FreeBSD Unleashed (With CD-ROM) - Softcover

Urban, Michael; Tiemann, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0672322064 ISBN 13: 9780672322068

Publisher: Sams Publishing, 2001

Synopsis

This book teaches the reader everything he/she needs to know in order to use FreeBSD to its full potential. It will show individuals how to use the same FreeBSD power that Yahoo!, the Internet Movie Database, and many other high profile internet sites depend on. Whether someone needs an enterprise class server, a small business server, or a dependable workstation, this book can be a very economical and powerful solution to your needs.

About this title

Review

Because it's very popular among Internet service providers (ISPs), FreeBSD is likely the Unix flavor you work with when you Telnet into the server that hosts a Web site. For that reason, it's worth having FreeBSD Unleashed around if you frequently need to log in to various hosted environments but don't do your day-to-day work on a FreeBSD computer. If you're running FreeBSD on your own machine--and more than a few Linux critics say you should be--you'll get even more out of this book, particularly if you prefer to have your reference materials on paper. It's a good idea to have them that way when you're having problems getting FreeBSD to connect to the Internet, after all.

This book explains, succinctly, how to do basic utilitarian stuff like moving files and creating users, and advanced utilitarian stuff like "building the world" from raw source. Further, the authors explain Unix concepts (like the shell and its relationship to the kernel) clearly and in ample detail. Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann also go beyond FreeBSD itself, explaining such concepts as wide area networks (WANs) and basic, environment-neutral Perl programming. Whether these inclusions are valuable extras or extraneous padding depends upon your perspective, but there's no doubt that the authors maintain a high quality standard throughout their documentation of FreeBSD and its allied technologies. --David Wall

Topics covered: Using and enjoying the FreeBSD flavor of Unix, with emphasis on versions 4.4 and 5.0. Instructions and explanations--all rather detailed--appear on installing the operating system, configuring groups and users, setting up daemons (including those for network services like mail), and connecting to other computers (as well as the Internet). Installable copies of FreeBSD 4.4 and 5.0 ship with this book.

About the Author

Michael Urban is a biology student at the University of Minnesota. He has been working with various forms of Unix-like operating systems for several years including FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris. Michael has worked as a technical analyst, and is now a systems administrator and webmaster for the Lion Research Center. He also does software development for them, including the development of Web-enabled database applications. When he is not studying for exams, or writing new Perl or Java code, he can usually be found immersed in research material on African lions.

Brian Tiemann has been a constant user of FreeBSD since his student days at Caltech, where he used it to build a movie fan Web site that has continued to grow and sustain more and more load until the present day. Born in Ukiah, California, Brian has remained in the state all his life; he currently lives in San Jose and works in the networking appliance field. Aside from FreeBSD, his other interests include Macintoshes, motorcycles, and animation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sams Publishing
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0672322064
• ISBN 13: 9780672322068
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1024