Automating Unix and Linux Administration

This book is outstanding. Most books on Unix Administration start from the beginning, the beauty of this one is that it doesn't. This is a more advanced book designed for veteran administrators, or administrators looking for a move be junior administrator status to senior admin. Bauer talks about the fundamentals behind automation, including state of mind and approach to automating different tasks. On top of that, he has great real-world examples that I am sure he has implemented on his servers. The book covers several topics and does it well. My favorite sections are the package management sections and the building RPMs sections. I have used those two throughout my time as a Unix Administrator in a large shop. Each topic is covered in adequate depth, with enough information to get you started and working though solving problems. The book certainly is not a complete resource on monitoring, SSH, or backups or user management. Bauer makes the assumption that you have some background (maybe not much, but some) with all of these concepts. When I meet good Unix Administrators who want to become great, I recommend this book. This is the type of book that will be looked periodically as a reference guide, after its initial reading.

If you do *ANY* Unix/Linux system administration (from just maintaining your own desktop machine on up to the big-time), and automating some (or most) aspects of UNIX/Linux system administration sounds at all interesting to you, then stop wasting your time reading this review, and *IMMEDIATELY* go purchase this book! Really! OK. If you are still reading, then either you don't do *any* UNIX/Linux system administration (in which case: Why *are* you reading this?), or you aren't quite sold. Let me tell you: This book is among a truly rare breed---just bursting with quality and value! (This book is an absolute *steal*; its a bargain at twice the price!) I'm a bit of a Linux and Perl book nut; I have so many O'Reilly books on my bookshelf that I have a better selection than my local Borders! AULA's publisher is a new one for me, but I think that they got an author---and a book---that O'Reilly would *kill* for! First of all, in the interest of full disclosure: I'm not a professional Sys-Ad, but I do administer my own small network of Linux machines that I use in my technical business. Oh, and I'd never heard of Kirk Bauer before reading this book (although I did know about a quality piece of open-source software called LogWatch---I just didn't know that Kirk Bauer was its author too). Automating UNIX and Linux Administration (AULA) is a genuinely *outstanding* UNIX/Linux system-administration book! I have read, re-read, and re-re-read *most* of the book! AULA is truly worth its weight in platinum! It is a rare and wonderful thing to start reading a computer/technical book and realize that it is of monumental significance, something that you *know* will be of enormous value! A "_this_changes_everything_" moment! In my personal programming library, AULA occupies prime real estate---and I would say that it shares the "WOW" factor with only a few of my other favorites: Linux Administration Handbook Evi Nemeth, et al., 2002, Prentice Hall PTR Linux Server Hacks Rob Flickenger, 2003, O'Reilly Linux Shell Scripting with Bash Ken O. Burtch, 2004 Sams Publishing (Developers Library) And of value to Perl hackers: Perl for System Administration David N. Blank-Edelman, 2000, O'Reilly Perl Cookbook Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, 2000, O'Reilly If Kirk Bauer ever publishes any other materials on Linux administration, I'll buy them on the basis of the title (and his name) alone---I have no need for any more information! This is clearly a guy who *knows* what valuable information is, and has the technical savvy to save you years (decades?) of trial-and-error experience. AULA is packed with unique insight and a source of information that cannot be found anywhere else! Do yourself a *big* favor---buy this book now!

This is a good book for everyone that want to go a little bit deeper in the Linux Adminstration. In Linux distributions we often find differents solutions to address the same problem. The book can save hours deciding between using solution A or B. It include and overview of the most often used solutions with the pro and cons in some cases. For example: NFS, AFS, Coda and others.All the time the author has the security in mind and this is important for people trying to set boxes on the Internet.If you have a UNIX background that not used for a long time (10 years or so) and you need to go into the Linux server administration. This book certainly will save you a lot of time and will give you the bases to go deeper in the topics that are more important to you.If the above if not your case, I think the book is still a worth too. I will help to understand the pitfalls in Linux administrations a bit deeper.At least, but no less important, I found the book easy to read.

If you are disciple in the church of Wall, or like me you believe that laziness is the father of invention, or if you simply have more than a couple *nix machine to administer, Kirk Bauer's new book Automating Unix and Linux Administration is definitely for you. From the creator of the popular open source projects AutoRpm and LogWatch comes a thorough - and believe it or not entertaining - look at how one can leverage the power of a few common tools to significantly reduce the time and effort system administrators spend doing their jobs. From the outset Bauer takes a straightforward and principled approach to problem analysis. Usually starting with anecdotal example scenarios (many of which will have you saying "been there before") and progressing through ideals, goals and consequences, he examines many of the common issues facing system administrators with candor and realism. Almost nowhere in the book does the author assume an authoritarian stance, he questions his own decision making process and encourages the reader to come up with exceptions to his rules. Fundamentally Bauer has one goal - to develop a comprehensive system for reliably automating the tedious but important tasks that all system administrators face on a recurring basis. Admittedly, it would be a fallacy for any book to claim complete and comprehensive coverage of all things related to system administration and Bauer does no such thing. When the author touches on topics that obviously require more depth than a single chapter can afford, he is certain to include at least one reference (and in many instances more) to alternate publications without bias to any particular publisher or author. Having said that, the book's scope and depth of topic coverage is impressive. Starting with an exhaustive examination of SSH and progressing through cfengine, NFS, LDAP, RPM and Tripwire (just to name a few) Bauer provides carefully detailed instruction on how to automate tasks ranging from simple network management and software packaging to security, monitoring and backups. The author even goes so far as to suggest methods for efficiently front-ending automation systems for the less technical of users. Although not expressly stated in the text, the overall theme of the book is walk on the shoulders of giants. Starting with simple example scripts (in both Bash and Perl) and many single-line commands, Bauer builds on the content of each previous chapter as the book progresses. Examples shown in early chapters are incorporated into more complex systems one step at a time. Following along is easy, each script or command is detailed on a line-by-line basis, and because of Bauer's principle-based approach the reader is rarely left wondering why the author has chosen a particular tool or implementation. More often than not the elegance of how Bauer pieces together methods and procedures will excite you about the possibilities for automation of your own systems. Although Bauer explicitly states that