Customer Reviews

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed

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

 

 

I have read about 3/4th of this book so far,most of it is mainly just review for me since the RHEL 5 release. I have noticed so far a few issues mainly with grammar, spelling, and multiple misguided instructions such as the PXE installation method, LDAP setup, and a few other minor things. Overall the book is my favorite linux related book since it gets right to the point and doesnt have all the boring history lessons about 15 years ago when service such and such was developed and how it is completely different etc etc. Any one who's read a linux related book knows what im talking about.

In regards to the misguided instructions, for instance the PXE setup. I have gone through the chapter about 5 times now and slowly stepped through the documentation as it explains but still have yet to be able to get the correct outcome.(a working PXE installation). I have previous experience with PXE so I was able to figure this out on my own with no issue but worry that some new admins to RHEL will have a hard time getting this particular method of installation setup. I'm unfortunetly human so I still may have gotten the steps down wrong and other may find that the instructions are infact correct. If so ... cool. :)

- runlevel -

S0me good general info - but watch our for the quality of examples. In my case, I was bitten hard by the "Installing with PXE" section of chapter 1. I found multiple typos in the example commands, file lists, and configuration files. When combined with the fact that error messages for these kinds of configuraitons are sparse - and documentation even mroe so - it was that much more dissapoiinting that the key text wasn't vetted prior to publishing.

I have found this book to be great. I was familiar enough with Linux and yet always seemed to be scouring the internet for How To guides for setting up simple services like Samba Server, FTP services and so on. This book is basically a collection of those most common guides, the configuration of the various services is discussed in sufficient depth and the book is clearly written. It may not have the depth some people are looking for based on the reviews but it has been great for me. I feel like I understand whats going on with my CentOS boxes these days.

I use this book in conjunction with CentOS 5.2 (Red Hat Enterprise clone).

I would risk and say it is a book with general information about Linux, with errors, bugs, not complete content, not clearly presented, commands mixed with regular text, lack of good reference, etc. Reading this book it is hard to believe the author has a real practical experience in the subject in a production environment.
Generally one of the weakest of books about RHEL I have read. I would say, better download documentation from Red Hat website for free and save the money for other good Linux books.

I am a Windows administrator, and I was given a project to build a Red Hat Enterprise 5 server. Having very little exposure to Red Hat, I picked this book up to help me with the setup and configuration of the server. I anticipated that a book with the work "Unleashed" in it's title would be a down-and-dirty manual with good information to help with some of the more "non-standard" items of administration (Like SNMP), but there was very little that I could get from this manual that I couldn't easily find on-line. A sad dissapointment

I bought this book as a desktop reference, but so far have been greatly disappointed. Every section I have read has been missing critical information, and the examples are so bare-bones as to be almost useless. You can follow the instructions to the letter, but you'll still find yourself scouring the internet for the missing information. The worst section I have come across is the NFS setup, which dedicates TWO pages to configuring NFS via command line and is missing all the pre-configuration necessary to make it work. Might be an okay book if you're already well-versed in RHEL, but if you're expecting comprehensive info, go elsewhere.

It is stated that the book is for intermediate to advanced level. However, I did not found it advanced at all. Little bit of disappointment.

I ordered a Linux Book and it came on it came in good condition.
Delivery was a little slow.

This is a RHEL5 book that is looking forward, not back. You really shouldn't be using telnet in 2007 (except maybe to connect to some old equipment); X11 forwarding is covered in the chapter about OpenSSH. What's I'm excited about are the new features: NFSv4 (better security and static ports!), provisioning servers with RHN and kickstart, Oprofile, SELinux, auditd, etc. By the way, the author works for Red Hat and is very active in these technologies. I do wish there was less general linux information in this book since that is heavily covered by other excellect publications.

When I got an alert on this book when it was first available I jumped on buying it. Frankly, it fell severely short of expectations. Maybe I presumed there would be more in an unleashed book than what was found between these pages.