Pro Linux System Administration (Expert's Voice in Open Source) [Paperback]

James Turnbull (Author), Peter Lieverdink (Author), Dennis Matotek (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 24, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1430219122 | ISBN-13: 978-1430219125 | Edition: 1

We can all be Linux experts, provided we invest the time in learning the craft of Linux administration. Pro Linux System Administration makes it easy for small- to medium–sized businesses to enter the world of zero–cost software running on Linux and covers all the distros you might want to use, including Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS. Authors, and systems infrastructure experts James Turnbull, Peter Lieverdink, and Dennis Matotek take a layered, component–based approach to open source business systems, while training system administrators as the builders of business infrastructure.

If you want to implement a SOHO or SMB Linux infrastructure, Pro Linux System Administration clearly demonstrates everything you need. You’ll find this book also provides a solid framework to move forward and expand your business and associated IT capabilities, and you’ll benefit from the expertise and experienced guidance of the authors. Pro Linux System Administration covers

• An introduction to using Linux and free and open source software to cheaply and efficiently manage your business
• A layered model that allows your infrastructure to grow with your business
• Easy and simple–to–understand instructions including configurations, examples, and extensive real–world hints and tips

What you’ll learn

• Linux architecture
• How to build, back up, and recover Linux servers
• Creating basic networks and network services with Linux
• Building and implementing Linux infrastructure and services including mail, web, databases, and file and print
• Implementing Linux security
• Understanding Linux performance and capacity planning issues

Who this book is for

This book is for small to medium–sized business owners looking to run their own IT, system administrators considering migrating to Linux, and IT systems integrators looking for an extensible Linux infrastructure management approach.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing Linux
2. Installing Linux
3. Linux Basics
4. Users and Groups
5. Startup and Services
6. Networking and Firewalls
7. Package Management
8. Storage Management and Disaster Recovery
9. Infrastructure Services: NTP, DNS, DHCP, and SSH
10. Mail Services
11. Web and SQL Services
12. File and Print Sharing
13. Backup and Recovery
14. Networking with VPNs
15. Collaborative Services
16. Directory Services
17. Performance Monitoring and Optimization
18. Logging and Monitoring
19. Configuration Management
20. Virtualization

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Turnbull is the author of five technical books about open source software and a longtime member of the open source community. James authored the first and second books about Puppet, and works for Puppet Labs, running client services. James speaks regularly at conferences including OSCON, Linux.conf.au, FOSDEM, OpenSourceBridge, DevOpsDays and a number of others. He is a past president of Linux Australia, has run Linux.conf.au and serves on the program committee of Linux.conf.au and OSCON. James is Australian but currently lives in Portland, Oregon. His interests include cooking, wine, political theory, photojournalism, philosophy, and most recently the Portland Timbers association football team.

Dennis Matotek works as a systems administrator for Hitwise Pty. Ltd. This business relies heavily on open source technology as the backbone for its infrastructure systems. Dennis was the technical reviewer of Pulling Strings with Puppet: Configuration Management Made Easy by James Turnbull (Apress, 2008). Dennis has many years of experience in systems infrastructure management that covers Microsoft products to IBM iSeries, but predominantly Linux.

Peter Lieverdink was born in a small Dutch country town in 1973. He owns a pair of clogs, but has never eaten tulips. On his 22nd birthday, Peter moved to Australia, and after briefly spending time in a office cubicle, he now runs a small business called Creative Contingencies Pty. Ltd. The business depends on open source software for infrastructure and development as well as daily office tasks. Peter specializes in web application development and helping other businesses implement open source solutions using Linux on both desktops and servers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1080 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (June 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430219122
• ISBN-13: 978-1430219125
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 2.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #409,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #89 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Linux > Networking & System Administration
  • #100 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Linux > Programming

More About the Author

James Turnbull works for Puppet Labs as VP of Technical Operations
managing the customer-facing business units including Services,
Sales Engineering, Support, Operations, Education and Community Management.

James has previously for the National Australia Bank as the manager of
the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and as an Executive
Manager of IT Security at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the CIO of a medical research
foundation doing Web-based clinical trials, managing the architecture
group of an outsourcing company and in a number of IT roles in gaming,
telecommunications and government.

He is an experienced infrastructure architect with a background in
Linux/Unix, AS/400, Windows, and storage systems. He has been involved
in security consulting, infrastructure security design, SLA and service
definition and has an abiding interest in security metrics and measurement.

James is involved in the Free and Open Source Software community as a
developer and contributor. He was the Treasurer, member of the papers
committee, and coordinated the mini-conference program at linux.conf.au
2008 in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a member of Linux Australia,
including serving on the Executive Council in 2008 and President in 2010.

