Essential System Administration, Third Edition

This book was a very useful resource to me in my first few months on the job, and still provides me with answers to occasional problems I run into. The conversational tone and organization by subject matter made the book very readable when I wanted to sit down with it, but it also was modular enough so that I could skip to whatever topics I needed to learn about quickly. The author's descriptions of her own experiences as system administrator have an honest and practical feel to them. (For example, early in the book she gives a time breakdown of her typical day with tasks ranging from setting up new user accounts to moving around office furniture to accomodate new computer equipment.)

For me, an added strength of this book is that it provides descriptions of how to accomplish the same task on different variants of Unix. This has been especially important for me since I deal with computers running Digital Unix, AIX, IRIX, and Linux. The book does a good job of taking a seemingly overwhelming amount of material and presenting it in a very manageable format.

Clearly a Unix book can't contain every answer in the world, but I find that this book still is a place I go to first for answers unless I'm looking for a very specific piece of information. I think this book is excellent for the intermediate Unix user who suddenly finds himself or herself in the position of caring for a number of computers. This is the most useful general purpose Unix book that I have purchased, and I recommend it highly.


The first book to buy for your personal library   January 11, 2000
pvargasmas@speedchoice.com (Phoenix, Arizona, USA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

I really liked how the author organized this book by task, and then provided an explanation of each task in Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux, etc. A very well organized, easy to follow reference that should be on every UNIX System Administrators bookshelf. The beginning SysAdmin should find it very educational. Intermediate SysAdmins should find this book to be an essential reference. Advanced SysAdmins may want to teach out of this book. All in all, well worth your time.


THE Unix/Linux Book to Have   January 24, 2003
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

This book should be called Indispensable and Complete System Administration. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but not by much. No book will ever be the complete book on Unix or Linux admin, but this one has so much material in it, it will be quite some time before I start looking for material not in the book. Every aspect of System Administration is covered in this book. The material goes into details as necessary, but the author does a good job of not getting bogged down in the details or overwhelming the reader with irrelevant or arcane knowledge that only a handful of people will use. What you will find is broad and thorough coverage of the material in an accessible, easy to read style.
One of the things I appreciate most about this book is the organization. Rather than listing out a bunch of technical information, each chapter deals with a specific task that a sysadmin needs to be able to do, and the information to carry out that task is contained within the chapter, rather than making references to other chapters or appendices, as is common practice.
This is another book that delivers the excellence I've come to expect from O'Reilly.


Good book for the curious.   October 20, 2001
Maggie the Lizard Tamer (NY, NY)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

I purchased this book as to satisfy my fascination with unix-based systems - I mean, after a while cd, mv, and mkdir just won't do anymore. It is an excellent book explaining the intricacies of unix-based systems and the differences between them. It covers topics such as the management of processes and devices, the filesystem, essentials in administrative tools, startup and shutdown, managing users, securing your system from others, automating your work, backups, system resources, even configuring kernels and TCP/IP Network Management. It explains everything in great detail in a way that's clear to understand while making the reader feel good about him/herself. Even though I didn't end up a system administrator after reading the book, I enjoyed it.