The UNIX Systems Administration Handbook

Mike Knell contributed this review of what is perhaps the most definitive collection of Unix practice and wisdom. It's even been newly updated to reflect the widespread influence of the other*NIXes. In fact, just look at the names of those who contributed forwards to this edition, and you'll see how it ties together the old and new continents of the Unix world.

UNIX System Administration Handbook
author	Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass, Trent R. Hein, et al.
pages	850
publisher	Prentice Hall
rating	9/10
reviewer	Mike Knell
ISBN	0130206016
summary	The updated third edition of one of the Holy Books Of UNIX.

Introduction

There are a few books which most sysadmins will mention in hushed tones when discussing reading material, and one of those is the famous "Red Book", the second edition of this book (the new edition's purple). I'd heard good things about it ever since people actually started paying me to do systems admin rather than just mucking about with computers for fun, so when the new third edition came along, I was keen to take a look at it.

The book aims to cover the basics in a wide range of areas that good UNIX admins need to know about. The contents range right through from booting the system and adding disks to dealing with users and the inevitable people-politics that help make the job so . . . varied and exciting. While the second edition covered six commercial versions of UNIX, the new edition has simplified this and now covers two commercial UNIX systems (Solaris 2.7 and HP/UX 11.00) and two free operating systems (Red Hat Linux 6.2 and FreeBSD 3.4), which accurately reflects the changes in the UNIX world since 1995. The last edition also came with a CD full of useful tools, but there's no such companion to the new edition -- near-universal Internet access for sysadmins has made such things far less useful than they used to be.

What's Bad?

The big shock upon getting hold of a copy of this book is the price tag. Here in Ireland, it's going for about IR£68 in shops, and the U.S. list price is $68. This is a lot to pay for a book, and to my mind it's quite likely to put off a number of potential readers. I can understand the price tag -- with four principal authors and 850 pages of dense information it's bound to be costly, but it's a shame that it had to be quite so expensive. Online it's available for about US$55, but that's still not cheap.

It should also be made clear right from the start that this is not a book for newcomers to UNIX. Don't look here if you're wondering how to list files or send mail -- there are plenty of books out there already that cover those areas more than adequately. The book assumes that the reader is already familiar with UNIX from a user's point of view.

What's Good?

When you get down to actually reading the book, though, it's immediately apparent that the authors really know their stuff. It's a book written from the perspective of people who know what it's like to be a sysadmin in the trenches. They have opinions that are obviously derived from painful experience, and aren't nervous about sharing them when the need arises -- if they think something sucks, they make damn sure you know about it. The information density is remarkably high for such a fat book, and the writing has a light touch which makes it extremely readable both as a desk reference and as bedtime reading. The advice given is sensible and solid, and I found myself nodding in agreement with the authors at some points, while feeling somewhat chastised and guilty at other points for not having done some of the things suggested. The humour helps to keep the book readable rather than getting in the way as it could easily have done.

As with all good computer books, there are cartoons (drawn crudely but funnily by Tyler Curtain) scattered through the book. My favourite is on the subject of "Co-operating With Windows." It involves, well, brides, rednecks and shotguns, something with which anyone who's ever gone through the pain of trying to make Windows machines play nicely in a UNIX environment will identify.

Things that only need a short chapter to cover the essentials (Web serving, for instance) aren't bogged down with extraneous detail, while the areas that always inspire fear among sysadmins (print services, DNS, mail ... ) are covered in all the necessary depth. Each chapter ends with a section of pointers to further information for those needing to know more than is covered in the book. The information is of high quality and feels very reliable, making it a good guidebook for those trying to find their way through the world of confusion, vendor-specific idiosyncrasies and divided loyalties that is UNIX administration.

So What's In It For Me?

If you're just interested in the basics of how to keep your Linux system running smoothly, you'd probably be better served by O'Reilly's "Running Linux" or any of the myriad similiar works out there. On the other hand, if you're starting out in system administration, or if you're an experienced sysadmin with anything less than universal guru status, this is a splendid book. The price is high, but if you're really serious about your work it's definitely money well spent -- think of it as an investment in your career.

Besides, with forewords from Linus Torvalds, Eric Allman, Marshall Kirk McKusick and Dennis Ritchie, who am I to argue? The only reason I've given it nine instead of ten out of ten is the price. To summarise -- I wish I'd read this book five years ago.

