Customer Reviews

The LINUX® Network

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is excellent for beginners. However, if you are an old hat at the UNIX/Linux environment, then you may want to shy away from this book. I bought it due to the fact that it was a Slackware bases networking book. I'm not new to Linux and found the information to be very informative if I were new to this OS. Even though I have used Linux, I did find value in this book.

Moral: Beginner with Linux and you want to get into networking, then buy this book. Experienced with Linux and you can learn easily from the avaliable HOWTOs, then shy away from this book.

Using the Dutch translation of this book, I have succesfully configured a 486-modemserver for a homenetwork running from a 80MB HD-partition and CDROM using the /live directory it contains. It taught me a lot about linux, and helped me to get started. It is full value for money in my configuration, but I can not give it full marks because of the somewhat dated kernel, and incompatibility with more popular distributions, but what the heck, I learned the essentials and my dedicated modemserver for a small network works very well using the CDROM, though dated it was not wasted. Found it very usefull.

In the preface there is a line that reads, "We have tested and re-tested the descriptions in this book to ensure their accuracy; however, despite our best efforts, this book may still contain errors."

In fact, this line really should have read, "We have not tested the descriptions in this book to ensure their accuracy; this book will contain many errors."

Notice: the book is full of mistakes and is dangerously misleading in more than a few areas. I would have given it 5 stars had I reviewed it early on, but as I delved deeper into the reading, relying on it heavily as a reference, it became evident that many of the explanations were misleading, ill-referenced, erroneous, and/or downright incorrect.

Even great authors are not exempt from the responsibility of proofreading their work. It seems this book missed that phase altogether. In some sections, you cannot read a single page without finding an error. (Ex: DNS). Many of the errors, unfortunately, are not trivial:

- The definition of Input in the IP masquerading section is wrong. "Input" in and of itself does not specify direction. Input can be from the Internet as well as from the Intranet. Ironically, the back-to-back definition for Output IS correct--small example of many such inconsistencies throughout the book.

- The explanation on setting up two ethernet cards, aside from being inconsistent, fails to mention something very important. Passing arguments to the kernel through lilo.conf only works if the NIC's driver is compiled directly into the kernel. If the NIC is being loaded as a module, then parameters need to be passed through conf.modules NOT lilo.conf. In chapter 3 the user is instructed to compile the Ethernet driver directly into the kernel, granted, but not a single thing is said about the option and ramifications of compiling Ethernet drivers as modules instead, a very common and efficient practice for many Linux users.

- Where descriptions are brief, the author points the reader to the end of the chapter for "additional reference." When the reader flips to the end of the chapter, what do you know? There are no references there.

- The part on Configuring Masquerading (p.343) claims that "if you compiled IP masquerading directly into the kernel, you do not have to do anything to configure it." (...referring to whether or not you have to load any IP Masquerading modules). This is clearly untrue as the ftp module, for example, still needs to be loaded as a module regardless of whether IP Masquerading was compiled directly into the kernel or not.

- The author says "you cannot use ping to test masquerading, because the ICMP...protocol doesn't have a source-port field." (p.346) Theoretically, true. Realistically, you can ping through IP masquerading till your heart's content. The fix has been around for some time now and is a standard feature of ipfwadm.

The problem with such mistakes is that they appear not a few times throughout the book, but many times. These are but a few examples.

Overall, the book proves to be a mere (albeit good) compliment to man pages, newsgroup postings, and howto's, not only because many of its explanations are incomplete and/or ambiguous, but because the reader suspects the need to confirm the validity of some of the information given. Moreover, and to the point of aggravation, the author repeatedly points the user to the man pages to get a complete understanding of how things work.

My recommendation: buy the book. It is extremely helpful and I recommend it. But beware. The recklessness with which things are laid out and the glaring mistakes resulting from this, warrant that the reader approach this book with a very cautious study.

