Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two: Tips & Tools for Connecting, Monitoring, and Troubleshooting (Paperback)

by William von Hagen (Author), Brian Jones (Author)
Key Phrases: synchronizing resources, journaling filesystems, prioritize your work, Window System, System Rescue, System Services (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Today's system administrators deal with a vast number of situations, operating systems, software packages, and problems. Those who are in the know have kept their copy of Linux Server Hacks close at hand to ease their burden. And while this helps, it's not enough: any sys admin knows there are many more hacks, cool tips, and ways of solving problems than can fit in a single volume (one that mere mortals can lift, that is).

Which is why we created Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two, a second collection of incredibly useful tips and tricks for finding and using dozens of open source tools you can apply to solve your sys admin problems. The power and flexibility of Linux and Open Source means that there is an astounding amount of great software out there waiting to be applied to your sys admin problems -- if only you knew about it and had enough information to get started. Hence, Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two.

This handy reference offers 100 completely new server management tips and techniques designed to improve your productivity and sharpen your administrative skills. Each hack represents a clever way to accomplish a specific task, saving you countless hours of searching for the right answer. No more sifting through man pages, HOWTO websites, or source code comments -- the only resource you need is right here. And you don't have to be a system administrator with hundreds of boxen to get something useful from this book as many of the hacks apply equally well to a single system or a home network.

Compiled by experts, these hacks not only give you the step-by-step instructions necessary to implement the software, but they also provide the context to truly enable you to learn the technology. Topics include:

• Authentication
• Remote GUI connectivity
• Storage management
• File sharing and synchronizing resources
• Security/lockdown instruction
• Log files and monitoring
• Troubleshooting
• System rescue, recovery, and repair

Whether they help you recover lost data, collect information from distributed clients, or synchronize administrative environments, the solutions found in Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two will simplify your life as a system administrator.

About the Author
Bill von Hagen is a seasoned Linux/Unix systems administrator and computer collector. He writes articles and product reviews for Linux Planet, Linux Today, Linux Format, and Linux Magazine. He is the author of several technology books including "Hacking the TiVo, Second Edition" (Muska and Lipman), "The Definitive Guide to GCC" (Apress), and co-author of "SUSE Linux 9 Bible" (Wiley). In a past life, he was the drummer for a hardcore punk rock band, The Cynics.

Brian K. Jones is a system administrator in the department of computer science at Princeton University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 478 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (December 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596100825
• ISBN-13: 978-0596100827
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #281,914 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #9 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Security & Encryption > Linux Security
  #11 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Networking > Networks, Protocols & APIs > LDAP
  #14 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Operating Systems > Unix > Administration

• This item is part of The O'Reilly Hacks Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!, September 12, 2006

By	John R. Vacca "Tech Write Independent Reviewer" (Pomeroy, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Are you a system administrator? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Bill Von Hagen and Brian K Jones, have done an outstanding job of writing volume two of a book that focuses on cool hacks they developed or used in their server and system administration careers.

Von Hagen and Jones, begin by exploring the authentication options that are available to you in heterogeneous networked computing environments and simplify administering user accounts and passwords. Then, the authors explore ways of connecting to remote systems. Next, the authors explain how to set up central servers that do things like synchronize the time on all the systems in your environment, deliver IP addresses to newly connected hosts, and integrate these services with existing ones. The authors then present a variety of cool sysadmin tips and techniques that they've accumulated over the years, including how to keep processes running without writing a daemon or staying logged in, how to use PXE to netboot Linux, how to share information with fellow sysadmins in a centralized fashion, how to get the most out of classic but incredibly useful terminal-oriented applications, and so on. They continue to explore some cool ways of making it easier for you to manage storage, deploy new systems, do backups of today's huge disks, and even reduce the need for some of the restore requests that occasionally clog every sysadmin's inbox. Then, the authors provide some tips and tricks for managing distributed storage and making sure the administrative environments on your servers are synchronized. They then discuss a wide range of security tools and techniques that can help you sleep at night and protect your systems at the same time. Next, they provide techniques for optimizing system performance, whether by figuring out who's hogging the entire CPU and shooting down that user's network sessions or by using cool knobs in the /proc filesystem to tweak system performance or using journaling filesystems to minimize system restart time. Then, they include hacks that enable you to centralize log information in a variety of ways, be warned when problems arise, and get the most out of system status information, whether it's log information, internal disk controller status data, or remote hardware status information that you can collect via SNMP. Finally, the authors show you how to boot crippled systems so that you can diagnose problems, repair munged filesystems, and even recover deleted files of data that was stored on disks that have gone belly up.

This most excellent book has presented hacks that are techniques that the authors have used at various times. More importantly, they view these techniques as time- and hassle-savers that are usually downright fun and cool.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book totally rocks!, November 18, 2006

By	Rob Wehrli (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I can't say enough about the work done in Linux Server Hacks vII by the two Bs. Bill and Brian have hit the ball out of the ballpark with this one.

Just the section on LVM (Logical Volume Management) have saved my bacon!

Every single "hack" (read tip) is extremely practical, applicable and relevant to managing and administering Linux systems whether "servers" or not!

The absolute best part of this book is that you get really useful, insightful views into the experiences of seasoned veterans of Unix systems. If you sit in a NOC or if you're the 24x7 guy/gal on a server farm, this book is an occupational requirement! Everyone else will appreciate it if they're running Linux. In my modest network of perhaps 30 Linux systems, I can tell you that I saved hours of effort with just two of the hacks included in this volume. Considering the time savings, buying this book saved my company more than 300% on the cover price.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More specialized than Volume 1, July 8, 2007

By	wherefore "wherefore" (Anacortes WA, USA) - See all my reviews

This is a very good book. These remarks are for Linux users on the way up. If you are already an über-üser, well, you will probably like this book anyway.

If you don't have the first volume, you might want to start with it. It has some simple but very useful things that apply to just about anyone with their own Linux box and a command line.

This volume is much more advanced, and most of the tricks and techniques deal with much more specialized problem domains, ie. things you might not have run into yet. One advantage of this book over the first is that it is very up to date in its recommendations of existing software to use.