BSD Hacks: 100 Industrial Tip & Tools [Paperback]

"BSD Hacks" is the book I hoped to read. I've been using FreeBSD in production and test environments for about four years (since 4.1 REL), and I've played with OpenBSD and NetBSD for about a year each. I was looking for a book that would explore the nooks and crannies of BSD without covering the introductory issues often found elsewhere. By hack 10 I had already learned enough to justify purchasing "BSD Hacks." Unless you're a member of the core team, you'll find enough tricks and tips to make "BSD Hacks" a welcome addition to your system administration library.

In the first chapter on customizing the user environment, I learned multiple ways to make using BSD easier. Simple hints proved especially helpful, like ctrl-a and ctrl-e for moving around on the command line, or 'cd -' for changing to the last directory, or 'set autolist' to bring tab completion with lists to the tcsh shell. I wondered how I managed to navigate the command line without this keystroke-saving advice.

Author Dru Lavigne demonstrated a wonderful talent for finding useful tools in the BSD ports tree. Applications like Unison, Ghost for UNIX, and ClusterIT are all waiting to be used, and "BSD Hacks" brings them to life in an easy-to-read manner. There's also plenty of sound administration recommendations, like creating an emergency repair kit, automating installs, and creating scponly-based shells. I like the tuning suggestions in hack 69 and would have liked more information on that subject. These sorts of hacks leverage existing capabilities in the OS to enhance the administrator's ability to meet user needs. I would probably have not considered them (even with the BSD's thorough man pages) without reading "BSD Hacks."

My only concern with the book involves coverage of material best done elsewhere. For example, hack 46 covers Tcpdump. Since this is not a networking book, I didn't think Tcpdump needed its own section. The author also needed to clarify the octet counting section for the TCP header. By the time the TCP flags are reached in octet 13, we've already moved through 13 octets (numbered 0 to 12), not 12 as implied by the book. Hack 59 addresses Snort, perhaps the most well-worn topic in network security. With a half dozen books on Snort alone and another half dozen with chapters on the open source IDS, I didn't need to read more instructions on installing it.

Overall, I was very happy to read "BSD Hacks." It's an absolute must-buy, with its informational content easily justifying its low cover price. I recommend readers submit hacks of their own to O'Reilly for future editions. For example, hack 81 could have mentioned using "make package-recursive" to create packages of a port and its dependencies. Hack 80 should probably have used the "RELENG_5_1" tag to track the security release of FreeBSD 5.1, not "RELENG_5_1_0", which would make no changes whatsoever to a system already running 5.1 REL. Hack 82 could have mentioned the portcheckout tool to build a port without access to the whole tree. Books like "BSD Hacks" are an excellent way to demonstrate the power and elegance of BSD, and expand its influence to those looking for alternatives to Windows and Linux.

Originally reviewied for the Lower East Side Mac Unix Users Group:
http://lesmuug.org/reviews.html

OVERVIEW
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There is a type of information that I consider to be a gem, a kind of information that doesn't really fit anywhere formally. It's too small, or perhaps too esoteric, to fit in most places.
This makes it hard to find- though these info-gems can often can be the source of wild hacking inspiration, or solve my un-solvable problems in some elegant manner.

This kind of information sometimes gets collected and recorded, Some of us at LESMUUG have really enjoyed the Mac OSX Hints book, spawned from macosxhints.com website,

http://lesmuug.org/reviews.html#Anchor-Mac-49575

BUT, after plowing repeatedly it's one UNIX chapter in Mac OS X Hints, I found myself craving more...

A Problem with BSD books:
One of the quietly great things about the BSD family of UNIX Operating Systems, is the terrific documentation. The quality and consistency of the man pages, across every BSD I've ever touched, I painfully appreciate when I use man pages on other non-BSD systems.
The FreeBSD world has the FreeBSD Handbook project, a printed and free online resource which sets the bar for every fat FreeBSD book out there. OpenBSD and NetBSD both have amazing online tutorials and documentation projects as well. Even the fledgling DragonFly BSD project has a full-blown Handbook, modeled after its FreeBSD lineage.
In the OpenDarwin and OSX world we enjoy the legacy of solid man pages and solid HowTo's online from our BSD heritage, and of course free registrations to developer.apple.com to boot.

With all that great documentation, it's really tough to find a BSD book that's really valuable, especially for experienced users, and Dru Lavigne has made a valuable and fun resource with BSD Hacks. The book is an impressive compilation of BSD gems, and as it's written for newbies and hardcore hackers alike.

Dru is a Canadian BSD Rockstar, well known in the BSD world for her articles with O'Reilly online, including the FreeBSD Basics column for ONLamp,

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/73

so who better to write a book that doesn't fit into traditional documentation?! Someone who KNOWS BSD.

ABOUT THIS BOOK
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The Book is comprised of so many disparate yet complete ideas, It's hard to sum up exactly what's in there. From networking, to gems on system maintenance, and gems about basics that really get lost in man pages. There's information about things like keeping up-to-date, giving a tutorial-level big picture of what can be done to keep your UNIX system running smoothly, boot and Login gems, some good Security Hacks and hacks about system customization and shell tricks. There's even a tutorial for how to create YOUR OWN man pages.

For Mac/Darwin users, the majority of the book applies directly to Darwin UNIX! A section which by its nature is OS-specific, would be the hacks about various port and application-distribution systems. This includes a good how-to for DarwinPorts, right along with the usual ports systems for other platforms. The section on filesystems doesn't have anything on hfs+, but that can be excused, insomuch as many mac-centric texts do it the same injustice.

Check out the TOC online for a full description of the book contents:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bsdhks/toc.html

CONCLUSION
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If you are a UNIX user who loves info-gems like I do, or you're a Mac UNIX user who digs macosxhints.com, (and the books published from it), I feel BSD Hacks will provide many weekends, and workdays worth of BSD gems- all written by a great technical author. This book now sits next to my printed FreeBSD Handbook, and since much of these gems are fairly timeless, I believe it will stay with me for a long time to come.

I have been a fan of Dru's articles on O'Reilly's ONLamp website for some time, so purchasing this book was a no-brainer for me. After just 30 minutes of thumbing through this book, my impression was that it would be a 'steal' at twice the price. After spending an entire evening reading and applying some of her 'hacks' this book has earned a spot of honor on my shelf right next to "Absolute BSD" by Michael W. Lucas.

The writing is straight-forward with a minumum of 'fluff', so an intermediate to experienced sysadmin can apply the tips and tricks offered in a very short period of time. If you want to save yourself hours/days/weeks of trolling 'PowerUser' forums, and archived mailing lists I cannot recommend this book highly enough.