Universal Command Guide: For Operating Systems (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Networks just aren't homogeneous anymore, despite the best efforts of operating system vendors to bring about the contrary. Many network administrators need to know how to get around in half a dozen operating systems or more; itinerant consultants find themselves in the same boat. Universal Command Guide for Operating Systems breaks new ground in the technical-book industry by documenting the interfaces--graphical as well as textual--of eight popular operating systems in one (large) volume. It's a great resource for people who have to hop from Red Hat Linux to AIX Unix (among others) frequently, or who want to use their knowledge of one operating system to help them learn another. In table after table and entry after entry, this book explains how almost every operating system you're likely to find in a modern data center exposes its functions to users and administrators.

It's hardly possible to commend the authorial team enough for the empirical research they did in compiling this book (and it is a tabular compilation, not a tutorial or prose volume of any kind). Over three years they installed all of the covered operating systems on test servers and used custom software to scan the machines for executable commands. They admit to excluding games, device drivers, and a small number of very obsolete commands from their coverage, but issue (in the preface) a challenge to all readers to find a useful command they haven't included. That kind of warranty is very rare in the technical-book industry, and it appears that this book lives up to its authors' boast of true universality.

How does the Universal Command Guide work? Say you know Microsoft Windows, and know that MSCDEX.EXE is key to making a CD-ROM drive accessible. What commands are equivalent in other operating systems? A scan of the cross-reference that opens this book (it lists every command available in every covered operating system next to its parallels in other environments) reveals what the Unixes and NetWare use, and that the Macintosh requires no special command for the purpose at all. If you want to know more about a NetWare 4.11 command, you can flip to the chapter on that operating system for complete coverage of syntax and parameters.

This is a big, supremely useful book, backed by diligent and extensive research. The only way to make it better would be to cover more operating systems (a couple more Linuxes, HP-UX, and Mac OS X would be nice), but that's a feeble criticism. If you understood the point of this book when you read the title, you'll be pleased. It'll satisfy your expectations. --David Wall

Topics covered: Every administrative command in Sun Solaris 7 and 8; IBM AIX 4.3.3; OpenBSD 2.7; Red Hat Linux 7; Novell NetWare 3.12, 4.11, 5.1, and 6; Mac OS 9.1; MS-DOS 6.22; and Microsoft Windows 95 through XP. Every command-line command and many graphical command sequences are covered fully, with information on every parameter and command variation.

Review

…an invaluable aid…interesting reading and is a useful reference tool… (PC Utilities – Editors Choice, No.39, 2003)

"&an invaluable aid&interesting reading and is a useful reference tool&" -- PC Utilities Editors Choice, No.39, 2003

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1600 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (April 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764548336
• ISBN-13: 978-0764548338
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.7 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #266,944 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars UCG book in research and teaching, November 13, 2002

By	Juha-Pekka Koskinen (Finland) - See all my reviews

I had waited a long time for a book that could serve me as "manual pages" for different operating systems.

Best part of this book is that if you are familiar with one OS you can now find the similar command in another OS. Afterall, when learning commands of a new OS the most difficult part (atleast for myself) was to ask the right questions - what can you do in this OS? I've used the book to find right commands for optimizing my Linux environment for heavy Matlab use and the book has served it's purpose well.

Because of good indexing of the book I feel that it is also good material for university students, especially for Operating systems courses.

There is one bad thing about the book, though. It is extremely big and heavy - and will probably ruin your bookbag ;D

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious...and it delivers, October 13, 2002

By	Bob Nelson (Frisco, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While initially quite skeptical of a book attempting to cover such disparate operating systems, the reality is that I have found this volume to be indespensible. Since I work with Red Hat Linux primarily and Solaris (v8) also rather frequently, it's easy use the UCG to get the syntax differences of those two environments. Sure, I could just scan the man pages -- but the already well-worn out copy of my UCG has enough bookmarks and paperclip (and yellow highlights) to make turning to it easier. It has also helped me better understand that there are quite a few ways to perform networking tasks using the Windows command line (as opposed to becoming dependent on the GUI). The charts showing the equivalency of commands across the diverse operating environments is a real time-saver. As a partisan of the O'Reilly books, I've come to the general conclusion that the value of a book is inversely proportional to its size. A big, thick book is generally fluff. But, this one is the exception.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars missing HPUX and Digital UNIX, May 28, 2002

By A Customer

This book is very complete for the OS's it covers. However, it doesn't cover HPUX or Digital Unix, which, AFAIK, are pretty popular variants of UNIX (especially HPUX).

Don't get me wrong...it's a real buy. The cross-reference and details (including examples) are excellent, and it's a "must" for persons having to deal with a heterogeneous OS environment; or for admins/users having to get used to a new OS.

I just wish the cover didn't say, "Every Command \ Every Operating System \ Cross-Referenced Together". That, to me, is misleading.