The best Unix Operating System books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

The one single-best reference book on the topic of system administration is: UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook.

The Linux Bible, How Linux Works, The Debian System, Slackware Linux Essentials, and CompTIA Linux+ all deserve places on the bookshelf.

> had any tips for solidifying the foundations.

I strongly recommend the book How Linux Works by Brian Ward, at No Starch Press. 392 pages.

Update: Here's a sample chapter Disks and Filesystems

While published in 2015, most of it is still very relevant. Page for page, it's the best Linux book I've encountered. Topics range from simple to complex, and intuitively organized as well. I found it applicable, of course, to most of Arch.

Good luck.

The Practice of System and Network Administration, Volume 1.

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=35C401GDBVK17BA273P8

I started doing everything at a really small family business a few years ago with nothing except a history of dabbling in videogame development and a degree in computer science (this is less helpful than you'd think it'd be when it comes to IT and system administration). This book has saved my company's butt as far as IT systems infrastructure and efficient time management spent in that area goes.

This should give you a very strong running start toward not managing a horror story or running something that ends up with several thousand upvotes on /r/talesfromtechsupport/ in ten or fifteen years

This book is what I’ve recommended to friends of mine in the same boat. Very easy to read and reference for future use.

Lol what?

Dude, you don't need any fucking classes to start out in IT

You can buy textbooks and earn certs while spending minimum amounts of money

Do not sign up for some fucking ridiculous 23k course. That's insane.

This field is so beautiful because you can dive in without any student debt whatsoever, don't hamstring yourself by going into debt like that

If you want an entry level job, go buy the A+ cert book on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549500043&sr=8-1&keywords=a%2B

Maybe do network+ too(that's the path i started out with so I'm biased I suppose).

You're talking like less than 50 bucks for the textbooks and then a couple hundred bucks for the tests(total), and with those 2 certs you can easily get an entry level help desk job and start working your way up.

It beats the fuck out of manual labor, that's for sure

I feel like C is most useful when you are programming directly to an OS and its resources, rather than through a framework or library. And you don't often need to use the most elegant data structures to accomplish a simple task.

The Linux Programming Interface is still one of the best introductions to Linux programming.

For a book I'd recommend: The Practice System Network Administration

Also look through the history of "[daily routine]"(https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/search?q=daily%20routine&restrict_sr=1) posts. That will give you a good idea of what to expect.

If you touch a piece of technology - learn about it. Read technet, or man pages. Make flashcards and study the material. Try to know it.

Also, try to learn broadly about all areas of technology - networking, windows, unix, etc.

Pick up programming. Bash, Powershell, Python. Learning is the one constant in this field. The sooner you bury your face in a book/video the better off you'll be. I wish I had studied as hard 10 years ago as I study now.

here 'tis, and it was well uner $100

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668

Best around.

There sure are books!

My favorite authors are Mike Myers and Todd Lammle.

Here's a guide for the CompTIA A+ certification.

These books can be a bit pricey, but it's EVERYTHING you need to know for the certification. If you have this book and a computer to practice on, you have everything you need to pass. The book is nearly 1,500 pages long as well. If you struggle to afford the books, you can always search online for illegal copies of older versions and possibly even the latest version that I linked. I assume the copyright police aren't going to be breaking down your doors.

The A+ certification estimates 6-9 months of hands-on training to be able to pass, but it can definitely be done in a shorter amount of time. Don't get dissuaded if after a month you feel tired of studying. Even if you don't have the means to take the exam, the information you can learn will help you so much.

I've mentored several Junior linux team members and I always recommend : https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Linux-System-Administration-Handbook/dp/0134277554

While not RH specific, it is has a wealth of information on Linux in general and serves as a good reference.

This book is recommended all the time here.

The Practice of System and Network Administration

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/133-5038114-7566656?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0321492668&pd_rd_r=0e7670a0-ca48-43ed-b0df-52a961b8b37e&pd_rd_w=EHHBL&pd_rd_wg=QxYjw&...

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1YFBCJCPV0ZB2&dchild=1&keywords=practice+of+system+and+network+administration&qid=1623689440&sprefix=practice+of+system%2Caps%2C168&...

man pages really are good enough once you got the basics down. They were 20 years ago, and I don’t think the quality has decreased. If you want truly great man pages, FreeBSD is the place to go.

