Igor Clark

In the five years since the last version of the Unix System Administration Handbook Linux has changed the Unix world. The previous version discussed six commercial unices. This one has two commercial unicies--Solaris and HP-UX--along with two free ones--Linux and FreeBSD. It looks like a trend.

This information dense book is a surprising mixture of arcane fact and weird humour--with emphasis on the former. The dense facts are leavened by extensive references to the authors' personal experiences with Unix. This hands on knowledge leavens a fairly dry text with interesting anecdote and occasionally breaks into proselytising. For example, when discussing the automount utility in RedHat Linux the authors can barely bring themselves to mention it before telling us how much better amd is--for four pages.

It's interesting that though X-Windows gets a few mentions the desktop environments--such as Gnome and KDE--that run on it get none at all. Clearly real men still don't use graphical interfaces.

This is a working book. It's aimed at those who have to make the system work and keep it working. There's a great deal of emphasis on troubleshooting, and the utilities capable of providing the system information you need to do it. No configuration file goes unmentioned. The authors also emphasise the commercial realities a sysadmin must acknowledge.

Over the last five years there has been an explosion of books on Unix, and especially Linux. Many of these are referenced in the text. But if you need a practical guide to system administration on Unix systems the Unix System Administration Handbook is hard to beat. --Steve Patient