“As an author, editor, and publisher, I never paid much attention to the competition—except in a few cases. This is one of those cases. The UNIX System Administration Handbook is one of the few books we ever measured ourselves against.”

—Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media

 

“This edition is for those whose systems live in the cloud or in virtualized data centers; those whose administrative work largely takes the form of automation and configuration source code; those who collaborate closely with developers, network engineers, compliance officers, and all the other worker bees who inhabit the modern hive.”

—Paul Vixie, Internet Hall of Fame-recognized innovator and founder of ISC and Farsight Security

 

“This book is fun and functional as a desktop reference. If you use UNIX and Linux systems, you need this book in your short-reach library. It covers a bit of the systems’ history but doesn’t bloviate. It’s just straight-forward information delivered in a colorful and memorable fashion.”

—Jason A. Nunnelley

UNIX^® and Linux^® System Administration Handbook, Fifth Edition, is today’s definitive guide to installing, configuring, and maintaining any UNIX or Linux system, including systems that supply core Internet and cloud infrastructure.

Updated for new distributions and cloud environments, this comprehensive guide covers best practices for every facet of system administration, including storage management, network design and administration, security, web hosting, automation, configuration management, performance analysis, virtualization, DNS, security, and the management of IT service organizations. The authors—world-class, hands-on technologists—offer indispensable new coverage of cloud platforms, the DevOps philosophy, continuous deployment, containerization, monitoring, and many other essential topics.

Whatever your role in running systems and networks built on UNIX or Linux, this conversational, well-written ¿guide will improve your efficiency and help solve your knottiest problems.

Evi Nemeth pioneered the discipline of UNIX system administration. She taught and mentored computer science students at the University of Colorado Boulder, was visiting faculty member at Dartmouth College and UC San Diego, and helped bring Internet technology to the developing world through her work with the Internet Society and the United Nations. 

Garth Snyder has worked at NeXT and Sun and holds a BS in Engineering from Swarthmore College and an MD and an MBA from the University of Rochester. 

Trent R. Hein (@trenthein) is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about practical cybersecurity and automation. Outside of technology, he loves hiking, skiing, fly fishing, camping, bluegrass, dogs, and the Oxford comma. Trent holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado.

Ben Whaley is the founder of WhaleTech, an independent consultancy. He was honored by Amazon as one of the first AWS Community Heroes. He obtained a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

Dan Mackin’s (@dan_mackin) long-standing passion for technology inspired him to get a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He applies Linux and other open source technologies not only in his day job, but also to automation, monitoring, and weather metrics collection projects at home. Dan loves spending time with his wife and dog, skiing, movies, sailing, and backcountry touring.

Part I. Basic Administration
1. Where to Start
2. Booting and Shutting Down
3. The Filesystem
4. Access Control and Rootly Powers
5. Controlling Processes
6. User Management
7. Storage
8. Periodic Processes
9. Backups
10. Syslog and Log Files
11. Software Installation and Management
12. The Kernel
13. Scripting and the Shell
14. Configuration Management

Part II. Networking
15. Physical Networking
16. TCP/IP
17. Routing
18. DNS: Domain Name System
19. NFS: Network File System
20. HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol
21. SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
22. Directory Services
23. Electronic Mail
24. Web Applications
25. Network Management and Debugging

Part III. Operations
26. Continuous Integration and Delivery
27. Security
28. Cloud Computing
29. Containers and Virtualization
30. Monitoring
31. Performance Analysis
32. Policy and Politics