To get the basics down, start with something like this

Once you understand that, follow up with something like this

Young people today.. they pick Arch to “learn something” (or just to be cool - I can’t decide), and when the learning part starts, they want the answers served without any effort. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn, just don’t expect to be finished in 4 hours.

I’ve spent 20 years as a Unix system administrator and/or developed systems running on Unix. Before I had kids I spent a few years working on Stampede Linux. My first Linux distribution was “Yggdrasil Plug&Play Linux fall ‘93”. I still learn new stuff frequently, and it usually starts with something I find on the internet, which then get tried on my own machine, and finally i use man pages for troubleshooting/fine tuning.

If that fails, I do what everybody else does, i ask google, and if I still can’t solve the issue, I will ask somewhere. Last issue I had was Debian <-> FreeBSD NFSv4 mounts with Kerberos that would freeze frequently. I spent a couple of weeks debugging that before asking, and learned a great deal in the process. After google started returning only purple links, I finally asked on a couple of forums.

2nd this.

The Linux Command Line. Author offers free PDF for download or you can support and buy from amazon.

http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

&nbsp;

https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Command-Line-Complete-Introduction/dp/1593273894/r

Yes. I have an ebook copy that I got from a Humble Bundle a few months ago (the whole bundle was $15). It's very in depth and easy to understand. If you want to learn systems programming then Linux Programming Interface is the way to go.

To be clear, this is the book I'm talking about: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming-Interface-System-Handbook/dp/1593272200

The Practice of System and Network Administration, Volume 1. The 3rd edition has more devops stuff in it than the 2nd edition but still has the core information.

Third edition adds DevOPS: https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165/ref=pd_sbs_1/143-2415222-3938968?pd_rd_w=SKTKd&amp;pf_rd_p=f8e24c42-8be0-4374-84aa-bb08fd897453&amp;pf_rd_r=D3YKV4VKQERT495973WV&amp;pd_rd_r=e8e9dd0d-5ff2-45da-...

Hey no worries! Often times when you're new to something it seems like a firehose rather than a fountain (something formal education does a good job moderating).

Square one? I'd say start with the Unix and Linux Systems Administration Handbook 5th ed. I suggest this one because it offers a really comprehensive view of most essential concepts one must know as a sysadmin.

You'll start by learning essential duties of a sysadmin (access control, adding hardware/software, automation, backups, monitoring, troubleshooting, documenting, security, performance tuning, working with vendors, putting out fires, etc.) From there, it's basic administration, networking, storage, and finally operations.

What I like so much about this layout is it demonstrates the cumulative nature of computing concepts. The authors also do an excellent job tying concepts back to practice--which should hopefully demonstrate the value of theory!

Because this is a general primer on systems administration, most of the concepts will apply to Windows even though tooling and execution will differ. At the end of the day directory services are directory services, access control is access control, and it's never DNS--unless you or someone you work with has misconfigured DNS.

There is an all in one A+ book on amazon (https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X) This book is a good read through for general concepts - read it quickly, don't go super hardcore study mode on this book, its quite long. This along with professor messer (free, google it)after quickly reading through was all I used to get my A+.

If you have some knowledge of computers and perhaps built your own you could be ready for a helpdesk role already. I know all I had was "customer service" and some basic technical knowledge before I got my first job. Just be sure to word your customer service skills as if you were on the phone doing customer service - since this may be a large portion of the job. Asides from that - google common helpdesk interview questions, their answers, and then google the specific terms like dhcp and dns to understand how they work.

Allow me to recommend the good book.

Gives some helpful insight in terms of building a department, and how to justify things to the business leadership and owners.

If they aren't interesting in giving you a budget to operate the department, run.

yeah ncurses is what you use if you want to draw ascii on the screen and keep it in position, and control where the cursor sits at all times

for linux terminal, make a loop that directly listens to input and respond to the input by making system calls - that's the most direct and simple (if you haven't done that yet)

if you haven't tried making a simple text based adventure game, it fits into this category of reading structured text input and responding

or for a more complex possibility, going the socket server route and emulating terminal input is a lot more advanced

if you're playing with systems level unix stuff, a good overall book with lots of examples to try is:

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Programming-UNIX-Environment-3rd/dp/0321637739

What are you using to study right now?

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I have my second test today, but I've used Mike Meyer's book as well as his Udemy course. Then I used Jason Dion's practice exams. Those are all very popular resources to get started.

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Another popular (and free) resource is professor Messer on Youtube.

