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and forgot about the rest of their commitments to the readers who are spending from $29 to $44.99 USD on a copy of this outdated and confusing waste of paper.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.

I found this book very disapointing. My main concern was with the authors decision to base the examples solely on Debian distros of Linux. This is not mentioned in the the books description.

The book also advises that there is a website to accompany the book with examples, tips and new procedures. This turns out to be a one page website with 5 links that refer back to the same homepage with no content.

Linux system administrators who want to solve problems quickly may already have many Linux references at hand for in-depth treatment, but the advantage of LINUX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION is it's a quicker reference than most - and thus more valuable to Linux programming libraries and programmer collections than weightier coverages. Its at-a-glance pages offer up plenty of real-world case history scenarios, question/answer formats, and tips which advance the training of existing Linux administrators who want to enhance and expand on their skills. From installing Apache and MySQL on a web server to using Linux visualization with VMW are to run multiple kernels on one piece of hardware, this is an item of choice for any Linux programmer.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Pretty good book, unfortunately it has no information on setting up NIS or LDAP. Other than that a solid read.

'Linux System Administration' by Tom Adelstein is a wonderful little book for doing exactly what the title says. For anyone that uses Linux on a daily basis in their jobs or is new to said role, this is a great book/tool for learning and configuring Linux. The only negative that I really have is I usually applaud brevity but in this case I will have to say that this book is a wee bit short. Covering 250+ pages, I felt like for a book to have 'system administration' in the title for such a big topic more content should have been put within the confines of this binding. What is covered is as follows:

01. Requirements for a Linux System Administrator
02. Setting Up a Linux Multifunction Server
03. The Domain Name System
04. An Initial Internet-Ready Environment
05. Mail
06. Administering Apache
07. Load-Balanced Clusters
08. Local Network Services
09. Virtualization in the Modern Enterprise
10. Scripting
11. Backing Up Data

Solid writing, nice layout and good content make this an easy recommendation but limited size also limits how high of a recommendation I can make. Hopefully in the 2nd Edition there is more content covered.

**** RECOMMENDED