Customer Reviews

Pro Ubuntu Server Administration (Expert's Voice in Linux)

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

 

 

Apress' Pro Ubuntu Server Administration is described by its author, Sander van Vugt, as the best book he's ever written; he should know -- it's his fourtysecond book.

The table of contents is mouth-watering: server installation, system imaging, performance monitoring and optimization, file system management, network monitoring, SAN, configuring OpenLDAP, integrating Samba, adding a mail server, server security, setting up an OpenVPN server, Kerberos and NTP, topped by troubleshooting. The list contains almost all an administrator wants to have to set up an advanced server in an enterprise environment.

The chapter on SAN contains goodies such as DRBD and iSCSI and, as in most chapters, you learn to set them up more in a howto fashion, with a bit of background information. IMO there isn't enough background coverage to get the reader up to snuff -- if something goes wrong, I'm left in the rain. For example, when covering the Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD), Sander shows me how to set it up, but he doesn't really show me what to do if things go wrong -- and believe me, they do sometimes go wrong! Similarly with the section on iSCSI: the book tells me that I can set up authorization for iSCSI, but doesn't go into the details on how to do so.

In the OpenLDAP chapter, Sander says you set up replication of directories with slurpd, but doesn't show me how to do so, which is fine, because slurpd has been obsoleted from OpenLDAP! The chapter on Kerberos unfortunately doesn't explain how to store your Kerberos information in OpenLDAP -- a shame. The promising SAN and hearbeat sections show me how to set up a secure file system environment, but getting my OpenLDAP directory and authorization/authentication systems set up securely isn't covered.

Pro Ubuntu Server Administration is good for intermediate system administrators who want to get an enterprise-type server running fast. But don't forget, there is more to following quick instructions -- you want to be able to maintain the server. Hopefully a second edition will address those points.

Ubuntu Server Edition is a wonderful Linux distribution -- one of the last ones left to fit on a single CDROM. Out of the box, it provides no GUI and only the bare minimum services to boot up. So when you install it and see that blinking cursor, just what exactly can you do with Ubuntu Server? Pro Ubuntu Server Administration does a great job answering that question.

This book covers almost everything a System Administrator would want to do with Ubuntu Server: RAID, LVM, system management, clustering, file sharing, mail hosting, and security. It's crammed with commands and utilities you can follow along with to create a killer server. I especially enjoyed the clustering coverage. Not too many System Adminsitration books cover clustering at all. And while this book didn't nearly cover all aspects of clustering, it still gave you enough information to get a file share cluster up and running.

Oddly, this book did leave out services such as DNS and Web hosting, but the wealth of coverage in the other areas more than makes up for that. This is a highly recommended book to read for anyone working with, or is curious about, Ubuntu Server. You won't be disappointed.

This book gives excellent introduction to most painful administration headaches: performance issues, tuning and problem solving (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 14). I have over 10 years experience in Linux administration and consulting and found this book to give something you can use in every Linux architecture, not just in Ubuntu. I'm not that interested about how to configure different services, Internet is just full of that information, I want something to use in planning Linux systems and something to dig me out of problems (save my weekends). Although this book has several chapters covering configuration, I still think it's worth stars I gave and worth having in your bookshelf.

This is really focused for enterprises, help a lot to deploy large environments. Good explanation on each point.


Great job!

The book touches on the right subjects but gives either too much or too little information. For example it goes step by step through building a DIY iSCSI SAN but doesn't really explain the big picture of what the components are and how they fit together. The book is helpful to see a few examples and get ideas about what is possible but it is not a comprehensive guide to server administration.

I was looking for a good book on setting up an Ubuntu server. This book had a few chapters of interest, but mostly was lacking in content and depth. Information on setting up firewalls with iptables and information specific to LAMP on Ubuntu were a couple of topics that were not covered. Topics that were covered in the book seemed to be covered more as an explanation of what the service was.