UNIX System Administration Handbook (3rd Edition)

RT Essentials

Unix

The Practice of System and Network Administration

Format: Paperback
Author: Thomas A. Limoncelli
ReleaseDate: 14 August, 2001
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Rating:

Awesome!


This is no 'for dummies' book. The Practice of System and Network Administration shows you how to become a great SA.

The Practice of System and Network Administration is a great guide.
.

Awesome!


That, however, is what it's for (It's plainly stated on the book! Read the friendly Meta-Manual!) and it is in fact a wonderfully lucidly written cornucopia of information in that field. I agree with some of the worse reviews: This book addresses all the touchy-feely stuff not found in other manuals. It also is delightfully platform-independent, even if it is perceivable that the authors have a UNIX background (but which Sysad doesn't?).

It's a simple fact that Sysads get other things wrong more often than the tech stuff: Communicating changes, seeing it all from the user's POV, negotiating (yes, they deal with salary, too), saying "yes" so that it isn't understood as "yes to all"; saying "no" so that it isn't understood as "fsck you!".

That's why we're often hated as arrogant BOfHs. This manual endeavours to fix that, and it just might succeed.
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A Mentor in a Book
Their scope is usually limited to whatever technical product is being written about and they become outdated as quickly as the technology becomes outdated. The book market is flooded with books that will tell you all about the technical details of administering various software products and operating systems. This book is very different. It gives guidelines in a very readable, coaching style, that can be applied to many different aspects of the System Administration trade.

I have been a System Administrator for a few years now, but this book clarifies many of the issues that I work with daily. It's like a having a mentor on my bookshelf that I can pull down and consult for advice. I especially like the whole section of seven chapters dealing with different aspects of management. These chapters should be mandatory reading for every SA -- and their bosses.

The book is written in a very readable style and has many useful and insightful real-world examples that show that the authors have been around and learned a lot on the way. The book is worth reading just for these examples. I read the book from cover to cover.

I first heard about this book when I attended a seminar Tom Limoncelli
taught at the 2003 LISA conference titled "Time Management for System Administrators: How to Keep from Going (More) Crazy". Many of the topics in the seminar are covered in detail in the book.

If you're a system administrator, you should read this book.