Customer Reviews

Building a Server with FreeBSD 7

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been using FreeBSD in production environments since early 2000. I've also written articles on FreeBSD administration for magazines like Sys Admin. One of my favorite aspects of FreeBSD is its ports tree, which currently offers over 15,000 applications. Although the ports tree greatly simplifies installing software on FreeBSD, there's more to most programs than just installation. Bryan Hong's "Building an Internet Server With FreeBSD 6" (BAISWF6) helps readers take those few crucial steps past the ports tree, into the world of functional, deployed services. If you need a quick guide for a variety of popular open source software on FreeBSD, BAISWF6 is for you.

This book impressed me. Mr. Hong published it himself through Lulu Press. The production quality is much higher than "Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF," another self-published BSD book that I liked. Aside from a few issues with grammar, I found the book to be remarkable considering one person was responsible for writing, editing, proofing, and publishing the text.

BAISWF6 does a good job sharing the information one needs to go from the end of the port installation process to the point where a service is actually doing work. The book packs a lot of information into a well-organized format.

I have a few minor comments. First, I didn't quite understand what I was supposed to do with an OpenLDAP Server. The common server configurations on page xx don't include OpenLDAP, so I only have a vague notion that it's used for directory services.

Second, I found some of the technical advice might have benefited from outside review. For example, it's best to avoid running an OpenSSH server that can fall back to protocol version 1 (as demonstrated by the SSH-1.99 server string on p. 102). It's bad form to sync a home NTP server to Stratum 1 servers; use Stratum 2 instead. It's not necessary to rebuild the kernel to support bridging or the tap device; kernel modules are available. MAC on p. 198 should be explained as Media Access Control.

From a big picture perspective, I'd like to see the protocols appendix and glossary removed, and replaced by information on keeping a server up-to-date. It's one thing to get software installed -- it's another to keep it current. Mr. Hong should cover freebsd-update (for kernel and userland binary updates), portsnap (for the ports tree), and portupgrade (to update installed ports/packages).

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn how to host popular Internet services on FreeBSD. It really cuts to the chase so the reader can be doing real work in a matter of minutes. I expect to see rapid updates to this book, since the author is free to quickly make and print them.

I had an old machine sitting around doing nothing and had considered putting some flavor of Linux on it I hadn't used before, just "because". However, I ran across this book and - having used FreeBSD 4.x six or seven years ago - curiosity about what has changed won out over installing Linux.

Being somewhat familiar with FreeBSD I didn't follow the setup instructions exactly as laid out in the book (for example, I chose the X-Developer install instead of the User install). However, the instructions are laid out in a nice step-by-step format that was easy to follow. After getting FreeBSD and the ports collection installed, I was pretty much back to up speed with version 7. I didn't go through all the server app installs presented in the book, but the couple I did go through were equally well documented as the OS install.

Things to be aware of - you need a high speed connection and/or patience. Pulling down the ISO for the install is 500+ Mb. Updating the ports collection can take a while - depends on how you do the update. There also are no instructions for getting a GUI up and running, so if you want a GUI, you're on your own (not that a server needs a GUI). :)

I have every book on FreeBSD on the market. But somehow I was never able to get a fully functional FreeBSD server running rock solid.

This book got me there! It tells me precisely what parts (ports or packages) I need to create a particular type of server (mail, internet, etc.), where to find them, how to install and configure, all in short, concise instructions. And it all worked! It's really a great little book. I hope the author comes by and checks out reviews of his book so I can tell him here how much I appreciate his taking the time to publish his "notes."

I love a book that walks you through step by step. I am a system admin and PHP programmer but had little experience with FreeBSD. I needed a "big picture" view of how FreeBSD works and how it is configured. This book satisfied me.


It is written in a casual, easy-to- read way, and is suitable for people like me who need some orientation before setting out to configure and install things.

The book helped me to install and configure all the tools needed to get a fully-fledged Internet server running.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in building a web or mail server since FreeBSD and all the tools required are opensource (free).

The only small criticism I have is author's choosing Postfix instead of Qmail for email server. Since Qmail is by far the most popular MTA in the world right now.

I thank the author for the fantastic job and please keep the good job by writing more books about FreeBSD or any opensource technology.

I've bought this book about a year ago, together with "Absolute FreeBSD - 2nd Edition" (by M. W. Lucas), because I was curious to give a try to FreeBSD as an Open Source OS alternative to Linux and the purchase of the two seemed like a good combination: the latter actually seemed to be far more complete and detailed, but nevertheless "Building a Server with FreeBSD" still looked like a useful and quick HOWTO for software installation.

After a few months, I can say I'm definitely glad of what I did, because the two did in fact allow me to set up (fairly quickly, in my spare time) a stable FreeBSD Host; but let's talk about this book specifically, from now on.

First off, I think that the main benefit of this book lies in its structure; it allows the reader to easily identify what services he'll need and from there to track down the software packages (ports) he'll have to install and related dependencies; step by step instructions are then given very precisely, always allowing the reader to accomplish his goal. There are actually a couple of suggestions that (as someone else already pointed out) might not be best practices (IE have an OpenSSH server that can fall back to protocol version 1 or use Stratum 1 NTP servers), but I think that the whole point of this book is showing the user precisely where to put his hands on, in order to install a certain piece of software, rather than giving verbose explanations on system internals or best practices. As a reader, you're almost never told why you're doing something or what lies behind your commands, but if you have some sysadmin experience and/or read some other documentation (I highly suggest "Absolute FreeBSD - 2nd Edition" here), it's never really hard to understand what's going on.

