If you're an experienced system administrator looking to acquire Linux skills, or a seasoned Linux user facing a new challenge, Linux System Administration offers practical knowledge for managing a complete range of Linux systems and servers. The book summarizes the steps you need to build everything from standalone SOHO hubs, web servers, and LAN servers to load-balanced clusters and servers consolidated through virtualization. Along the way, you'll learn about all of the tools you need to set up and maintain these working environments.

Linux is now a standard corporate platform with users numbering in the hundreds of millions, and there is a definite shortage of talented administrators. Linux System Administration is ideal as an introduction to Linux for Unix veterans, MCSEs, and mainframe administrators, and as an advanced (and refresher) guide for existing Linux administrators who will want to jump into the middle of the book. Inside, you'll learn how to:

• Set up a stand-alone Linux server

• Install, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot a DNS server using BIND

• Build an Internet server to manage sites, perform email and file transfers, and more

• Set up an email service for a small-to-medium-sized site, complete with authentication

• Install and configure Apache, PHP, and MySQL on a web server built from scratch

• Combine computers into a load-balanced Apache web server cluster based on the free Linux Virtual Server

• Set up local network services from distributed file systems to DHCP services, gateway services, print services, user management and more

• Use Linux virtualization with Xen or VMWare to run multiple kernels on one piece of hardware; manage each kernel's access to processor time, devices, and memory

• Create shell scripts and adapt them for your own needs

• Back up and restore data with rsync, tar, cdrecord, Amanda, and MySQL tools

Linux System Administration is not only knowledgeable and practical, but convenient. The ingredients for this book had been scattered throughout mailing lists, forums, and discussion groups, as well as books, periodicals, and the experiences of colleagues. Everything is now in one handy guide. In the course of their research, the authors also solved many problems whose solutions were completely undocumented. They now pass their lessons on to you.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 12 Ratings

Quite Disappointing - 2007-08-05
Reviewer Rating:
I shelled out the full price for this at a local bookstore with the hopes that it could help me setup a new Debian LINUX server. Normally, O'Reilly books have a very high level of accuracy and detail, this one deviates from that standard quite a bit. I used to admin BSD boxes many moons ago and thought this would be the perfect refresher course for me to get back up to speed with the current technology. From the beginning of the book, I started running into problems and was getting confusing errors that were not at all mentioned in the book. For starters, this book is based on older software packages that aren't included in the current distribution, so you have to use your favorite search engine to find out what the current version and installation package names are. Next, the configuration files the authors tell you to modify are in many cases wrong or non-existent. They have you comment out lots of lines in various config files only to discover later on in the book that you have to uncomment them so things like PHP will actually work. On top of that, the ISPCONFIG setup fails, as there is some sort of problem with the PHP installation. AARGH! I think I spent more time playing Sherlock Holmes on the web than I did reading the book. Which, I actually recommend that YOU do if you are in a similar position as me... To add to my frustration with the authors, their website is basically vacant. My opinion is they cashed the check from O'Reilly and forgot about the rest of their commitments to the readers who are spending from $29 to $44.99 USD on a copy of this outdated and confusing waste of paper. There might be a few useful tidbits here and there, but the web is your best resource for this information. I gave it 2 stars because it does point you in a general direction of how you might want to set things up, but the explanation of it all is generally wrong.

Great for quick overview - 2009-05-03
Reviewer Rating:
I got this to get me more acclimated with our Linux systems. I have only had very limited exposure to Linux and the apps you run on it. This is a great book for giving a technical person a good understanding of basic administration. I would recommend based on the book description and who the intended audience is for.

Poorly organized - 2009-04-03
Reviewer Rating:
I stumbled on this O'Reilly volume in the bookstore and immediately bought it, but my high expectations were not met. As of 2009 the book is already hopelessly out-of-date even though its publication date is only March 2007. Partly this is due to the tumultous, fast-moving Linux landscape, but most of the blame rests with the authors, who rely too much on specific commands and config files rather than on explaining general concepts. As a result, many of the examples in the book don't work at all. Experienced admins will find this merely annoying, whereas novices are likely to be thoroughly baffled and frustrated.

In Chapter 2, Setting Up a Linux Multifunction Server, we install Apache, Postfix, BIND, and various other services on a Debian server. The authors explain that this chapter is based on "Debian's stable version," but fail to alert the reader that "Debian's stable version" is a moving target that changes every couple years. Beginners who dutifully install "Debian stable" and follow the directions in this chapter will be in for quite a rough time, since the authors appear to be using Debian 3.1 (although they don't say), and the current stable version is 5.0. The chapter starts by updating and restarting inetd, an obsolete package that Debian no longer uses. There are many other problems and annoyances in this chapter. The authors set up rdate as a cron job and point it at a specific NTP server at CMU in order to synchronize time on the server. They fail to mention that hosted virtual servers (which I'm sure many readers will be using) will not have to do this since NTP will already be running on the host server. They install fetchmail which seems pointless since a few pages later they install an entire mail server (Postfix), complete with a self-generated SSL certificate. They install BIND9 in a chroot environment. To me it seems ludicrous to introduce chroot jails and self-generated SSL certificates in an *introductory* chapter on Linux system administration.

The organization of the book is bizarre. Chapter 10, the second-to-last chapter, covers extremely basic Unix topics like file permissions, I/O redirection, and shell scripting. The final chapter is on backups. It's as if the book were written backwards, moving from advanced topics to basic ones.

Experienced sysadmins will be able to glean some valuable tips from this book, but newbies who want a general overview of Linux system administration should stay away.

Configure and deploy debian servers - 2008-11-18
Reviewer Rating:
This book explains step by step how to properly configure basic network services for a corporation.
The text describes most used open source applications and it is focused on Debian Linux distribution ( Ubuntu is based on Debian).
The content of the book is very detailed and the quality of the resulting server configuration really works in a productive environment.
You should be aware that you need some Linux/UNIX background because basic Linux commands are not explained.
If you want to deploy a Debian server with basic functionality or want to become an acceptable Linux system administrator, this book is really useful.

Great reference - 2008-10-14
Reviewer Rating:
This Linux system administration book has been very handy for me over the last 6 months. I found the information on high availability and virtualization very helpful since I am deploying this in my domain. This book is also a great command line reference for me. The security recommendations also came in very handy. This book also gave me guidance on other books to purchase for more indepth information certain topics. I recommend this book for new system administrators!

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