You can't do it this way. Linux is too big to learn everything sequentially in small steps. And it's not very practical. If you want to learn in a way that is practical and sequential, check out this book for Red Hat certification: https://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Seventh/dp/0071841962/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&amp;keywords=red+hat+certification&amp;qid=1594663391&amp;sr=8-3

I would suggest the following:

1) Know how to install your favorite Linux distro. Do it several times so you are very familiar with it.

2) Learn how to boot into Linux manually with Grub.

3) Set up a firewall using firewalld, iptables, or nftables. Script it.

4) Learn how to start, stop, enable, and disable system services with systemd.

5) Add users and groups. Add user to wheel group.

6) Gain system access with su or sudo.

7) Learn the command line. It is your friend.

8) Learn the basics of Vi since it's on every Linux system.

9) Find your distro's documentation and get an idea of what's there. Pick out something that interests you and do it.

10) Figure out something you want and will use a lot. Do it in Linux.

I liked the Practice of System and Network Administration by Tom Limoncelli et al. when I was starting out. Some of the specifics may be dated but the concepts are good.

https://smile.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668

Edit: there's apparently a 3rd edition here

https://smile.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165

Read a book on system administration, I would say. Don’t skim it, READ it.

The book that got me where I am today: https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Linux-System-Administration-Handbook/dp/0134277554/ref=nodl_

working thru the examples in:

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Programming-UNIX-Environment-3rd/dp/0321637739

might be a good start on systems level programming in C in general. most of it isn't explicitly kernel development, but if you haven't done any systems level stuff, it might be good to learn that level of things first. i have done only minimal actually-within-the-kernel work, so i can't speak too much to below this layer, though.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for self hosting behind the safety of ones own (fire)walls.

But take it from someone with 20+ years of experience as a sysadm, network administrator, security consultant, developer, cloud architect and more, that you do NOT want to expose services to the internet unless you know what you’re doing.

If you need more arguments, look no further than haveibeenpwned. While some of the companies might not have hired the brightest of the bunch, I refuse to believe that all of them were incompetent, and they still got hacked.

Services on the internet needs near constant monitoring, at least if you have a lot of traffic. I doubt your little nextcloud (or whatever) instance will attract much traffic except from automated vulnerability scanning scripts.

You say you want to learn Unix, and that’s (probably) a good choice. I know it has kept bread on my table for 3 decades, and I can recommend Linux and Unix system administration handbook as a great guide that takes you around almost everything, including security.

Also know that your “SLA” gets a lot more complicated once your user base grows from 1 to “more”, and you will find yourself sitting in the small hours of the night debugging why somebody cannot connect from the laptop when their phone connects just fine. And god forbid your hardware fails and your backup doesn’t work :-)

Anyway, I’m a grumpy old dinosaur,and there’s lots of learning to be had from experimenting, so keep at it, and you’ll get great at it in no time :-)

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X

Basically the A+ bible right there. Mike Meyers cert books are pretty much the go to. For CCNA, they publish their own stuff.

While not as sexy as Google's SRE handbook, the UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook 5th Ed remains a classic. Not only does it cover basically everything you'd want to know about *nix and operations in sometimes excruciating detail (looking at you Chapter 18 on email) it's also a great pointer for other books on topics of frequent confusion like networking.

> Leider gibts ja kein "How to SysAdmin" Buch

Actually, there is. Das Buch bringt dir bei, mehr in generalisierten Systemen zu denken, seien sie Windows, Linux, BSD oder was auch immer gerad auf deinen Maschinen läuft.

Das Problem das du gerade hast ist dass Graylog eine Art Appliance-Lösung ist, wo du nichts wirklich selber bauen musst. Das ist für ein Business super aber für jemanden der Unix blicken will nicht so super. Appliance meint, das ist eigentlich ein ganzer Softwarestapel aus verschiedensten Bauteilen, die du auch häufig in anderen Systemen zu anderen Zwecken eingesetzt siehst.

Fang simpler an. Bau einen DHCP-Server, einen DNS-Server und mach dann dass die Clients den Nameserver mit ihrem neuen Lease updaten können.

Oder, um Systeme wie Graylog zu raffen, bau einen Syslog-Server der dir kontextabhängig Emails zu besonderesn Ereignissen schicken kann. Ich hab jetzt nur die Frontpage von Graylog gesehen, gehe aber jede Wette dass die an irgendeiner Stelle ein syslogng mitbringen.