Linux Cookbook (Paperback)

by Carla Schroder (Author)
Key Phrases: version control, solution add, solution set, Solution Use, Red Hat, The Definitive Guide (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This unique and valuable collection of tips, tools, and scripts provides clear, concise, hands-on solutions that can be applied to the challenges facing anyone running a network of Linux servers from small networks to large data centers in the practical and popular problem-solution-discussion O'Reilly cookbook format. The Linux Cookbook covers everything you'd expect: backups, new users, and the like. But it also covers the non-obvious information that is often ignored in other books the time-sinks and headaches that are a real part of an administrator's job, such as: dealing with odd kinds of devices that Linux historically hasn't supported well, building multi-boot systems, and handling things like video and audio. The knowledge needed to install, deploy, and maintain Linux is not easily found, and no Linux distribution gets it just right. Scattered information can be found in a pile of man pages, texinfo files, and source code comments, but the best source of information is the experts themselves who built up a working knowledge of managing Linux systems. This cookbook's proven techniques distill years of hard-won experience into practical cut-and-paste solutions to everyday Linux dilemmas. Use just one recipe from this varied collection of real-world solutions, and the hours of tedious trial-and-error saved will more than pay for the cost of the book. But those who prefer to learn hands-on will find that this cookbook not only solves immediate problems quickly, it also cuts right to the chase pointing out potential pitfalls and illustrating tested practices that can be applied to a myriad of other situations. Whether you're responsible for a small Linux system, a huge corporate system, or a mixed Linux/Windows/MacOS network, you'll find valuable, to-the-point, practical recipes for dealing with Linux systems everyday. The Linux Cookbook is more than a time-saver; it's a sanity saver.

About the Author
Carla Schroder is a freelance system administrator and technical writer, who has written for IBM Developerworks, Intel, Crossnodes.com, and Computerbits.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 580 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1 edition (December 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596006403
• ISBN-13: 978-0596006402
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #158,768 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #3 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Business & Culture > File Sharing
  #9 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Operating Systems > Unix > Administration
  #11 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Software Engineering > Multimedia Information Systems

• This is item 27 in The O'Reilly Cookbooks Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Numerous tips on direct command line usage, January 16, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this book is that it wasn't published prior to December 2004. Linux has been popular enough in recent years that the book would have been useful earlier. But given that it has just appeared, Schroder has a very up to date coverage of linux tips.

Take for example the chapter on CD and DVD recording or copying. All sorts of guidance on using DVDs for data or audio. Linux has powerful but obscure commands for these tasks. But they are run at the command line. Often with many input arguments. Not the easiest of things for someone to remember. Linux lacks a nice UI to take some of this burden off you.

Some of you should check out the chapter on Knoppix. There is an allure about making a bootable version of linux on a CD or DVD that you can then run on an arbitrary Intel or AMD machine.

The chapter on managing spam has a very limited discussion on using a blacklist. It talks about how it's used to block incoming messages from addresses on the list. No mention about using the list against domains from hyperlinks in the message body.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for command-line administration, July 10, 2005

By	Elizabeth Krumbach (Schwenksville, PA United States) - See all my reviews

First off, this book focuses on RPM-based and Debian-based distributions. This doesnt, by any means, make it useless for those that don't, but some of the "recipes" are specific to either of these.

I am not even sure where to begin with my praise of this book, it's got over a dozen sticky notes marking key sections that I find useful. I guess I can start by saying that the author is deeply involved with doing system administration via the command line, which is fantastic news for me! There are plenty of decent GUI tools out there, but when x dies and you're stuck at a command line, using them isn't an option. I feel that if you don't have the knowledge to fix things yourself, at least have a book by your side that offers you some tips, and that is what this book is for. And some people just prefer doing administration via the command line all the time, myself included.

The time I most often pull out this book, however, is not when I run into a problem, but when I'm setting up a new system. I don't reinstall often, but when I do there are little things that I often forget how to do, since I do them so infrequently. Things like setting up ssh keys, setting up users and groups, setting up NTP, setting up new fstab.

I also found this book useful when I wanted a quick and clean explaination of different filesystems and more information about command line options for CD burning. Also I got some good ideas for backups and local file transfer methods from the chapter on Backup and Recover.

Best of all, this book contains a great chapter on kernels. So many books and online how-tos I've seen give you the steps of compiling a kernel, but don't explain what is going on. This always left me feeling like I had no clue what I was doing, and if there was an error I'd have no idea where I'd begin fixing it, since I didn't really know what "make mrproper," for instance, means (side note, she even quickly explains "according to Linux lore" the reasoning behind the name Mr. Proper, a delightful bit of trivia). Now that I've read this chapter on kernels I'm much more comfortable recompiling and customizing my own. She also talks about patching a kernel, which is something I had trouble with for a while, since so much documentation I found and people I asked said "just use patch" which meant nothing to me.

An excellent book for the linux user who wants to move away from the GUI and learn more about core, command-line administration. I love it.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy two copies and lend one to your friends, July 6, 2005

By	Boulder Patterns Group (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

Linux Cookbook by Carla Schroder (O'Reilly)

I have already lost my copy of this excellent book to my coworkers. This is another great entry to O'Reilly's "Cookbook" series. I have been running and administering Linux for 10 years and I didn't expect too much from this book. I was wrong. It is packed full of useful recipes that are the kind of thing I can never remember and spend ages digging out of documentation when I need them. Two of my favourites so far are how to use Grub to boot your machine when you have toasted your Master Boot Record, and a script to create a "phantom rpm package" that reflects all those libraries on your system that you have compiled and installed from source so that RPM knows about them.

The author has clearly had to make some hard decisions about what information to include in here and she has done a great job. The recipes cover the full spectrum of common administrative tasks that have details which are hard to remember. They include tasks such as configuring Samba, Apache, NTP, DNS, printing, mail servers, backups, and user accounts. There is information on installing software for both Debian and RPM based systems, and on rebuilding the kernel and how to patch it. The list goes on; you'll just have to read the book.

In short, there are lots of great tips in here that are easy to find and use. Keep this book at hand for all those times when you are asking yourself, "now how do I ... ?"