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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">I've been doing a lot of
reading of systems admin books lately including:<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><font
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica,
Arial, sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><font
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica,
Arial, sans-serif">Frisch, E. (1991). Essential System
Administration (3rd edition is my fattest book other
than Unabridged Shakespeare)<br>
</font></font></font>Hunter, B. H., & Hunter, K. B.
(1991). UNIX Systems Advanced Administration and Management
Handbook (Opinionated praxis)<br>
</font>Nemeth, E., Synder, G., & Seebass, S. (1989). UNIX
System Administration Handbook (5th edition is another fatty)<br>
</font><br>
Tons of other more recent drivel.</font><font face="Helvetica,
Arial, sans-serif"><br>
<br>
I have been working on my ancient and not so ancient Unix library
for a while now, and it's kind of funny. It seems like once I read
a book, be it new or old, I hardly need it anymore - most of them
wind up back at half-price books. The exceptions are those that I
find myself going back to over and over and over again and wow are
those few and far between. An example of one of the gems is S. R.
Bourne's The UNIX System, another is Kernighan and Pike's The UNIX
Programming Environment, and a couple of newcomers for me are
Volumes 3 and 8 of O'Reilly's The Definitive Guides to the X
Window System. I've written in the margins so many times with
these that there are sections where I can't fit any more notes.
That's the kind of sys admin guide I'd like to hear about. So, </font><font
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">my
question for y'all is, what did y'all think about sys admin
texts as they were coming out? Were they well received, were
they water to a dying horse, were they paperweights, what? </font>If
you are of the camp, "we don't need no stinking admin guide", or
"we did it all by muscle memory and didn't use books", don't
reply. I'm curious about the experience of those of y'all who
actually used them. Were there any early standouts and why did
they stand out?<br>
<br>
Anything from 1970 on is fair game. <br>
</font><br>
Later,<br>
<br>
Will<br>
<br>
P.S. </font><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><font
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Can you believe that 2000 is
fast becoming 'history' worth preserving? In 1997, we were
rewriting our gas pump and credit card transaction systems,
which were written in C, to deal with upcoming Y2K bugs. Oh, how
the worm has turned :).<br>
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