UNIX SSH: Using Secure Shell with CDROM (McGraw-Hill Tools Series) [Paperback]

Anne Carasik (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 1999 | Series: McGraw-Hill Tools Series

Ssh (secure shell) is an encryption program that allows a UNIX administrator to log into another computer over a network. This book shows readers how to log in to their system from anywhere, and how to prevent a cracker from getting access. The CD ROM contains ssh version 2 plus utilities.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies (August 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071349332
• ISBN-13: 978-0071349338
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,143,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Unix > Shell

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing. Verbose, repetitive, very badly edited., September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: UNIX SSH: Using Secure Shell with CDROM (McGraw-Hill Tools Series) (Paperback)

The use of terminology in this book is so inconsistent, it is all over the map! Example, in chapter 3, "server" sometimes refers to a daemon, sometimes to a machine, sometimes both usages in the same sentence. Similar crimes are committed with the words "remote" and "local", and several others. I'm no neophyte at client/server networking, but I couldn't make head or tail of some whole paragraphs.

Contradictory information is presented. In one section we are told that only the server machine needs a daemon, yet elsewhere (e.g. Fig 1.2) we see a daemon on both client and server.

The writing is highly repetitive. Example: Chapter 2 explains over and over again how the server daemon spawns a child process. Once is enough! Get on with it.

The book digresses from the topic on strange tangents. The whole digression in Chapter 1 about hosts.equiv/.rhosts misconfiguration leads nowhere. After an 8 page digession, we learn that this has nothing to do with ssh, and is not a problem ssh addresses.

This book lacks the essential structure that would guide the user through the learning process: Starting with an overview, describing the functionality in broad strokes, then filling in details in later chapters. At the point where I gave up about halfway through, it had still not yet given a good synopsis of WHAT SSH IS. By that point, the reader should have been told in broad terms the main functionality, the security philosophy, where and how keys are generated, stored, and communicated, the roles that the public and private keys play, what criteria are used for authentication, etc.

Finally, this is a book that has not targeted a particular audience. Is it for beginners? Then define your terminology and apply it consistently. For experts? Then cut the senseless elementary material, and all its tiresome repetition. Is it a reference book? Then trim the fat and organize it by functionality. Is it a tutorial? Then structure it top-down.

I want my fourty bucks back!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a waste of paper, January 23, 2000

By 

Han Holl (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: UNIX SSH: Using Secure Shell with CDROM (McGraw-Hill Tools Series) (Paperback)

Because English isn't my mother language, it's not easy for me to come up with forty synonimes for bad, but they would all be deserved.

The author clearly doesn't know the difference between server and client,or between parent and child process for that matter. I know this is hard to believe, but the author clearly doesn't have a clue what a socket is (the server listens for sockets, the client sends sockets <sic>).

10 pages of ./configure output just to get the pages filled are a waste of paper, but at least don't contain to many errors.

The name McGraw-Hill on the cover doesn't seem to guarantee any quality any longer.

I'm sorry I saw the first review too late.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Beginner's Reference!, March 27, 2000

By 

Shane O'Neal (San Antonio, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: UNIX SSH: Using Secure Shell with CDROM (McGraw-Hill Tools Series) (Paperback)

I disagree with the three people previous to me who reviewed this book. I found it to be a great beginner's reference for compiling, installing and configuring Secure Shell (SSH), as well as learning some of the additional tricks it can do.

I have been using SSH for about two years, on AIX and Solaris. I learned a lot from Chapters 8 & 9 about using SSH through firewalls as a sort of "poor man's" VPN. The book also spells out the difference between the 1.5 and 2.0 protocols.

UNIX System Administrators with little or no knowledge of SSH will find this to be an excellent, step-by-step guide. Experienced users may learn something they didn't know. There are some minor errors, but overall they have no impact on the usefulness of the book.

Developers who are looking for tips on modifying, enhancing or otherwise hacking SSH code will not find much here to help them.

A book like this is long overdue and I'm glad somebody finally wrote it.