Mac OS X Server 10.3 Panther (Visual QuickStart Guides) [Paperback]

Covering Mac OS X Server in a single book is a hard, hard thing to do. You certainly can't get everything in there; there's just too much. But for all those limitations, the authors certainly manage to do an awesome job.

The fact is that the documentation included with Mac OS X Server - and the stuff available online at Apple's website - is woefully inadequate. This book fills that void and does it really well. From start to finish, the authors seem to have made every effort to avoid a situation where the reader looks at a section and goes "huh?" The section on Mail services is pretty cool, as is the stuff on Web Services and Open Directory.

This is a definite must-have for anyone working on or thinking about deploying Mac OS X Server, be it in an SMB setting or in larger-scale enterprise scenarios. Schoun Regan has a well-deserved reputation as one of Apple's finest Certified Trainers and his shows at Macworld are consistently packed. This book represents a healthy chunk of his knowledge and experience.

The book is not bad, but it only handles "simple" stuff, if I dare call any computer administration simple.

People entering server administration should, first off, be those that are already considered power users or geeks by the majority of their coworkers. Such a person will already know the truly simple stuff, have acquired bits and pieces of more advanced knowledge, but need considerable direction on the concepts and issues of server administration. On this latter point the book is, unfortunately, far too sketchy, and some things are, I feel, a bit too sketchy for this sort of audience.

I should point out, too, that the famed Macintosh ease of use is here somewhat of a hindrance. I.e., the Xserve and Mac OS X Server setup is deceptively easy, to the point that bad setups are easy to do. Was Unix administration always intentionally hard, in order to "idiot-proof" it? One has to wonder... Given this problem, the book screams out for an introductory chapter on what issues there are in setting up a server, what possible solutions are, what the implications pro and con of each of these choices are, what setups are prerequisites for others, and so forth. The wet-behind-the-ears administrator could then create a flowchart of needed tasks, which this proposed introductory chapter could then reference for details.

Furthermore, the book's organization leaves much to be desired. I should think that security issues should be set up first, not relegated to a late chapter as in this book. DNS is handled in Chapter 3 I believe, yet there are items with dependencies on DNS that are described in earlier chapters. It would make sense to describe setting up user templates before users are actually set up.

For my part, I've already read the book twice and am now proceeding with my 3rd read-through, taking notes as I'm going as to what I need to do and in what order. I'm also taking notes on the files that will be modified as I'm doing this, so that I can take care to back up their original versions. This kind of information is thankfully in the book but unfortunately not stated up front in each section. This (i.e. "read the book through before starting any work") should appear as an instruction in the first chapter.

As to detail, one example relevant to our own situation (and likely many others') should suffice. Having already set up a web site, we wanted to set up the Xserve so that web requests go to the off-site web service while email is sent to the Xserve. The basics can be accomplished with Apple's GUI tools, but the details have to be done by hand in the text-based configuration files. Granted, books can be bought on DNS and BIND; but I don't really want or need a library of 10-12 books on all aspects of Unix administration.

The Visual QuickPro Guides have an interesting design philosophy that is a cross between a tutorial and a reference book. I guess I'd call it tutorial based, but organized so that you can look up what you need and then get straight to what you are looking for without having to go one step at a time through a tutorial. They claim that this offers the fastest way to learn tasks and concepts. I find it hard to dissagree with this view.

Let's say you want to set up Mail Services. You can turn to Chapter 8 and go through the whole thing page by page. But, if you just want to set up mailing lists, the index will send to you to page 277 within Chapter 8 that tells you just exactly how to do this. The mailing list section is set aside so that while it logically flows through Chapter 8, you can also jump to just that section and not have to read about other parts of the mailing list program.