Table of Contents

1. Where To Start
2. Booting And Shutting Down
3. Rootly Powers
4. Controlling Processes
5. The Filesystem
6. Adding New Users
7. Serial Devices
8. Adding A Disk
9. Periodic Processes
10. Backups
11. Syslog And Log Files
12. Drivers And The Kernel
13. TCP/IP Networking
14. Routing
15. Network Hardware
16. The Domain Name System
17. The Network File System
18. Sharing System Files
19. Electronic Mail
20. Networking Management And Debugging
21. Security
22. Web Hosting And Internet Servers
23. Printing
24. Maintenance And Environment
25. Performance Analysis
26. Cooperating With Windows
27. Policy And Politics
28. Daemons
29. Colophon
30. Index

---

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Where *do* the reviewers get these ideas??

and the writing has a light touch which makes it extremely readable both as a desk reference and as bedtime reading.

You know, as a sysadmin, I usually don't have time to sleep. And when I do have time, I usually don't need to read anything to help me get to sleep. And when I do need to read, the last thing I want is more stuff to do with my job! I'm in home and in bed to get away from lusers! Not to think about them some more!

For the humor-impaired: this posting has been a joke. Thank you.

Re:Where *do* the reviewers get these ideas??

and the writing has a light touch which makes it extremely readable both as a desk reference and as bedtime reading.

He didn't want to say "it's readable when you're on the crapper".

WOW

The RED Book revisted! Seriously, if you want to become a Unix admin, there are 4 books you must study.

1. The Red Book (this book second edition, I guess now it is the purple book)

2. The Blue Book (O'Rielly's Unix System Admin book)

3. The Small Book (The Unix Philosophy by Mike Gancarz published by Digital Press)

4. The Drill Book (O'Rielly's Unix Power Tools, picture of drill on front).

I think if someone can study and know everything in those books by memory, they will have a good start at unix admin-ing. Also need a good book on your unix of choice, the man pages, and more than anything using the system.

The point being, this book is famous, it is a really good book and is required reading for anyone wanting to get into unix admin-ing.

I can't believe they changed the color! The 2 admin books where the red and blue books. Now it will be the purple and blue books, that isn't as catchy.

There is also a DOD red book on security and IBM produces a lot of "red books", so it gets confusing, but most admin know what you are talking about.

I paid I think $90 for this book at borders. It was worth it.

I can't do my job without this book.

I administrate a mixed shop of 70 or so systems: big HP-UX, Sun and AIX development machines with FreeBSD, Debian and a few stranger things running our infrastructure. Even tho the USAH only directly covers half the systems I have to handle, it lays down a solid groundwork =any= admin of =any= Unix system can benefit from.

The USAH saved my hash on more than one occasion, and it really bailed me out when I first wound up a professional Unix admin. You gotta realize, I'm a Mac guy...first computer was a Mac, I now write for an up-and-coming Mac webzine, and I carry my Powerbook around with me wherever I go.

So I was hired as the "IT Guy" by a small R&D company on the strength of my Mac skills. There were a dozen or so Macs in sales and marketing...and over 110 Sun workstations. From an old Sun 3 to a pretty monumental dual-UltraII clone, we had unix boxes running everything from our firewall and company web site to file servers and backup systems to circuit simulators and code compilers. As someone who's only experience to the comand line was a dial-in shell to get internet email, I was completely out of my league, and desparate to hold onto the job for reasons I won't get into here.

It was a =really= hairy situation, and I kept my head above water only because of this excellent book. Now I do the Unix thing as my main career, and use the Mac for fun and personal computing. I picked up O'Reily's Systems Administration Handbook, as well as Sun's own Solaris books, but they weren't anywhere near as concise or accurate as the USAH.

SoupIsGood Food

A Word of Warning

As a UNIX system administrator myself, I have to say that I have used the Red Book countless times, and it's saved me almost every time. I rarely have to look in another book (except perhaps the Frisch book, aka the "Blue Book," aka the "Armadillo Book"). What distressed me about this newest edition of the book is that they focus only on four OSs: FreeBSD, RedHat 6.2, Solaris 7, and HP-UX 11.00. While these are perhaps representative of the most popular UNIXes out there presently (with the exception of perhaps AIX), the authors made the conscious decision not to cover all of the OSs they had done before. The second edition, for instance, went over Solaris 2.4, HP-UX 9.0, IRIX 5.2, SunOS 4.1.3, DEC's OSF/1 2.0 (which is now Compaq Tru64), and BSD/OS 1.1.

For system administrators who are interested in supporting legacy systems, the Red Book (or, more specifically, the Second Edition) is still useful. I, for instance, needed to know how IRIX set up their /etc/exports or /etc/dfs/dfstab equivalent, and I was able to find it in seconds in the Red Book. No longer.

Otherwise, having now read the Purple Book cover to cover, I can recommend it heartily. It has the same style, flavor, and philosophy which has made the Red Book invaluable to me in the past, and I suspect that I'll be carrying around the Purple Book for years to come. Go buy it.

Note also that you can find /.'s review of the Red Book here [slashdot.org], if you're curious.