Linux Server Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools [Paperback]

Highlights include CVS commands, creating unchangeable files (even by root!), filtering
and organizing apache log files (for example, listing the top 20 broken links, sorted
and numbered by frequency of occurrence), modifying the titlebar to display load average,
host, current directory, etc., ntop and httptop and much more.

I've been using *nix for 6 years now, and I found this book both a refreshing review of
previously known concepts as well as a great introduction to some new utilities and tools.

I'm really looking forward to other books from O'Reilly Hacks series, what about 100 hacks on Oracle, MySQL, regular expressions "one liners" (with sed, awk, grep, perl...), Windows NT...

The book begins with a refreshing introduction (by esr) detailing what
it means to be a hacker. No, not the hax0ring w4r3z d00dz of frequent
media attention, but the aforementioned bearded variety who spend most
of their waking effort forging uncommon techniques for solving
otherwise dull problems. Kudos to Mr. Flickenger (and O'Reilly) for
not only acknowledging the difference, but celebrating it.

As the title would indicate, the audience of this book is the
administrator in charge of a server--that is, a Linux box performing
only a couple of dedicated tasks, probably of a network-oriented
nature. Although Linux enthusiasts from the desktop realm are not part
of the intended audience, they will almost certainly pick up a thing
or two from the material anyway.

The book is organized into the following sections:
* Sever Basics is a variety of general purpose tips that don't fit
into the other major categories. Some of the more interesting
items include:
+ Persistent daemons with init
+ Building complex command lines
+ Using xargs with tricky arguments
+ Effectively using sudo
+ Makefiles for automating administrative tasks
I think the real magic of this chapter isn't necessarily the tips
themselves, but the creative process behind them; the author is
demonstrating a methodology for dealing with common problems by
introducing clever solutions. This will ideally inspire the reader
to deal with other problems in the same creative manner.
* Revision Control. Servers with multiple administrators may benefit
from using a revision control system to handle changes to
configuration files. This section illustrates using RCS, with
examples of checking config files in and out of the system. This
provides a segway into using CVS for controlling revision of large
software projects.
* Backups becoming a nuisance? Approach them from a new angle by
implementing some of the tips from this chapter. Examples
including automated incremental backups over tar, rsync, and ssh;
archiving with pax; and even some very creative (if not a little
scary) ideas like piping your backups over ssh directly into
cdrecord. The UNIX philosophy is illustrated well: simple tools
working well together as an efficient solution.
* The Networking chapter covers material that is no doubt already
familiar to security-conscious Linux users. However, iptables
newbies (or those transitioning from ipf or pf) will appreciate
the netfilter primer and discussion of masquerading (NAT) and TCP
port forwarding. Some tunneling and encapsulation techniques are
also detailed here.
* Monitoring details the use of syslog, and a great deal more.
Networking aspects are given ample attention, without any
redundant information in respect to the previous chapter. Some
simple tips are given (like using lsof to track down elusive
processes) as well as more advanced ideas (like a short shell
script to perform an IP fail-over.)
* SSH tips: are you still tapping out a password every time you hop
to a new machine? If you administrate more than a few, this can be
distracting and tedious. This chapter illustrates some of the
inner beauty beneath SSH's surface functionality.
* Scripting details a handful of ways to make your command-line life
a bit easier.
* Information Servers (like BIND, MySQL, and Apache servers) are the
topic of the final chapter, with an emphasis on commercial web
administration. Certificates, load distribution, and flexible
Apache configurations are just a few examples of the items
covered. Although administrators of mid-to-high-traffic servers
are given special attention, those of you who run a humble Apache
box from the broom-closet will find plenty of useful information
as well.

For someone already familiar with the basics, Linux Server Hacks is a
fun way to spend an afternoon tinkering with Linux machines. Truly
expert administrators may find very little new information in this
book, but the sheer number of tips (and breadth of topics) would make
it difficult not to learn at least a couple of shortcuts... and that
makes it a worthwhile read for anybody.

I'm eagerly looking forward to more titles from the Hack series. This
title is available online from O'Reilly and Safari[1].

[1] No, I don't work for O'Reilly. I do think their books are
excellent, however, and would love to see their Safari service thrive!