Customer Reviews

BSD UNIX Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The meat of this book, like it's Linux counterparts in the series (I read Ubuntu Linux Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for Ubuntu and Debian Power Users), lies in the useful shell commands that even seasoned administrators may have overlooked or useful combinations that never occurred to them. Personally I've used Linux since 1999 and have three or four years of professional administration on Linux, HP-UX, and Solaris. To my surprise I still found one or two new tricks in the Ubuntu book and quite a few more in the BSD book.

A junior administrator or a intermediate hobbyist will find countless pointers, commands, and insight that takes years of reading man pages, web searching, and chatting with other geeks to figure out. I know Francois Caen, one of the writers in this series, and his goal was to bring together all these "tools" he uses every day to accelerate your learning curve. I think he and Negus met that goal.

While I thought this book was good, it was missing a few things I expected to see. It's clearly focused on Linux users who want to put their toe in the BSD pool. That's pretty good for me, primarily a Linux user, but users not coming from a Linux background may be lead slightly astray. Special attention is paid to setting up a FreeBSD system that can play nicely with Linux systems (reading ext2/3 file systems, for example). I feel that the Linux compatibility received a bit too much coverage, but given the popularity of Linux, many will appreciate it.

The book is applicable to all BSD based systems, and even Linux and commercial Unix variants to a lesser extent, but it focuses on the popular FreeBSD variant. Personally I'm exploring OpenBSD for use as routers/firewalls, and I'd say about 80% of the BSD content in this book is applicable to OpenBSD (in my naive viewpoint). I really wished they would have covered the OpenBSD packet filter (PF) more, but with the focus on FreeBSD, IPF is covered instead. I was quite surprised at the easy to use syntax of IPF compared to IPChains in Linux.

As seems to be the trend with recent technical books, there were a couple typos in some of the examples, but a careful reader can catch the gist of what was meant.

All in all BSD Unix Toolbox is a great book for an intermediate Linux or Unix user interested in exploring the FreeBSD command line. I all but guarantee you will find a few new commands to add to your own toolbox.

BSD Unix Toolbox (BUT) is a straightforward system administration book that could apply to many Unix-like operating systems. The title mentions "BSD" but the BSD-specific material is FreeBSD-oriented. The non-FreeBSD sections (such as using a shell) could apply to any Unix-like OS, so in that sense other BSDs like OpenBSD or NetBSD are "covered." However, sections like Ch 2 (Installing FreeBSD and Adding Software) have no OpenBSD or NetBSD equivalents. Nevertheless, I recommend BUT for anyone looking for a rapid introduction to BSD system administration.

BUT is thorough but fast and dry. Michael Lucas' Absolute FreeBSD is still my favorite FreeBSD book, and you're more likely to find neat aspects of the OS in a book by Dru Lavigne. Bryan Hong's recent book is place to find recipes for installing popular open source applications on FreeBSD. The people who will like BUT the most are those with little to no BSD experience, or those with some Linux experience looking to transition to FreeBSD.

BUT will probably fill a lot of knowledge gaps in the intended audience. I really liked the book's style, whereby it introduces a task and shows command-line examples. Everything uses this approach, which is a winning formula. The vast majority of the book is command line-oriented, with no apologies. If you're using FreeBSD this is probably what you're looking for anyway. I also liked the reference tables, especially in the appendices.

One caution: if you own one or more of the other "Toolbox" books, there's probably a decent amount of overlap. There's only so much to say about using Samba, or checking process listings, or running backups, when the underlying applications are all the same.

Years ago the Unix System Administration Handbook was a one-stop shop for comparative system administration commands, with coverage of Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD. Unfortunately no single modern book includes commands for common tasks for all three major operating systems, although the Linux Administration Handbook (3rd Ed) serves that purpose. I commend Wiley for publishing modern books on system administration like this.

This book makes a nice addition to my FreeBSD collection. It contains a comprehensive listing of useful commands collected in a single source. The book is fairly compact so it doesn't take up much room on your desk. The softcover makes it easy to quickly flip through the sections.

For the price, this book was well worth it!

EDIT: Added another error on page 259. Author specifies:
firewall_type="/etc/ipf.rules"

...which is flat out wrong. Doing that on a remote system will result in a broken firewall and probably losing access to the remote system! Another example of the lousy editing in this book.

It should read:
firewall_type="closed" (or open, workstation, unknown, etc.)

Original Review:

This is one of several books by the author that span multiple operating systems. Errors were found sprinkled throughout the text. Most of the errors involved commands from other operating systems that had been mistakenly added to this book. For example, "lspci", a command found in most Linux distributions is listed in this book as a FreeBSD command.

It appears the authors did a lot of cutting and pasting between their different "toolbox" books -- FreeBSD, Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc. There are a lot of commands in this book. Whether they are actually useful is questionable.

This book is a excellent resource for anyone that is working with UNIX. The book is arranged to teach you the basics first, and then move on the more advanced commands. This is what makes this book great for any new BSD user, as well as the experienced ones. I have been working with FreeBSD for several years, and I was amazed at how much I have learned from this book.

excellent book, lots of great commands to get you used to the command line. Only downfall is Amazon is not packaging their books well anymore, I ordered $100 worth of books that were all thrown in a box and arrived all banged up! This is the 2nd order in a row, I will think twice about ordering again as I dont care for my books being all banged up! They used to use a cellofane wrapper to hold them all together but guess it was a cost cutting measure, sad to see damaged books.. I'd rather pay full price and get a good one..

I've recently stepped into the wading pool of FreeBSD after about 15 years of using Linux. My previous UNIX experience has dealt with a number of BSD variants, but only recently have I installed FreeBSD on a personal system. The book offers decent coverage of most topics. The criticisms I have of the book are:

* The title tagline "1000+ Commands" - so if I type "ls -l" then "ls -a" then "ls -F" and "ls -laF" by this book's tract I just learned four new commands. I don't think having individual options mentioned on separate lines as "learning X number of new commands."

* Title - BSD UNIX Toolbox; if I remember correctly, I didn't get instructions on how to use a ratchet and socket in my toolbox; why does this book walk you through like a "For Dummies..." book.

The title tries to mirror another great series (O'Reilly's In a Nutshell series", but falls short of the advertised "1000+ commands." Buy it and use it until O'Reilly and Associates releases a BSD in a Nutshell book... then burn this copy and buy that one.