Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide

March 11, 2003 Update: Redoing a lot of these pages. See the newly done translations page!

Last updated: March 1, 2001

Summary: Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide is a mix of O'Reilly texts where there is enough "theory" to explain why things are the way they are without becoming overwhelming or boring, the Unix System Administration (Nemeth, et. al.), and large chunks of my experience as a system administrator. The book is geared towards people who are at the very least, already familiar with computers as a user. However, folks who have administered NT systems probably getting the most out of it. Each chapter starts out with an introduction to the subsystem explaining its purpose and why anyone would care about its existence and ends with intermediate level details on configuring it from start to finish.

News:

May 6, 2001 UnixWorld seems to like the second edition. You can find their review at http://www.networkcomputing.com/unixworld/1207/1207uw.html.

March 1, 2001 The second edition of Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide has hit the streets. You can find it on Amazon, but I still haven't seen my copies yet. I will update this page with errata information as soon as I get a copy and can start going through it. In the meantime, anyone who finds a mistake and wants to let me know about it can do so at .

January 13, 2001 I received the Chinese version of the first edition in the mail. I have no idea where you can find it online, and the fact that I can't read Chinese makes it that much more interesting. =) But I scanned the cover of the book along with the dedication page. You can see them here and here. So very strange to see all of your work in a different language... You can find more information about the book itself at McGraw Hill's Taiwan web site, http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.tw.

January 4, 2001 The second edition is completed and going through the final stages of post production. It should be out in book stores by the end of the month of early Febuary. The second edition includes coverage of RedHat 7.0, and the 2.4 kernel.

Errata: You can see the errata for the first edtionhere.

Reviews: Here are the reviews for the first edition that I can find on the net. If you know of any more, please contact me.

Contact: Feedback from readers is always welcome. Due to the volume of e-mail I currently deal with (independent of this book), I do not have very much time left over to deal with technical support. I will try my best to respond to e-mail, but I apologize in advance if I cannot give a personal response.

To help sort through my correspondence, please use the following address: linuxadmin@planetoid.org.

Table of Contents for the first edition:

Part 1: Installing Linux As a Server

Technical Summary of Linux Distributions and NT
Installing Linux in a Server Configuration
GNOME and KDE
Installing Software

Part 2:Single Host Administration

Managing Users
The Command Line
Booting and Shutting Down
File Systems
Core System Services
Compiling the Linux Kernel
Securing an Individual Server

Part 3: Internet Services

DNS
FTP
Setting Up Your Web Server Using Apache
SMTP
Post Office Protocol (POP)
The Secure Shell (SSH)

Part 4: Intranet Services

Network File System (NFS)
Network Information Service (NIS)
Samba
Printing
DHCP
Backups

Part 5: Advanced Linux Networking

Network Configuration
Advanced Linux Networking (how to use ipchains, etc.)
The /proc File System

Appendices

Programming Languages that Accompany Red Hat Linux
Getting the Usual Done

Other books: You can read about some of the othe books I've contributed to at http://www.planetoid.org/about/books.shtml.

	May 6, 2001	UnixWorld seems to like the second edition. You can find their review at http://www.networkcomputing.com/unixworld/1207/1207uw.html.
	March 1, 2001	The second edition of Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide has hit the streets. You can find it on Amazon, but I still haven't seen my copies yet. I will update this page with errata information as soon as I get a copy and can start going through it. In the meantime, anyone who finds a mistake and wants to let me know about it can do so at .
	January 13, 2001	I received the Chinese version of the first edition in the mail. I have no idea where you can find it online, and the fact that I can't read Chinese makes it that much more interesting. =) But I scanned the cover of the book along with the dedication page. You can see them here and here. So very strange to see all of your work in a different language... You can find more information about the book itself at McGraw Hill's Taiwan web site, http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.tw.
	January 4, 2001	The second edition is completed and going through the final stages of post production. It should be out in book stores by the end of the month of early Febuary. The second edition includes coverage of RedHat 7.0, and the 2.4 kernel.