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| Editor(s)/Author(s) | Joe Cooper |
|---|---|
| Copyright | July 2003 |
| Publisher | No Starch Press |
| Book URL | http://www.nostarch.com/webmin.htm |
| ISBN | 1-886411-92-1 |
| Reviewer | Peter Gorsuch |
| Review Date | November 29th, 2005 |
As the saying goes: "You snooze, you loose." Not this time though; at a CHUUG meeting a while back, this book was one of the few left on the table, and since its subject was vaguely familiar, and considering that other more interesting books had been taken already, I chose this one.
Here's a short review:
The Book of Webmin was a bit of a discovery for me, and I think it will be also for others who are not particularly knowledgeable about or proficient with open-source *nix's. Perhaps unintended, the table of contents provides the reader with a laundry list of many important things that are possible to accomplish with the free *nix's, and instills optimism in the less experienced reader.
In the Preface/Who Webmin Is For section, the author states:"Webmin is unique in the Unix world, in that it provides a one-to-one graphical interface to nearly every service and action needed to maintain a UNIX system". Along the way, one learns about "nearly every service and action needed to maintain a UNIX system", and thus informed, the reader may learn about the various unfamiliar procedures on his/her own.
As is typical of the No Starch Press books I've seen, the typography is effective and comfortable, which is a nice change from other technical books that I've used.
The table of contents is useful for finding a particular section of a chapter that you need to review for a specific reason, as the chapter titles contain sections and page numbers (which I'm sure would be way useful for configuring sendmail, for example).
Chapter 1: Obtaining and Installing Webmin
Chapter 2: Logging In
Chapter 3: Webmin Configuration (What you need to know, security)
Chapter 4: Usermin: A Webmin for Users
Chapter 5: General System Configuration
Chapter 6: Server and Daemon Configuration
Chapter 7: Apache Webserver
Chapter 8: BIND
Chapter 9: FTP Server
Chapter 10: Postfix
Chapter 11: Sendmail (sample chapter)
Chapter 12: Squid
Chapter 13: Networking Configuration
Chapter 14: Hardware Configuration
Chapter 15: Others Category
In Conclusion, I'm surprised by the apparent power of Webmin, and pleased that an administrator of a *nix system has this as an option. Webmin is a great example of what is good about open-source software, and I think that The Book of Webmin does a great job of informing the interested reader of the possibilities of its subject, and of open-source in general.
About the reviewer:
Peter Gorsuch lives in Waynesboro, Va. and is the only male in a family of six (incredible wife and two daughters, two pretty good dogs, and a cat who's no slouch.) He is an open-source advocate and enthusiast, and works as a Computer Technology Advisor in the Shenandoah Valley. He is currently learning xhtml and css, and he hopes you'll notice his dl technique (which he came up with on his own and which he asserts is "neat") and find it useful.