP-UX system administration-in-depth

• UNIX commands and shells

• UNIX/Windows interoperability

Now, there's a single source for all the information HP-UX administrators need to succeed. Marty Poniatowski has updated the world's #1 HP-UX system administration guide to cover all the latest HP-UX 11i enhancements, all the UNIX commands HP-UX sysadmins need to know, plus every key option for UNIX/Windows interoperability!

HP-UX in depth...

• System boot: PDC, ISL, hpux, GSP

• Installing HP-UX, software distributor, and operating environments

• HP-UX kernel-including detailed 11i kernel parameter descriptions

• Device files

• Users/groups, backup/restore, and startup/shutdown scripts

• Virtual partitions background info

• System Administration Manager (SAM)

• Veritas Volume Manager and LVM-with extensive LVM examples

• Performance management: iostat, vmstat, netstat, top, sar, rpm, and more

• Networking

• Common Desktop Environment (CDE)

• HP-UX system auditing

UNIX commands and shells...

• File types

• File commands: cd, cp, file, ls, mv, mkdir, pwd, rm, rmdir, and more

• File viewing: cat, head, tail, and more

• Advanced commands: grep, sed, awk, find, cut, paste, split, sort, cmp, diff, comm, and more

• Chapter-length vi coverage-plus bonus tear-out Quick Reference Card

• Bash, Korn, and C shells and shell programming

• Includes manual pages for many commonly used commands

UNIX/Windows interoperability...

• CIFS/9000

• X Window System

• NFS

• ASU/9000

• Command Line

• Services for UNIX

CD-ROM INCLUDED

Includes trial versions of Hewlett-Packard's suite of VantagePoint performance tools for HP-UX, plus information on HP Virtual Partitions and "Cheat Sheets" for key sysadmin tasks.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 23 Ratings

The best HP-UX book, but not well edited - 2003-07-28
Reviewer Rating:
There are dozens of good UNIX administration books; this is the only one that covers comprehensively the feature set of HP/UX 11i. For that reason, you should definitely pick it up if you have HP UNIX machines to manage. It covers specific HP stuff well: SAM, the boot process, the backup utilities, virtual partitions, etc. The information is accurate and the overall style is easy to read. I think it's the most complete books on a given operating system I can think of: most authors/publishers would have divided the information here into at least two or three books: one for the basic UNIX stuff, one for regular HP sysadmin, and one for advanced features found in high-end HP servers. This book has all three.

It does fall down on occasion in terms of its editing. Overall, I tend not to trust the editing quality of books published by the company that produces the software (they don't exercise the editorial scrutiny because they want more books about their products), and this book is no exception. Sometimes, it strangely talks about things that aren't HP/UX, for instance, the section on CDE contains a lot of superfluous information (like what Sun puts in what drawer on the front panel) and the section on Samba is a weird mix of discussion of Samba on HPUX and on Linux. I can only imagine those sections were slapped in there from other papers without tailoring them for this book. There are some other annoying things that a good editor could have taken care of, for instance, repetition in between sections of the same chapter and screenshots/console dumps that have confusing information in them. One boot screenshot shows leftover console garbage that should have been removed, for instance. There are also occasional omissions, like any mention of using LDAP services, but all the basics are covered. There are some nice additions, too, such as information on setting up PRM and a nice tear-out card with hardware commands.

I still give this book a 4/5, because none of its flaws prevent it from being very useful and informative. If a good technical editor put it under the knife, it would definitely deserve the status of best HPUX-specific book. Right now it holds that position, but mostly due to the lack of titles out there that concentrate on HP UNIX.

A true HP-UX 11i Handbook - 2006-01-20
Reviewer Rating:
I used this handbook to get a better picture of HP-UX system administration and as supplement to the CSA exam study guide.. In fact this book helped me well in my preparation for the HP-UX CSA exam. It covers wide range of topics related to system administration. The book is heavy but very resourceful. I like it and I am keeping it aroung for a while.

Weak user admin section - 2009-04-01
Reviewer Rating:
While this tome covers many commands and steps central to installing and managing HP-UX 11i servers it falls terribly short on readability. This is what results from not having experienced writers in the technical pubs group. Where was the editor?

My biggest complaint is the user administration chapters. This book actually points you to the "vipw" command, which places a syntax and locking wrapper around a vi session on /etc/passwd. This leaves out /etc/shadow and other "modern" user admin constructs. "Modern" here means anything since roughly 1990. Directly editing /etc/passwd is widely considered verboten except in dire circumstances (uncracking a system, and other extreme recovery processes).

Even the "vipw(1M)" man page on an 11i box says "editing of the password file with vipw is generally discouraged. Please use sam, useradd, usermod, userdel, chfn, chsh or passwd to edit /etc/passwd." That was dated November 2000, before even the April 2001 first edition of this title!

The proper tools for local user admin would be "sam" for interactive/menu-driven control, and "useradd"/"usermod"/"userdel" for command-line control, plus a handful of other tools. Centralized admin through a variety of directory services is considered de rigueur in mid-to-large-scale environments.

If you really want this book then buy it used...and cheap...like $1-9 cheap. It will be useful for some of the HP-UX 11i-specific stuff, but there are lots of good admin essentials that include HP-UX and give better advice on managing Unix servers.

too little for the money - 2003-11-05
Reviewer Rating:
It is a pretty good book, but poorly indexed. Has valuable tips if you are not experienced, but most of the data found here can be found by searching the internet. For half the price, it would be a good book

Wow! Why wasn't this around when I was learning HP-UX? - 2003-06-16
Reviewer Rating:
It has the wide range of topics needed for every sysadmin and the detail needed to actually help you learn the OS. The book has a *lot* of information; it freely uses example code, output, and visual aids to help clarify.

If you want to learn HP-UX, then this is the book! You will be able to set up, configure, and make available a great server and you'll know the "why" that goes with the "what".

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