FreeBSD 6 Unleashed - Softcover

Tiemann, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0672328755 ISBN 13: 9780672328756

Publisher: Sams, 2006

Synopsis

FreeBSD is extremely robust and powers some of the largest internet sites in world including Yahoo!. FreeBSD 6 Unleashed provides complete coverage of everything you need to know to use FreeBSD to its full potential, including coverage of FreeBSD 6.0. This edition includes updated coverage of Apache, MySQL and Sendmail, as well as added coverage of PowerPC support for Macintosh G3 and G4 platforms. This is the most up to date, comprehensive reference on the market covering FreeBSD 6.0.

About this title

Review

Because it's very popular among Internet Service Providers (ISPs), FreeBSD is the likely Unix flavour 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 into 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. 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 flavour 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

Brian Tiemann is a freelance technology columnist and software engineer who has operated his own business and leisure websites on FreeBSD servers since 1995. As an outspoken advocate for the Apple Macintosh platform as well as for FreeBSD, he values a synthesis between open-source and closed-source development, and believes FreeBSD and Mac OS X both validate that synthesis for the benefit of all users. Brian is a graduate of Caltech, author of Mac OS X Tiger in a Snap and iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap, and coauthor of Sams Teach Yourself FreeBSD in 24 Hours.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sams
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0672328755
• ISBN 13: 9780672328756
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 912