Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition Review

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Book:		Essential System Administration
Subject:		Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition Review
Date:		2003-04-10 18:05:15
From:		Alex Belt

Rating: This book should be called Indispensable and Complete System Administration. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. No book will ever be the complete book on Unix or Linux admin, but this one has so much material in it, it will be quite some time before I start looking for material not in the book. Every aspect of System Administration is covered in this book. The material goes into details as necessary, but the author does a good job of not getting bogged down in the details or overwhelming the reader with irrelevant or arcane knowledge that only a handful of people will use. What you will find is broad and thorough coverage of the material in an accessible, easy to read style. One of the things I appreciate most about this book is the organization. Rather than listing out a bunch of technical information, each chapter deals with a specific task that a sysadmin needs to be able to do, and the information to carry out that task is contained within the chapter, rather than making references to other chapters or appendices, as is common practice. This is another book that delivers the excellence I’ve come to expect from O’Reilly.