BSD Hacks

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 448 pages
• Published by: O'Reilly Media, Inc. May 24, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0596006799
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0596006792
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.3 pounds

Product Description
In the world of Unix operating systems, the various BSDs come with a long heritage of high-quality software and well-designed solutions, making them a favorite OS of a wide range of users. Among budget-minded users who adopted BSD early on to developers of some of today's largest Internet sites, the popularity of BSD systems continues to grow. If you use the BSD operating system, then you know that the secret of its success is not just in its price tag: practical, reliable, extraordinarily stable and flexible, BSD also offers plenty of fertile ground for creative, time-saving tweaks and tricks, and yes, even the chance to have some fun. "Fun?" you ask. Perhaps "fun" wasn't covered in the manual that taught you to install BSD and administer it effectively. But BSD Hacks, the latest in O'Reilly's popular Hacks series, offers a unique set of practical tips, tricks, tools--and even fun--for administrators and power users of BSD systems. BSD Hacks takes a creative approach to saving time and getting more done, with fewer resources. You'll take advantage of the tools and concepts that make the world's top Unix users more productive. Rather than spending hours with a dry technical document learning what switches go with a command, you'll learn concrete, practical uses for that command. The book begins with hacks to customize the user environment. You'll learn how to be more productive in the command line, timesaving tips for setting user-defaults, how to automate long commands, and save long sessions for later review. Other hacks in the book are grouped in the following areas:

• Customizing the User Environment
• Dealing with Files and Filesystems
• The Boot and Login Environments
• Backing Up
• Networking Hacks
• Securing the System
• Going Beyond the Basics
• Keeping Up-to-Date
• Grokking BSD

If you want more than your average BSD user--you want to explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools, and come up with fun things to try on your own--BSD Hacks is a must-have. This book will turn regular users into power users and system administrators into super system administrators.

About The Author
Dru is an instructor at Marketbridge Technologies in Ottawa and the maintainer of the Open Protocol Resource. Dru writes the FreeBSD Basics column for ONLamp. She's been a FreeBSD advocate since a Google search led her to freebsd.org back in 1997. By day, she pokes about her systems and writes of her findings. By night, she teaches the basics of networking, routing, and security. Yes, she works through the long Canadian winter so she can enjoy summer days filled with camping, cycling, hiking, and kayaking.

Reader Reviews
"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 ten 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 eighty 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.