I authored chapter 18, "File System Administration" in this book. (Since I only authored one chapter, I'm in the "et. al" part of the author list.) This was an interesting experience. I forgot how much detail and knowledge I took for granted until I sat down and tried to enumerate all of it. Lesson learned: Writing is tough! But well worth it. My editor was really helpful and made the process as easy as possible for me. The chapter covered basic file system structure, disk installation, and partitioning under IRIX, SunOS, Solaris, and Linux.

Of the 720 pages, I wrote about 100 of them. The biggest was the TCP/IP chapter where I covered the details of configuring network cards, route tables, DNS servers, NIS servers, and NFS servers. A small section was dedicated to setting up a PPP client. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time or pages to get into the fun stuff like PPP servers, IP firewalling, IP Masq., etc. Maybe another edition? ;) The second chapter I wrote was on how to setup and configure a FTP server using wu-ftpd. The last full chapter I was responsible for was on the linux kernel where I walked through a full kernel compile for a production system. My editor wanted me to author a chapter on configuring Sendmail and QPopper (SMTP/POP, respectively) but I didn't have the time. We ended up taking the sendmail section from the UNIX Unleashed book, adding the POP section (I wrote) and rewriting portions of the SMTP stuff to be linux specific. All said and done, I'm very proud of this book.

This is probably one of the smallest contributions I've made. I only wrote the chapter on user administration, but oddly enough it was one of the hardest to write. My original draft was written in the style of the unleashed books and as a result was pretty technical. I got into all the guts of PAM, NIS, etc. etc. etc. Then my editor read it and basically told me that I had to rewrite it -- Using Linux was meant to be a newbie book. Suddenly I had to make a lot of complex ideas either really easy to understand or I had to drop them. Not fun... All said and done, I think it is one of the most useful books I've worked on. It did well in the bookstores and even made it to #4 on Border's Bookstores top selling computer books.

For this book, I finally took on a more editorial role. I was the technical editor for 9 chapters (over half of the book) and for all effective purposes I co-developed the table of contents. While that doesn't seem like a big deal, it is -- getting the TOC right is cruicial to getting a book out in a timely manner and making sure it covers everything it should. Most importantly, if a book doesn't cover what it should you don't get a market share and the people who put the money up to publish it get grumpy. In terms of actual writing, I didn't have to do much. I revised old chapters from the 2nd edition and there weren't that many sweeping changes. The fellow who took over revising the chapters I wrote in the last edition didn't make much of any changes either (but they got their names on it). Overall, if you're looking for a good linux book, I highly recommend it. It comes with the Red Hat 5.2 CD and an intro into everything. If you find that you need to know more detail about any one subject, you can buy a book more focused on it. (i.e. you get this book to figure out which O'Reilly books you want to buy. ;) One note: The DNS chapter covers BIND 4.3 but RedHat 5.2 comes with BIND 8. Don't ask, I don't know. Oh, and most importantly, my name is on the front cover under "Authoritative Advice". I didn't know I was authoritative, but it's pretty cool none-the-less. July 2000 update: It seems that subsequent versions of this book (including the 6th ed.) still give me full credit for the FTP chapter.

This was another update of an old chapter. Fixed up the File Systems chapter to comment on newer technologies and newer operating system tools, esp. under RedHat Linux.

This is my first pride and joy -- a book of my own. I designed the table of contents, I wrote all the chapters (except for the DHCP chapter) and I did all the front matter/back matter, etc. This book is designed to be the "red book" for Linux. I made an effort to cover all the stuff that an administrator should know at the very least about Linux and included a lot of references to advanced versions of specific topics where appropriate. (Many, many, many recommendations to Richard Stevens' wonderful text TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols, as well as several book from O'Reilly and Associates.) There is so much to say about the book, but I ended up pouring most of that text into the introduction and acknolowdgements in the book. Eventually, I'll also get a page up about the book where I will include errata information as well as links to other sites.

My current pride and joy, this is the second edition of my book. Clocking in at about 100 pages thicker, it has been revised to cover the the insanity that is RedHat 7.0, complete with coverage of the 2.4 kernel. Like the first edition, I have made an effort to keep the book general enough that you should be able to use it with other distributions as well.

Now this is cool. The fine people at McGraw-Hill actually had my book translated into Chinese. It is bizarre to see words I wrote translated into a language I can't read. This edition also shows my technical editor (and the author of chapter 16, DHCP) Art Chan on the cover. Very cool, indeed...