Linux Network Administrator's Guide by Kirch, Olaf (1996) Paperback

by Tony Bautts

The long-overdue second edition of O'Reilly's Linux Network Administrator's Guide, by Olaf Kirch and Terry Dawson, still sports the cowboy colophon, suggesting that netadmins have retained their Lone Ranger personas. While life for a sysadmin has improved over the years with the introduction of the ./Configure utility and build-less rpm distributions, network building and maintenance is still a vast prairie, in its complexity growing faster than the availability of tools and documentation to tame it. Linux document libraries are filled with disparate, obsolete, and/or redundant How-Tos for multiple Ethernet cards, bridging, cable modems, DHCP, Samba, ISDN, DSL, and laptop Ethernet card peculiarities. Sadly, the recycling of the cowboy motif indicates a deeper problem with the second edition. While authors Kirch and Dawson have expanded and updated Kirch's original text, they give scant attention to any of the paradigm shifts that have occurred in Linux networking since 1993. Strangely, the authors have retained much material on core technologies of diminishing importance in the era of small ISP-connected networks. While PPP and Chat are still relevant for ISP connections, such protocols as UUCP, SLIP, dip, and PLIP are largely of historical interest. Discussions of packet routing are not browsable, and there is no practical presentation of the configuration of routing for multiple Ethernet cards, which the small-network Linux market needs. The showstopper is the absence of any discussion of configuring DHCP, DSL, cable modems, or Samba. When the authors blithely indicate in their preface the growing importance of these areas, one gathers that this book was written in 1997 or earlier.Still, in the nearly 500 pages of earnest effort, Kirch and Dawson expand on such infrastructural basics as TCP/IP, NIS, and DNS. Discussions of firewalls and IP masquerading are genuinely new, and the authors include an up-to-date section featuring firewall implementations in kernels as recent as 2.4. Such tried-and-true utilities as SMTP and Sendmail are covered in detail, although out-of-the-box implementations haven't posed serious problems for years. The five chapters on reading and serving network news are positively excessive.Perhaps it's time for the cowboy to come back to the ranch to see how the world has changed. --Peter Leopold

Genres: Technical, Reference, Nonfiction, Technology, Computers, Computer Science, Programming

Paperback

First published September 1, 1994

Reviews

[Elie De Brauwer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the first edition of the Linux Network Administrator's guide. And when I bought this book somewhere in the 2nd half of the 1990's, this book was the first O'Reilly book I owned and comes from a time in the offline era where lot's of knowledge (even about computer-ish things) had to be obtained in an offline world. Even today I'm still impressed by the book itself, the 'RepKover' way of binding still bring this feeling of quality and even though it is one of my oldest tech books it doesn't show it effective age. Hell the book even 'smells' like an O'Reilly (something current O'Reilly don't do anymore).

As for the contents, from one end reading this (in the first edition !, there is also a 3rd edition which stems from 2005) it already contained some stuff that was even vintage in '95, things like UUCP, YP, NIS, ... (things I wouldn't have known if I hadn't read about them in this book). It cover 0.99 and 1.* Linux kernels which were even before 'my' time. Another big part is just a trip down memory lane, the concepts still exist but the practical implementation has changed. And some rock solid concepts are even relevant today.

Anyhow, I read this book for nostalgia purposes (success !) and now the 'Printed on Recycled Paper' will take a next step in the circular economy.

[Jorgon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick re-read of this confirms that its status as an oldie but goodie. Despite some space wasted on obsolete technologies, the chapter on DNS, at least, is still quite relevant. But it is probably time for another revision!

[Angela Randall]

Free in HTML here.

[Laurent]

Read the first edition, then this one... must be close to 10 years ago.

[عَبدُالكَرِيمْ · Rating 3 out of 5]

learned from it but not as much as I expected.. pass