Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 8
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Pros:
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Covers MS and *nix implemantations. Very in depth discussions before examples.
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Cons:
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Light on examples.
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Covering the following in great detail..
- Filesystems
- User Accounts
- User Activity
- TCP/IP Name Services
- Directory Services
- SQL Database Administration
- Electronic Mail
- Log Files
- Security and Network Monitoring
with 5 excellent Appendices
- The 5 minute RCS tutorial
- The 10 minute LDAP tutorial
- The 8 minute XML tutorial
- The 15 minute SQL tutorial
- The 20 minute SNMP tutorial
This book clarifies the uses and most common abuses of system services with an easy, quick and thoughtful style. It is obvious from the first pages that security is top of the list, and although second best can be enough at times, it often isn't even accurate. So complex tasks when well thought out and tested provide excellent information in return.
The sources of the modules and discussions about alternatives are always present, as are examples of more complex scripting. Starting always with the simple approach, then moving on to more courageous ideas.
Following the examples requires some perl knowledge so it's not a book for a perl newbie. It does however go into enough detail that an astute person could start here. It was especially useful before looking at the internal workings of Webmin, being able to view the processes before the techniques.
I found the section on logfiles a little empty, but a good place to work from. And an overall bias towards discussing MS systems than*nix systems (which look frightfully simple afterwards).
A very good read, lots of practice to tweak the output to my satisfaction and time to venture into some more perl modules!
What's missing? Well it's a July 2000 print, so maybe time to refresh the current module capabilities.. and how the level of automation for administrators has changed. Not much missing..
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