FreeBSD—the powerful, flexible, and free Unix-like operating system—is the preferred server for many enterprises. But it can be even trickier to use than either Unix or Linux, and harder still to master.

Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd Edition is your complete guide to FreeBSD, written by FreeBSD committer Michael W. Lucas. Lucas considers this completely revised and rewritten second edition of his landmark work to be his best work ever; a true product of his love for FreeBSD and the support of the FreeBSD community. Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd Edition covers installation, networking, security, network services, system performance, kernel tweaking, filesystems, SMP, upgrading, crash debugging, and much more, including coverage of how to:

• Use advanced security features like packet filtering, virtual machines, and host-based intrusion detection

• Build custom live FreeBSD CDs and bootable flash

• Manage network services and filesystems

• Use DNS and set up email, IMAP, web, and FTP services for both servers and clients

• Monitor your system with performance-testing and troubleshooting tools

• Run diskless systems

• Manage schedulers, remap shared libraries, and optimize your system for your hardware and your workload

• Build custom network appliances with embedded FreeBSD

• Implement redundant disks, even without special hardware

• Integrate FreeBSD-specific SNMP into your network management system.

Whether you're just getting started with FreeBSD or you've been using it for years, you'll find this book to be the definitive guide to FreeBSD that you've been waiting for.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 18 Ratings

Not much more (and sometimes less) helpful than online Handbook - 2009-05-21
Reviewer Rating:
In general, I found this book to be redundant with a combination of the online FreeBSD Handbook and man pages. In some cases, the information provided is inaccurate, inappropriate, or just (already) outdated. If you like printed texts, this may be for you. Otherwise, I'd stick with the online content.

I was hoping to find some pointers on some of the less-common facets of FreeBSD (as compared to Linux or Sun), such as ipfw2, netgraph, mpd for VPN, service jails, running dhcpd in a jail, ZFS, and management of updates through freebsd-update and portsnap. In general, I didn't find much that wasn't more easily available and complete on the FreeBSD site.

Looking at a couple of the 7.x features I was hoping to get some extended insights into, but was bothered by the results:

jails -- Suggests that you "look around for the Secret Ninja Jail Techniques" and doesn't even mention the ezjail port (which goes back to 2005). Come on, at least give me something I can put into Google! Already out of date with the changes in 7.2 which allow named jails and multiple IPs.

ZFS -- Suggests that 64-bit processors are required. Reality is that its not the instruction set, but that 1 GB or more memory is recommended, and can be run on less (768 MB as been shown possible). "ZFS's license is not suitable for making it the primary FreeBSD filesystem" seems out of sync with the efforts going into making ZFS pools bootable in -CURRENT.

If you don't have any familiarity with `nix and are diving into FreeBSD first, this might be a good book to read. Personally, I'll stick with the updated information on the FreeBSD website.

As a side note, if you're in that category, take a look at the more general UNIX System Administration Handbook (3rd Edition), which served me well in one of its earlier editions.

THE FreeBSD Bible - 2009-01-26
Reviewer Rating:
Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition is the perfect combination for FreeBSD's own Handbook. At times the Handbook might seem too straightforward by not offering advices or sharing experiences. Michael Lucas' Absolute FreeBSD on the other hand presents the reader with rich information, background, advice and reasoning although focusing on the network administrator and setting aside the desktop user.

If you are looking into a nice FreeBSD book to get your feet wet on Unix-like systems so that you can carry out mundane desktop tasks then I'm afraid that Absolute FreeBSD simply isn't for you. If you on the other hand enjoy FreeBSD, know Unix basics and want to expand your horizons and maybe setup a personal server and even make a living out of FreeBSD, Absolute FreeBSD is definitely for you.

I don't have an IT background though I know my way around Unix-like systems so I've found chapters like Chapter 6: The Network extremely useful to cement some disperse concepts that I have (had thanks to Lucas' book).

People new to FreeBSD and Unix-like systems in general will find the first two chapters filled with helpful advices on how to prepare yourself for the tasks of installing FreeBSD and seeking help, especially the Preinstall Decisions section. To help explore FreeBSD Chapter 10: Exploring /etc is simply golden as it goes over the files available in /etc while describing what each does.

I found Chapter 3: Start me Up! The Boot Process very insightful. Chapter 4 brought RCS to my bag of tricks. The security chapters (7 and 9) were also very interesting reading namely the part regarding Jails.

Personal favorites were Chapter 5: Kernel Games, Chapter8: Disks and Filesystems, Chapter 11: making your system useful, Chapter 12: Advanced Software Management, Chapter 13: Upgrading FreeBSD, Chapter 18: Disk Tricks with GEOM. These are the chapters I'll ended reading time and time again and are largely FreeBSD focused.

Chapters 15 and 17 focus on adding services to FreeBSD and go over SSH, FTP, NTP, Inetd and Apache web server. Pretty useful as I'm planning on setting up some personal web serving stuff.

I'm not much into email and DNS stuff so I didn't payed much attention to chapters 14 and 16, however if the reader is into the subjects I'm sure he'll find both chapters very important.

Props to chapter 20, 21 and the Afterword as these expand on what FreeBSD is, what it can be, how can you interact with it and how to help improve it.

To sum up, just go out and buy the book. It's worth every penny and more.

good reference and guide - 2009-10-23
Reviewer Rating:
I loved this book of it's depth and particularly ease of reading (author's manner of speech just encourages to read more and smile for his intelligent jokes). Putting jokes aside, this book was really good complementation to FreeBSD handbook. I highly recommend it to any system administrator working with FreeBSD OS. I worked with FreeBSD for several years and still there were yet another trick to learn and wonder - "why in the world i implemented my solution so ugly?"
Certainly worth the money for the people going to work with it as system administrator.

Interesting - 2009-09-12
Reviewer Rating:
I'm very grateful with the Amazon.com team, with the sellers, and with the producers of my item.
I found too interesting my Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition by, because all the contents helps me for improve my job and increase my knowledge.
Even, if is your case, and you handle FreeBSD very well... you will find many many surprises...

My only advice: discover Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition by, from Amazon.com and get the power of serve!!

Great book to get you started - 2009-04-25
Reviewer Rating:
I've been a Linux user for a long time, but was unhappy with it's instability as of lately, so I switched to FreeBSD. This book was very helpful in getting me started on my transition, and the author has a good sense of humor which makes reading it more fun. I did notice that he throws in some "teasers" as to what FreeBSD can do, but doesn't always explain how one goes about accomplishing some of those tasks (i.e. having your nic have more than on IP at the same time). The firewall section was pretty basic, so I had to get another book to bring it all full circle.

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