Author: Juliet Kemp
Publisher: Apress
ISBN: 978-1430224495
Price: £21.99

An easy-to-understand problem-solving book by an experienced system administrator

The book covers quite a few system administration tools. There’s a quick start guide for some networking and provisioning technologies such as LDAP, Kerberos and Nagios. The first part of the book starts with a chapter about saving yourself time and effort: automation of simple and complex tasks in order to make the working day easier to deal with. The following chapter gives a worthwhile introduction to Kerberos authentication: how to set it up and make it work.

The reader is then shown a few ideas about making backups and managing data and how to work with file systems. A later part of the book gives some useful ideas about GNU/Linux security such as SSH and password policy. It finishes with some helpful suggestions about tracking down bugs and managing time and people. The volume uses a problem-solving approach throughout, not quite like some of the other publications around. It is down-to-earth enough to keep you in touch with what should be happening on your network.