In his spare time his interests include cooking, wine, political theory,
photojournalism, philosophy, poetry, and cats.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars mixed bag of choices, "pro" - maybe ? maybe not.. you decide June 26, 2009

By Konstantin Kondakov

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I always liked "Apress" books and keep purchasing them side by side with O'Reilly titles. Most "Apress" books and authors give very "in the trenches" and "gotcha" oriented approach, while O'Reilly seems very dry . Well, here we have 1053 page volume that is trying to cover most issues and applications that any Linux sysadmin will come across. Plenty of advise, plenty of "do that", "do not do this" options. However, I gave it only 3 (three) stars - here is why:

1) A lot of "entry level" stuff that takes at least 15%-20% of the book. You just do not call the book "Pro" and show "grep localhost /etc/*" on page 97. All previous pages are written about history of Linux, why you need a Linux server, blah-blah - that can be easily skipped. Just randomly opened a page .. page 358 - how to use "df -h" command and what it does. What a revelation! IMHO, a book called "pro" need to spend a lot of time dealing with nitty -gritty stuff - like building HA systems, integration of Spamassassin+postfix+clamav, integration of SVN+Wiki+Bugzilla+Apache - we have built a similar system here, but I would love to read more from authors who know how to architect a scalable solution for 200+ servers. That would be "Pro"

2) The second drawback is very selective choice of applications at hand. I know that Puppet, for example, is an excellent package and has plenty of features - but would you mention at least Cfengine that been long enough and has a huge installation base?! Give a half of page explaining pros/cons Cfengine vs Puppet - and explain your choice for Puppet (Chapter 19) - yet give people an option to explore Cfengine. Or Chapter 10 gives a verdict to Postfix - "postfix is much easier to understand, configure and troubleshoot" - so no reference to Sendmail!!! OK, I agree with you - but can you give a half-page reference list to Sendmail choices?

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Contains Linux system administration advice and recipes. September 26, 2009

By WM

Format:Paperback

I have found this book useful, being a Windows admin who doesn't drop into a Linux terminal session very often. The book contains the usual man pages, "history of Linux", etc. The real reason to purchase it is the included advice and recipes. Every chapter that I have read has a real "I've done this many times" feeling to it. I have yet to find a technical mistake in the information that I have gotten from this book (I can't say that about most websites).

This book is not a complete reference to the most popular utilities or the newest distributions. It falls short of a complete Linux reference due to the fact that the authors seem to only discuss tools that they have personal experience with. This book also won't teach you how to become a top-notch Linux System Administrator. What it will do, is quickly point a non-Linux system administrator in a possible direction when they need to make configuration changes. I have also found that this no-batteries-or-Internet-required reference comes in handy when working on Linux machines in remote locations.

A Windows or Mac system admin may find this book a welcome addition to their technical library. A Linux system admin may want to look elsewhere.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars I agree with my fellow reviewers, but I does deserve 4 stars October 18, 2009

By J. I. Doumet

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Turnbull, Lieverdink & Matotek should do a public service to PRO Linux Administrators and possibly drop the Pro from their Pro Linux System Administration book. For once I totally agree with all the other reviewers (never mind there are only two) of this book in the fact that this is NOT an advanced server title. That is about the only serious complaint I have since accidentally enough since I am not anywhere close to being a seasonal Linux user, much less a PRO.
Now lets suppose I managed to liquid-paper those three words from the cover: I have got the BEST RH/Ubuntu_LTS beginners administration and setup book available; do mind that before purchasing this title. By the way, those are the only two flavors of Linux Server covered in the book which is very fine to me: One paid one free.
In my case I did my homework while looking to replace my previous Linux books: Red Hat Bible and Amazon's bestselling Linux Server book (titles and authors intentionally incomplete.) I have read both of them AND 80% of this one so far.
What I am surprised about is the fact that I did not know there was a student course in Linux book writing, complete with a very strict TOC and Topic coverage. I have come to believe that ALL THE authors of Linux books, at least those available at my local book store, did attend. If you read most Linux Server books or at least browse through their TOC-even regular Linux flavor titles-they cover THE SAME TOPICS: Firewalls, DHCP/DNS/Apache, Networks, SSH, OpenLDAP, etc. I spent a couple of afternoons flipping through pages of these titles and I was very surprised that the topics were not really similiar; THEY WERE THE SAME. My question at that point was: Is there any difference in the book you buy besides the amount of coverage to each topic?
Then I found this book which is not at first sight much more different than the rest. But what sets this title apart is the fact that apparently Mr. Turnbull & company did go to my imaginary Linux Book Writting 101 crash course, but decided to attend some advance courses as well. I found that, at least in the relevant chapters, this book goes the extra mile and provides some fairly interesting material related to it. Chapters like MySql/Ldap/Apache/Mail servers, among others provide interesting examples and sometimes complete follow through of real life applications you can use. The book finally hits a nail in this 'plus' thing with a complete chapter on a collaborative Open Source suite (Zimbra) which was the main reason I was setting up Linux in the first place. After a quick look up, there are no other books that cover this and in my limited knowledge open source groupware is very limited.
I ended up with a server that provides local secure IMAP/Groupware/Time Server services all using this book with minimal references to other books or the internet. For a beginner Linux user setting up and even connecting to the box remotely that IS a big deal.
The errors on the book are very scarce (at least in the relevant chapters I used) but by no means is the book perfect. The utility that is supposed to update the free Antivirus engine still has not updated anything (no coverage on how to check this either), the ClamAV file checker for some reason started to work after a couple of days (it was written by Mr. Turnbull himself??), and for God's sake; WHAT IS IT with these Linux authors that cannot EXPLAIN IN SIMPLE WORDS how to setup remote GUI access? Please! Enough with SSH, half the setups in Linux CAN be done via GNOME or other! Me to ALL Linux Authors: INCLUDE A CHAPTER ON VNC SERVER, NOMACHINE, OR ANYTHING that begins with an X and comes free; PLEASE.
I guess references on the internet were more common that I care to recall.
Anyhow very good book, I'll try and revise this review when done with the book, and thanks for reading this review. If you want to set up a box for home/small or even medium size server load, for nothing more than the cost of the box AND this book, this will get you a pat in the back from your users.