This book, Linux Network Administrator's Guide, 2nd Edition, is intended for the Unix/Linux administrator who has at least a basic working knowledge of *nix, and is interested in adding networking support. It is assumed that the reader knows the basic, and most common, Linux commands, such as cat, ls, gawk, tar, and if the user doesn't have a major distribution, such as RedHat or Debian, that they have the means to compile the programs mentioned. In addition, it is assumed that the reader can login as root, and can compile the needed features and modules into the kernel. In brief, this is a guide to networking, intended for the intermediate user.

The book is not broken up into sections, yet it can be considered to have six sections, as follows: introduction/overview, configuration of hardware and special interfaces, resolving hosts and addresses, physical connections, firewalls and accounting, file and resource sharing, mail and usenet.

The introduction/overview is just as the name suggests. It provides a brief look at TCP/IP, UUCP, NIS, along with the different classes of IP addresses, along with netmasks. It lays the groundwork for what follows, and helps you become comfortable with the terms used in the book.

In the configuration of hardware and special interfaces section, it deals with setting up an Ethernet connection between computers on a LAN, along with how to configure a modem for either PPP or SLIP connections to an ISP. It does provide some information, but not a great deal, on bridging between a LAN and ISP (or commonly referred to as sharing an internet connection).

Just one chapter is devoted to resolving hosts and IP addresses/domain names. It provides just enough information on how BIND works so you can ensure your DNS is working correctly. Due to the time the book was written, version 8 of BIND was the major release, and no hint at version 9 is even made in the book. The chapter does provide enough information to get a basic LAN up and running, and able to resolve local addresses.

The section on physical connections goes into great detail on SLIP and PLIP connections, gives information on setting up, and administrating, user names and passwords. Again, most of the book is geared towards the small LAN, with a limited number of users/hosts. It does suggest using one protocol over another, and even explains why.

The firewalls and accounting portion of the book was written before netfilter/iptables support was included with the stable Linux kernel. The stable kernel was at version 2.2, while the development kernel was 2.3.6. The authors noted that they feel that netfilter/iptables was important enough to include, even thou the finial stable version was not yet release. They do provide information on ipfwadm, ipchains, and iptables, and for each example provided, they re-write the example for each type, so you can see the similarities and differences. They not only show you the rules for setting up a very limited - yet functional - firewall, including information on tracking (logging) usage of the internet.

For the file and print sharing section, the book discusses NIS version 2, and NFS. Print sharing is left out for the most part, with just a mention of it near the beginning of the book, when mentioning the different types of protocols that you may find on a *nix based system. Version 2 of NIS is covered, while mentioning that NIS+ was too unstable, and version 3 too new, to be considered at the time of publication. No mention of Samba is made, nor is LPD or CUPS. Also absent, is any mention of Apache, which could be used for distributing documents, both internally and externally. It does mention on how to set up, and configure, the two programs it does cover, but only for a Linux environment. It does mention the problems with integrating different servers, where a person may have different user and password logins, that don't match the current system. Also, it mentions integration with an existing Netware 4.10 system.

Finally, the book deals with e-mail, and usenet/netnews. In the chapters dealing with e-mail, two programs are considered - sendmail and Exim - for mail transport, while just basic guidelines are provided for the end-user's client. In the three chapters, a couple assumptions are made - 1) all users are on an *nix based system, 2) all computers are left on, so as to be able to accept delivery, 3) all computers are set up with a client that receives notification of new mail, 4) the e-mail client will retrieve the e-mail as soon as it is notified, and 5) all mail systems are to be set up as POP3 configurations. It seems as if the parts on mail transport suggest pushing e-mail to the client, and not letting them decide if they want to just view the headers, delete the message without retrieving it, or retrieve it at a later time or date. To its credit, it mentions a method for helping filter spam. It does note that the definitive reference for sendmail is 1050 pages long, in published form, so trying to get a basic configuration set up using the M4 macros, in just a chapter, can be hard. It does do a better job of addressing usenet/newsnet servers/programs. It covers the differences between the uucp and NNTP protocols, and how you can patch a server to work with the two. Also, it distinguishes between a new message being posted, and a message already posted. It also looks at, and deals with, the issue of keeping your own news server in synch with another one, that you have a content sharing agreement with.

In conclusion, I find the book to be a limited introduction to network administration, that at times, seems to be dated, even when published, and the authors note as much, trying to provide backwards compatibility. It does cover a number of areas, and one or two areas that most books published now won't cover, yet it only provides limited information, enough to wet your appetite, but not much more. When the book was being written, and published, Windows 98 and NT 4.0 were out, and in widespread use, with Windows ME and Windows 2000 server in final beta testing, or early release. To ignore the Windows operating system, and how one may integrate it with a Linux system, is a bit short sighted.

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