However it goes, chances are high that at the end, you'll end up with a stable running system; so, I really think it's much better to have a book taking you there this way, rather than having a much less intuitive 1000+ pages book which tries (and most likely fails) to precisely explain all inner details of all applications covered; those specific informations can be easily found online or on other dedicated books anyways.

So I really think this books fulfills the expectations given by its title and deserves some good rating; the only reason why I don't give it 5 stars is because it actually lacks almost completely informations on keeping your system up-to-date; portsnap and portupgrade could've definitely fitted into the book, instead of the protocols appendix, for instance, as the latter falls, in my opinion, in the kind of documentation you're better off looking for elsewhere.

We recently made the move from Windows to Apple Leopard servers. Since we had great PC server hardware left over, we decided to go with the Unix closest to OS X: FreeBSD. There was a learning curve, but this and a few other books are getting us ahead.

While most books talk theory or are references, Hong's guide will give you exactly what you need and nothing you don't to get up to speed quickly with a real server. It's not tedious like your typical step-by-step guide. The format is very clear and you know exactly what you are supposed to do.

Most of the ports Hong includes will be helpful to any server configuration. Install what you need and leave off what you don't. These ports are among the most popular. In our case, most of them are what Apple is using in their Darwin/Leopard, so this guide has helped us create a complimentary server.

This is the most practical of the FreeBSD 7 books you need for your server and learning pleasure. When I was trying to decide between this one and Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition, I finally concluded I had to get both. That book is your theory while Building a Server is your field guide.

A good quick reference, and ties in well with the topics presented in Absolute FreeBSD (2nd ed) by M Lucas. But Lucas has a much better writing style, and gets across his technical info in a better way, by explaining why things work the way they do.

Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 is kind of the quick and dirty, do this, do this, done. And although it has helped me set up FreeBSD on my first try as a competent server, I'm still trying to find out why the book tells you to do certain things and how components work together. With the info from Lucas in his books, you know how things work together and why you're instructed to do certain things.

I pre-ordered this book based on its title alone (abbreviated here as BASWFBSD7), as I am in the middle of building a webserver with FreeBSD. I have done it a couple of times in the past, but have always had a sinking feeling that I was doing it kind of "fly by night" and I didn't know the best practices for maintaining current versions of the system and the various ports. Even though I have been using FreeBSD for several years now, "make buildworld" still scares me. I wanted something server-oriented that would walk me through installation, telling me about all of those options I never was quite sure about, giving me solid recommendations on how to partition my disks, how to set up bombproof RAID and automated backups over the network (note: RAID is not mentioned anywhere in this book!), configure my kernel to be lean and mean, lock everything down securely, and tell me how to keep everything running and updated for the years to come. (I have both editions of Michael W. Lucas' "Absolute (Free)BSD", a much more thorough handling of FreeBSD, and this information is discussed there, but the focus of that book is not a server but rather a general desktop machine.)

That's what I wanted. What BASWFBSD7 gives you:
- Instructions for a generalized, non-custom FreeBSD installation.
- Brief instructions for installing a variety of server-ish ports, covering everything from Apache to LDAP to WordPress to BIND to SpamAssassin. The Apache chapter (which is representative) is 6 pages long and pretty much covers the minimum to get Apache up and running. In contrast, the Apache section in Absolute FreeBSD is 20 pages long and includes such vital information as how to set up virtual hosts. BASWFBSD7 mentions httpd.conf but does not talk at all about how to edit it or what should be changed in it. Although I am by now very used to Apache configuration and do not necessarily need this information, it is shocking to see it left out of a book such as this.

That's pretty much it. There's really not much to this book. It's practically a bunch of man pages. Although I am sure it will be useful when I decide to install Postfix, for the most part it is not at all what I need.

I was initially very impressed by this book until I ran into a problem with the phpbb3 installation. Like so many other Tech books I'm learning to live with authors who don't actually don't try out the instructions in there own book. Notably you cannot successfully run the application phpBB3 the way it's laid out in the book. I was able to Google a solution to the problem, but then why buy the book? If Mr. Hong doesn't want to go into the details of a what "PHP" is or in this case php5-extensions, I'm ok with that. I like quick and dirty guides... but if Mr. Hong had actually spent the time to try out his own book these problems could have been avoided.

More aggravation came my when I found this book was ripped to the underground E-book market. Great! Another $30 bucks wasted.

So out of 5 stars I rate this a 3, A quick and Dirty guide to getting things done with FreeBSD. But buyers be warned, you must be willing to work your way through the dirt. There's plent of it.

-DML

Having this book is like having a good friend who is a FreeBSD Internet Server guru by your side. This book shows you how to do what you want to do and gives you just enough background info so that you feel confident in what you have done. To search out the specific info in this book on your own would take weeks of frustration and sifting through hundreds if not thousands of pages of confusing manuals and articles.

I only wish this author would make another book and include even more how-to's such as Nagios, Cacti, Zenoss, SNMP, Single Sign On, and other common tools that FreeBSD Internet Server Administrators use when setting up an environment.