Linux Server Hacks

by Rob Flickenger

Book Overview

A competent system administrator knows that a Linux server is a high performance system for routing large amounts of information through a network connection. Setting up and maintaining a Linux server requires understanding not only the hardware, but the ins and outs of the Linux operating system along with its supporting cast of utilities as well as layers of applications software. There's basic documentation online but there's a lot beyond the basics...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596004613
• ISBN13: 9780596004613
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.9" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Poor Man's VPN

The challenge: Accessing my Linux workstation at work from my Linux workstation at home.A colleage suggested I take a look at SSH port forwarding. I did a quick read through the man page and tried a few things to no avail. As I say back in frustration I noticed a book on my shelf that had say unread for several months. A quick scan of Linux Server Hack and I had a solution that allowed me to create a sort of poor man's VPN.Buy this book. Read it. It will pay for itself in increased productivity.

An ax worth having

I can't help myself not to begin this review with a big *thanks* to O'Reilly for choosing Linux to launch this new series. First thing that crossed my mind after opening this tiny book, was a notion of close resemblance with another O'Reilly book that I read recently, "Unix Power Tools". Book is organized in almost identical way, short articles (anything from a page or two, to several pages) that are presented with a clear writing style, examples and efficient layout. Articles are cross-referenced in such a way that you can easily start reading the book from whatever end you wish.The hacks that I like the most are those in chapters on Server Basics, Backups, SSH and Information Servers (BIND, Apache, MySQL, OpenSSL). If you're hardcore Linux sysadmin you'll probably appreciate hacks in other chapters too; Networking, Revision Control and Monitoring. For me, the most challenging hacks in this book are the ones that deal with tunneling (IPIP/GRE encapsulation, vtun over SSH), due to complete lack of experience on my side, otherwise I found the book well worth the price and time to read, even if you'll end up with only one or two implemented hacks in your production environment. (If I could only say this more often in my reviews :-). Keep in mind, this is not the book that'll likely collect the dust on your bookshelf after you'll read it. Mine is always close to the Linux box that I manage (in a good company with already mentioned "Unix Power Tools").I'm really looking forward to other books from O'Reilly Hacks series, what about 100 hacks on Oracle, MySQL, regular expressions "one liners" (with sed, awk, grep, perl...), Windows NT...

One of the best...

... linux books I've read in a long time. The more time I spend with Linux (6 years now) the less I find useful in book offerings. Too many books are written with the new user only in mind, no thought given to the intermediate to advanced user. While many of the things in the book appear elsewhere on the web and print, this is the first volume I've seen that brings it all together in a cogent and succinct package. Kudo's to the authors and to O'reilly for putting this book out.

Lots of Wonderful "Tips & Tricks"

Being a one-time "Sys Admin," I can appreciate the drudgery of numerous system tasks. This book offers a number of tricks (or "hacks) to make some of these tasks a little less dreary. There are several sections (Server Basics, Revision Control, Backups, and Networking to name a few), along with lots of these tricks. Since I'm a mp3 fan, I especially liked the ones about CDR's and burning a CD without creating an ISO file!This book is a collection of various hacks that probably would take you forever to find (and what sys admin has any time anyway?) if they weren't in this book. There's probably many more out there that are undocumented, but these 100 were the ones the authors considered the best ones.This book is the first in a series of "Hacks" books by O'Reilly and I'm looking forward to the subsequent ones.

I reserve my highest rating for this book

This is a wonderful little book. It's as if Flickenger carefully picked thru onLAMP, LDP, 5 years' worth of Linux Journals, Linux mags, etc., and chose the 100 best hacks/idioms/recipes/whatever to make the linux admin's life easier (almost everything is relevant to FreeBSD too). These are the most powerful, efficient, and time-saving, not the most clever hacks. I've only had it a week but already i'm doing things different w/CVS, apache, SSH, etc. Also learned a little bit of bash shell and perl. I keep this book within reach, next to A.Frisch, Nemeth/Snyder/Hein's books, Complete FreeBSD and FreeBSD handbook.