--Daniel

I found this book very useful, coming from a Windows environment with some UNIX shell experience. BUT if you use Red Hat 5.2, it is almost completely useless (this is Red Hat's fault, not the book!) It took me 1 weekend to read the book and setup a slackware linux server on the Internet. The instructions were amazingly clear and very aware of "newbie/intermediate" readers who might not know all the ins and outs of Linux. It took me another whole week to figure what Red Hat called the same network files and in what directories they put them in, before I got Red Hat 5.2 up and running correctly. Two examples, just try to find rc.inet1 and rc.inet2 in RH 5.2. And then go and try to get the kernel source code off the CDROM and install it on the machine and you'll see what I mean. By the way I only gave it 4 stars since I wish it had included the Red Hat material. Despite that, it is my Linux networking bible, period.

I originally purchased this book to see if I could finally get some concise information on allowing my Windows machines to work with linux(Samba). (Which I did pretty easily)

The information provided here is great for building a linux network. It covers in pretty good detail several aspects of Linux Networking to include Mail, DNS, SAMBA, Security, Setting up Intranets, connecting your intranet to the internet and much more. Although it is geared towards the slackware distribution, I did not find it to difficult to translate.

Becuase of what I learned in this book I am now getting full usage of my linux box. I am now routing all mail and internet access thru my linux DNS server. Sharing resources between WIN95/Linux.

My only regret is they did not cover using a WIN95 printer as a remote, only the other way around. A bargain for the information you get.

I can't say enough about this book: I believe it's a must have for anyone thinking seriously about Linux. Things have changed a bit since then (my book deals with kernel 2.0.35), and for the better (easier card configuration/detection, more intuitive GUI tools.. ), but for the hardcore LINUX/UNIX command liners, this is still an invaluable resource. And it comes bundled with Slackware, one of the best older distributions for power users that want to tweak to the death their systems. (Sorry I can't say the same about the 2.2 kernel Slackware's :( )

Well, this book is a very good book, BUT, for beginners in networking AND - it is unfortunately outdated (it regards the 2.0 kernel rather than the *significantly* different 2.2 kernel). Also, if we're here, why not make this book compilant with RedHat which has 50% of the market share of Linux dist's ? (rather than really asking here, I mean more: pay attention to the fact that RedHat current version (6) is quite different in networking configuration details from the book's Slackware version). IN DETAIL: It is written well from the basics of protocols throughout almost everything you'll need to know about networking, which is a HUGE subject, so dont be surprise that it's security section, for example, is only 20 pages long. All in all it does a very good job in explaining the background and walking you through the details of configuration, so beginners will benefit a lot (but I mean here only real newbies to networking). CONCLUSION: Trying to cover networking details of a UNIX ditro' in one book (!)is probably mission impossible, so we're doomd to start with something that must cut corners somewhere - KEEP THAT IN MIND... . If you're a newbie with a hacker's soul - this book is for you (you can benefit alot). Otherwise - it might not be the best book for you.

Overall, The Linux Network includes some good information on setting up networking in general on Linux/Unix machines. However, the spelling mistakes and other errors are really annoying at times. If the mistakes were only small ones, I wouldn't be so picky, but there were errors like sonfusing "DSP" for "DNS" and mixing up the name of a newly created kernel. Also, the author spends too much time noting that a certain topic is "beyond the scope of this book". Although it is impossible to cover everything, it would make sense to just go on to the next topic. Finally, he spends more time introducing/ending the next chapter/section than actually writing the chapter. But, I'll recommend this book to anyone interested in Linux networking, as long as he doesn't mind the errors and somewhat flawed organization of the book.

GOOD! This is the only book I need for building my home Linux Server for printing and file sharing, firewall and gateway server.

I would recommend this book to only one who want to build their first Linux Server!!

"The Linux Network" is clearly written and well organized. This book will get you through network setup step-by-step. Networking with Linux and X is completely different than windows; you can actually make use of all your old computers at one time by running programs across the network. There's also a great section on configuring Windows95. Fill in the blanks, reboot W95 a few dozen times, and you're there.