Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook? (lemmy.mindoki.com)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Hello,

Longtime windoze user (because work, gaming, programming, lazybess, ...) I'm switching over to Linux Mint (a slow long process that might finally end up with just a little win-box for the printer and a soft or two) on all my everyday pc:s so I'm trying to get more into the nitty gritty stuff here, and I have long time heard that the:

UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (4th Edition)

Is like the Linux Bible...

Is it still so? Is it still worth the money or are there better books out there?

Cheers!

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[-] CameronDev@programming.dev 10 points 11 months ago

I'm of the opinion that computer textbooks are out of date the second they are published. That one was published in 2017, so 6 years ago, which is an eternity. It might have some generally useful advice, but in terms of resources, google and online wikis are going to be more up to date (still probably outdated, but less so, and free).

[-] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, exactly this. Your best bet is to sign up to one of the Linux communities here and read through some of the posts.

[-] Braindead@programming.dev 6 points 11 months ago

The big difference is that a book is structured to teach you bit by bit. One of the issues of learning a new subject is that you don't know what you don't know. Something structured like a book solves this.

That being said, a six year old book is ancient when talking about computer related stuff...

[-] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 1 points 11 months ago

Maybe just the basic GNU tools that come with every dostro, but other than that... yeah, that is ancient.

[-] maryjayjay@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Though implementation specifics may change, the foundational concepts remain the same.

[-] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I like how computer textbooks organize general concepts, similar to what I got out of formal education.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

It's funny that this is on AskLemmy and not some linux-specific community. Reinforces the image that Lemmy users are the more computer-savvy people (which I find great!)

[-] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 2 points 11 months ago

And the very same reason why everyone who isn't tech savvy left Lemmy after the first wave... sorry, but that's the cold hard truth.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

You don't need to be savvy to use Lemmy. I don't understand how this perception came to be. It's just that the crowd here is somewhat savvy

[-] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 2 points 11 months ago

It didn't use to be like that after the first wave, with comms such as sewing, there were some gardening subs as well... the only one that kinda took off was the woodworking sub, that's it.

I opened a few subs myself, related to tech, but not really computer related, none of them took off, only a few posts at the beginning and that was basically it, no new posts whatsoever.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 11 months ago

To be fair IMO you at least need some mindset that like okay this isn't working, how can I tackle that? Rage isn't sufficient in the long term and Lemmy itself isn't exactly user friendly just yet.

It's a bizarre new medium after all. I love it, maybe partly because of it.

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Define "bizzare". You don't need to understand too much of federation to be able to use Lemmy.

Depending on what works and what doesn't, that mindset may or may not be required to use Lemmy.

I like Lemmy enough that I will likely spin up my own instance at some point

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 11 months ago

The keyword here is "don't need to understand too much " which is more than for TikTok or Reddit.

It's not (yet) very streamlined either, it's a little bit of work to make your stream of information coming etc.

Like how a server doesn't show you all the communities, "only" those users on that server have already subscribed to (+the locals).

Not that hard but harder than TikTok :-)

[-] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I would argue that now, it's as user friendly as Reddit is. But, alas, now is too late 😔. There was a wave of instances dissappearing over night (vlemmy, fmhy, etc.), mods abusing power and... well, that crowd just felt safer with commercial media. At least their data and shared images won't drown into oblivion if an instance owner decided to just close shop 🤷.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 11 months ago

Weell, I mean it's not far far away but tell me how to make a correct link on Lemmy (and I will not ask for the meaning of 20047 or the Englishy greenish color 😉):

Seems to work for someone:

https://lemm.ee/post/!art[@dnzm@lemmy.ml

Works in a browser:

https://lemmy.ml/c/watercolor

Should work but if I paste it in the search bar of say Jerboa, it doesn't find anything:

!watercolor@lemmy.ml

It will all fall together in the end IMO but there are still a couple things to iron out.

Must say I like the smaller world here where everything (almost nothing?) isn't driven by some dopamine kick selling point😊

For disappearing communities, it's a shame but I hope it's just communities thinking they could be new Reddit subs, which IMO is (excepted small established niche subs) very different from at least what I think a Lemmy community 'should' be.

We'll see :-)

[-] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I don't understand what problem you're trying to describe. The first link is incomplete, and the second one takes me to the watercolour community on Lemmy.ml.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah IDK, it didn't work yesterday, now they do...

[-] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 2 points 11 months ago

and I will not ask for the meaning of 20047 or the Englishy greenish color 😉

It's NO in ASCII and I'm not a native English speaker... and this thing doesn't have auto correct, underline or suggestions 😒 (Jerboa).

The correct way to share a community on Lemmy (so that apps recognize it as a Lemmy community) is with an exclamation mark, as in your last example. The search in Jerboa (as is with other apps) is broken, doesn't work like it should. Use the web UI search on your instance, you'll find the community.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks, and it works today, guess my instance had some hiccup yesterday...

Ah yes of course! I was thinking of the leet codes put in stack memory or something 😁 (like IIRC Nintendos DS compiler put 0xDEAD all over it some other was 0xC0FFEE.. etc, it was to catch stack overflows).

