Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Almost five years ago I reviewed Absolute BSD, Michael Lucas' first book on FreeBSD. I gave that book five stars, back when several other BSD books provided competition. On the eve of 2008, I am happy to say that Michael Lucas is probably the best system administration author I've read. I am amazed that he can communicate top-notch content with a sense of humor, while not offending the reader or sounding stupid. When was the last time you could physically feel yourself getting smarter while reading a book? If you are a beginning to average FreeBSD user, Absolute FreeBSD 2nd Ed (AF2E) will deliver that sensation in spades. Even more advanced users will find plenty to enjoy.
One of the best aspects of AF2E is that it is modern and covers FreeBSD 7.x. The previous edition covered 4.x, and plenty has changed since then. I've used FreeBSD regularly since 4.1.1 (Aug 2000), and AF2E taught me a lot about my favorite OS. Michael's coverage of GEOM, NanoBSD, FreeSBIE, journaling, memory file systems, filesystems in a file, and other topics really opened my eyes. Michael delivers excellent line-by-line explanations of system output, using numbered references to guide the reader.
Another major reason I love AF2E is that it is a good system administration book that covers plenty of FreeBSD nuances. Michael shares many of his experiences running FreeBSD in production, and I always believe he is teaching the reader what he or she needs to use FreeBSD to support customers. For example, I liked the hint on p 221 about disabling hard drive write caching (hw.ata.wc=0 in /boot/loader.conf). I also liked hearing about netstat -m to see kernel memory used for networking.
The book is also very lively for a system administration title. One of my favorite lines appears on p 135:
"Ethernet has many device-like characteristics, and it's simplest for FreeBSD to treat it as a device. Leave this [kernel option alone], unless you're looking for a learning opportunity."
So far AF2E has received all positive reviews, but I'm sure there's some deficiency another reader will report. In an ideal world I would have read more on FreeBSD binary updates, especially those involving minor releases (say 6.2 to 6.3) and major releases (say 6.2 to 7.0). Those developments are too recent to have appeared in the book, but they appear in 7.0 and will provide exceptional power for many users. I think enough completely FreeBSD-specific chapters (performance tuning, /etc, and others) are present that it's easy to say this is an awesome FreeBSD book.
If you want more coverage of Pf (and found AF2E's material lacking), just buy a copy of the new title The Book of PF: A No-Nonsense Guide to the OpenBSD Firewall by Peter Hansteen. If you want more detail on installing certain applications on FreeBSD, buy Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 by Bryan Hong. Kudos to No Starch for publishing AF2E and these other BSD titles.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition
FreeBSD—the powerful, flexible, and free Unix-like operating system—is the preferred server for many enterprises. But it can be even trickier to use than either Unix or Linux, and harder still to master.
Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd Edition is your complete guide to FreeBSD, written by FreeBSD committer Michael W. Lucas. Lucas considers this completely revised and rewritten second edition of his landmark work to be his best work ever; a true product of his love for FreeBSD and the support of the FreeBSD community. Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd Edition covers installation, networking, security, network services, system performance, kernel tweaking, filesystems, SMP, upgrading, crash debugging, and much more, including coverage of how to:
Use advanced security features like packet filtering, virtual machines, and host-based intrusion detection
Build custom live FreeBSD CDs and bootable flash
Manage network services and filesystems
Use DNS and set up email, IMAP, web, and FTP services for both servers and clients
Monitor your system with performance-testing and troubleshooting tools
Run diskless systems
Manage schedulers, remap shared libraries, and optimize your system for your hardware and your workload
Build custom network appliances with embedded FreeBSD
Implement redundant disks, even without special hardware
Integrate FreeBSD-specific SNMP into your network management system.
Whether you're just getting started with FreeBSD or you've been using it for years, you'll find this book to be the definitive guide to FreeBSD that you've been waiting for.
Click here for more information about Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition
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