UNIX: The Complete Reference, Second Edition (Complete Reference Series)

Many good books are available on System Administration. Here are a number for beginners (and for some more experienced system administrators as well):

• Bauer, Kirk. Automating UNIX and Linux Administration. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2003.

• Calkins, Bill. Solaris 10 System Administration Exam Prep 2. Indianapolis, IN: Que, 2005.

• Feiler, Jesse. Mac OS X: The Complete Reference. Berkeley CA: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2001.

• Frisch, Æleen. Essential System Administration. 3rd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., 2002.

• Maxwell, Steven. UNIX System Administration: A Beginner’s Guide. Berkeley, CA: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002.

• Michael, Randal K. AIX 5L Administration. Berkeley, CA: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002.

• Negus, Christopher, and Thomas Weeks. Linux Troubleshooting Bible. Indianapolis, IN: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.

• Nemeth, Evi, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass, and Trent Hein. UNIX System Administration Handbook. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

• Petersen, Richard. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora 4: The Complete Reference. 3rd ed. Berkeley, CA: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2005.

• Poniatowski, Marty. HP-UX 10.X System Administration. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.

• Poniatowski, Marty. HP-UX 11i System Administration. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.

• Winsor, Janice. Solaris System Administrator’s Guide. Mountain View, CA: Sun Microsystem Press, 1998.

Web Sites with Useful Information on System Administration

Numerous web sites offer valuable system administration information for each of the variants discussed in this chapter. Here are just a few for each of the variants discussed throughout this book.

Linux has an online Linux System Administrator’s Guide 0.9, by Lars Wirzenius. It is one of the better guides and includes many tips and tricks. You can get it at http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/index.html There is a good online entry on Linux Administration Made Easy (LAME), part of the Linux Documentation Project, at http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy/.

Sun Microsystems has a site with System Administration info and FAQs about the Solaris 10 environment at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/products/sol10.html.

HP has a site with useful information about administration of HP-UX 11.0 systems at http://docs.hp.com/en/oshpux11.0.html. HP also has a similar site for HP-UX 10.0 systems at http://docs.hp.eom/en/oshpux10.x.html. There is a site for registration for HP-UX 11 administration courses at http://www.mindiq.com/ilt/hpux/hp200.php.

For AIX users, there is a discussion of unique issues regarding AIX system administration at http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/aix/aixbman/admnconc/sys_mgmt.htm. There is also course registration information for AIX system administration at http://www.mindiq.com/ilt/aix/ap200.php.

Mac OS users can find a short description of basic system administration functions at http://campus.umr.edu/cis/desktop/documentation/mac/osx/basic_system_administration.pdf as well as some system administration tech-tips and recipes at http://www.tech-recipes.com/mac_system_administration.html.

Newsgroups to Consult for Information on System Administration

You can gain a lot of insight into the issues of system administration simply by following the discussion in the USENET newsgroup comp.unix.admin. You will probably also want to read the newsgroup(s) devoted to the specific machine or version of UNIX you are using. The following newsgroups address questions dealing with administration and general use for particular operating systems. Usually, if you lack relevant or useful documentation, you will get useful information back when you post questions to the appropriate newsgroups. Some useful newsgroups are

• comp.os.linux.admin

• comp.sys.sun.admin

• comp.sys.hp.hpux

• comp.unix.aix

• comp.unix.solaris

• comp.mac.sys.*

• comp.unix.questions

Journals and Publications on System Administration

There are a number of journals and publications on system administration for UNIX variants.

For Linux, here are a few good journals:

• http://www.linuxjournal.com/-Linux Journal (also available in print at newsstands)

• http://www.linuxmagazine.com/-Linux Magazine (also available in print at newsstands)

• http://www.linuxtoday.com/-Linux Today

• http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/- Linux Planet

• http://linuxgazette.net-Linux Gazette

• http://www.linuxfocus.org/-Linux Focus

For Solaris:

• http://www.adminschoice.com/-Admin’s Choice (technical tips, articles, discussions)

For HP-UX:

• http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/journal.html-The HP Journal online

For AIX:

• http://www.eservercomputing.com/ME2/Default.asp-eServer Magazine (covers AIX)

For Mac OS:

• http://www.mactech.com/index.html-Mac Tech: The Journal of Macintosh Technology

• http://www.macworld.com/-Mac World: The Mac Product Experts

• http://www.macaddict.com/-Mac Addict (A better machine, a better magazine)

For all of the variants above:

• http://www.samag.com/-Sys Admin: The Journal for UNIX/Linux Administrators