Choosing a Unix System Administration Textbook? 57
Smantha writes "I recently began teaching a Unix System Administration course at a community college. The previous instructor was using a very outdated textbook, and I'm trying to find one that is a bit more advanced and useful for my students. They are required to take a 100-level Unix class before this one and are familiar with the basics of using the command line. I'm looking for something that covers topics such as OS installation, software/package installation, user management, system administration tools, troubleshooting techniques and tools, service configuration (network services, for example) and some miscellaneous topics such as compression/archive tools, grep, make, and the like. What books have you found to be good references on your desk? What books have been good for learning these sorts of topics?"
Recommendations (Score:5, Informative)
First off, you can't go wrong with Essential System Administration [oreilly.com], 3rd Edition by Aeleen Frisch. Really, really excellent book.
But just as important as the specifics of Unix, I'd argue, is the general question of how to be a good sysadmin. ("Start by installing Linux" is my usual smart-ass answer, but I'll skip that for right now...) The Practice of System and Network Administration, 2nd Edition [amazon.com], by Tom Limoncelli, Christine Hogan and Strata Chalup, is a truly excellent book about how to be a good sysadmin in the general case. I can't recommend it enough. (BTW, the link for the book comes from the authors' website [everythingsysadmin.com], so I presume it throws them a few nickels if you buy it that way.)
Linux+ (Score:2, Informative)
Mark Sobell (Score:3, Informative)
Someone up there mentioned "Install linux" as a snarky answer. There's no substitute for hands-on. Even for those that don't want to actually install Linux, there are Live CDs and VMWare images.
Oh yeah, and just because something is old doesn't mean it's useless. Sometimes the old stuff saves one's butt when you can't find a click-and-drool interface for what you need to do. Look at the butt-saving stuff in the old textbook and see if the new texts cover 'em.
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BMO
The Practice of System and Network Administration (Score:4, Informative)
Revolving around install/configure/run a Debian VMWare machine, sitting on the live internet.
this textbook provides useful stuff that students wouldn't find in the how-to on the internet - the kind of stuff you'd want to know before becoming a sysadmin.
The one other resource i'd love my students to master is google.
pointless questions solved with one quick google search
arrg, why dont they teach Effective Google searching in CS1000
Re:O'Reilly is an excellent source (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Don't!! (Score:3, Informative)
p.s also choose bash/tsh based on your audience, if its a mac crowd tsh is going to be more useful but if its a linux crowd stick with bash