Sams Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours [With CDROM]

I have seem many different UNIX SA books, but this one is the very best. It covers all the important topics and concepts, and has detailed examples for everything the author discusses. This book is very easy to read and follow.

I'm not sure what the 1-star reviewer's problem is. Who wants to wade through MAN pages for hours? The whole reason I buy books is to compile the information in one handy place. This is a useful source to fill in general holes in your knowledge. If you already know this stuff cold, I'm not sure why you'd be interested in the book at all (either to praise or pan.) Bottom line: good, general book for those who want to bootstrap themselves.

There are a bunch of things I like about this book. First off, I like that the author covers not only Linux, but also Solaris and Mac OS X. By discussing them all, you get a good sense of how different Unix can be on different platforms. It's also the first book I've seen that discusses command-line based Mac OS X administration at all, so that by itself was very interesting (if occasionally weird) reading. The writing style is very good too -- I have read other Unix books by Dave Taylor and he not only understands this stuff inside-out, but explains it in a way that makes this material interesting and fun. Finally, I really appreciated that he emphasizes problem solving (showing how, time and again, to use Unix tools to track down bugs, configuration problems, etc) rather than a bunch of canned solutions. If you're a Unix person, or wannabe, this book is highly recommended, even if you'll never admin your system.