LWN: Comments on "Review: Linux Administration Handbook, Second Edition"

Graphical admin tools (or the lack thereof)

hein.zelle — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 11:09:17 +0000

I fully agree, it's the system administrators choice not to install such software. I for one don't see why a secure system couldn't have any other editors installed than vi - unless there are severe space limitations. I personally always install emacs on any server, simply because I make less editing mistakes when modifying important config files. That alone makes it more secure for my server than only having vi installed. The added convenience is a whole extra story.

What is the reasoning behind not installing curses?

Review: Linux Administration Handbook, Second Edition

chuck97224 — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:17:41 +0000

I agree. Serial ports are still important. Embedded devices often use them, for example.

Graphical admin tools (or the lack thereof)

tzafrir — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:10:27 +0000

This is your choice. However installing the required X client libraries (which are not big) and running and X client (say, over ssh) from the remote host on your local desktop is not really a problem, and not a major overhead.

RS-232C

a9db0 — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:58:25 +0000

I remember breakout boxes - don't know at the moment where mine has got itself to, but I do know where the half-dozen different serial cables and gender changers I have are.

As an aside - I wonder how many readers here think "gender changers" is something to snicker at, not an extremely useful tool?

I'll be off to order my copy now. Thanks Jon!

Graphical admin tools (or the lack thereof)

dps — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 15:18:51 +0000

I set up and administer several seriously minimised linux systems, including one firewall and several bastion hosts. These systems simply do not have graphical admin tools or many of their requirements installed.

Anything within a mile radius of X11 is definiely not installed. Even curses is a little dubious, unless you can prove I should install it for some reason. Text editors either absent or limited to vi.

There are very few graphical admin tools that can cope with those servers. An admin tools which requires somethine else extra, except ip tables and ssh, is unlikely to be installed. I would like to implement selinux but have had insufficient time to do so.

RS-232C

ldo — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:56:38 +0000

>The amount of needed detail on getting a RS-232 wired correctly...

Hah!

I can remember when there was no one way to wire an RS-232C connection correctly, what with interfaces needing null modems or not, different forms of hardware handshake, and other oddities. An essential bit of kit was a "breakout box" which had LEDs letting you see which signals each end was sending, plus little switches so you could try various guesses as to what signals it might be expecting.

The young kids these days, they have it so easy. :)

Review: Linux Administration Handbook, Second Edition

Ross — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:56:13 +0000

I have to agree. I've used serial access to systems at just about every sysadmin job I've had, including the current one. It's true you don't often need to make cables but when you do it's nice to find a clear, definitive source for information.

Review: Linux Administration Handbook, Second Edition

smoogen — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:33:48 +0000

I would like to say that I still use the 2nd edition of the Unix System Administration book (after loaning it out to a student.. I kept running into systems that should have been shot dead years ago but were still in use.)

These books are as close to a classic that one can get in Systems Administration. The amount of needed detail on getting a RS-232 wired correctly helped me multiple times in getting a customer to give me a kernel dump when I worked at Red Hat... and the old chart on different SCSI connectors came in handy every couple of days. My biggest disappointment with the 3rd edition of the USAH was that it had to drop so many flavours of Unix that I still needed to maintain.

When I have any junior systems administrator assigned to me, I make sure that they have a copy of the Linux Administration Book in their hands... and if I have time we go over particular chapters when dealing with problems.

I am off to the bookstore to order my copy of Linux Administration Handbook (2nd edition.)

[This endorsement was not sponsored by Ms Nemeth or any other co-author of the book]

Review: Linux Administration Handbook, Second Edition

thyrsus — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 17:13:07 +0000

Serial lines are still important. My servers all have a BIOS that can send the BIOS screens to the serial line. Then I configure the OS to use the serial line as the console. conserver gives multiple admins access to the console and logs everything on them - including kernel "oops". Tom Limoncelli mentions console servers in his chapter on Data Centers, but leaves the details to other sources - and it sounds as if the Linux Administration Handbook would be one of those sources.