[-] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 2 points 11 months ago

Hmm... didn't know that... but that makes sense 👍... the overflows I mean... good tip, thanks 😉.

[-] Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I’m a newb myself. Just put Ubuntu on a free laptop I got from work and set up a Plex media server.

I am slowly working my way through this vid to get my feet wet with very basic stuff:

https://youtu.be/ROjZy1WbCIA?si=cuWRkvlXTKxf7mNq

[-] swordsmanluke@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

Honestly, it depends on what you're trying to do with your machines. If you are looking for a stable desktop environment, you don't need to dive that deep. (At least, to start.) Just install the defaults, and read a basic tutorial on using the Bash shell. (Even if you move away from bash, lots of scripts and such use it by default, so a passing familiarity is highly recommended.) Especially learn about installing programs with the package manager. ('apt-get' for Mint and other Debian-based distros.) The defaults are gonna be generally sane, especially in Mint. If you want to get into deeper waters from there, you'll have a stable base to start from.

But. If you want to configure your machine, top to bottom and really understand how Linux works... Install Arch. Not even joking. Arch installation docs are very detailed and walk you through setting up every part of your Linux system. Be prepared for your first time to take a few days to complete. It's a lot to take in. Start with a computer you can leave offline for awhile.

I learned a ton by installing Arch. And then I went back to Debian-based distros because there was less active maintenance. (Note that this was over a decade ago, so things may be better now. YMMV). This is definitely Learning The Hard Way, but it's honestly the most effective thing I can think of.

Linux is insanely customizable. You can swap out and/or customize pretty much every aspect of it. It can be overwhelming. I recommend taking things on a bit at a time, but I've rarely used software that's as easy to find free support for.

Welcome to the party!

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 2 points 11 months ago

Ha ha thanks 😊 party time 🥳🎉 !

I'm sort of in between I guess, I'm a senior dev and I mean I get to it when needed like doing that vi ~/.bashrc for an env var (and ~/.bashrc to (re)load it right?), fixing some script or installing "stuff" or so.

Server soft I write is usually for Linux, the rest on Wind. But I also decided to switch my daily driver over and I have a curious mind so if I can't sleep I'd love to have some big good old book to check out for 'stuff' I do not yet know!

Maybe you're right and I should go on and install everything from scratch (that's it with Arch right, of am I messing it up with some more bare metal install? A colleague did that compile install everything once a bunch of years ago, he spoke about it for weeks :-).

[-] swordsmanluke@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

Gentoo is the og, "Linux from scratch" distro, where you compile everything yourself. Arch is kinda like that, except everything is compiled already. 😁

You still select all the parts of your Linux system, from the desktop environment (if any) all the way down to which initialization system you want to use. Along the way, you'll dive into a lot of the various text files Linux uses for configuration and learn which files live where.

It's a very thorough dive!

If you're looking for reading material about Linux though, I don't really have any books to recommend offhand... I will say that the basic tooling in Linux, the POSIX-standard stuff, like grep, vi, sed, and so forth remains mostly unchanged (at least in all the important ways) from year to year. Some of it has remained essentially the same since the seventies, so even a six year old book will still be able to cover all of that just fine.

The things that it would not be good for would be some of the more recent developments in, say, UI tech, like the slow, but ongoing migration from X to Wayland.

Command line scripts and config files are likely to largely be the same (though a few files have a tendency to move around depending on the distro).

Tools for administration outside of the venerable POSIX tooling is gonna be a crapshoot in book-form. Still, it'll give you a place to start from!

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks, but yeah, I'm more into books. Like for the back bone of things, for the daily error I'll be on the web for sure.

[-] Asudox@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

OP Please make the title of this question end with a "?" per rule 2.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 2 points 11 months ago

I see you are working, but these threads are like 7-8 days old. IMO it's a bit useless.

[-] Asudox@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

yeah but it doesn't hurt, does it?

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 2 points 11 months ago

I don't know really, I mean the (my) posts went up, worked out and somehow went to sleep forever.

You're IMO doing the stack overflow approach, so yeah that's maybe the thing for keeping high value content. I'd not remove posts that easily just yet as there isn't not that much quality content but that's just me.

Cool that you're doing it putting in the time, we're all in this together!

Cheers

[-] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Linux admin course: Install Gentoo

Really just start by installing a distro you're interested in, learn how to set up a grid of terminals as your desktop background, then get in to doing any task you would normally through the terminal. What got me first interested in using linux years ago was the way you could make it look cool and messing around with different desktop environments, and I ended up being a unix admin for over a decade and run it at home wherever possible. I'd definitely do the self-exploration route, just find cool things you want to do on linux as inspiration and go for it. The great thing about linux is you can personalize it so it embodies whatever you love most about computers.

If you're doing this for potential career that's different, you'll want to learn more about managing daemons and security groups, disk provisioning, configuring services like httpd ssh autofs etc. Then get in to things like ansible and remote config/monitoring. At least from my experience, it's gonna depend on the employer. Kubernetes and enterprise containerized app solutions is what I'd be learning if I was about to enter the field again.

this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023

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