off topic - red hat linux book

[Jerry Kemp-3]

This is probably off topic, so if you have a suggestion, please email me
off line.

At $WORK, there has recently been a push to begin looking at RHEL, and I
would like to purchase a nice book for reference.  I have not had any
luck searching either amazon.com or nerdbooks.com.  Actually I have, but
everything I have come across has been pretty out of date.

Does anyone have a recent RHEL linux reference book that you like, that
you might suggest?

Thank you,

Jerry
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[stephen price]

I'm in the same boat - so please let me know as well!
regards
steve

> At $WORK, there has recently been a push to begin looking
> at RHEL, and I would like to purchase a nice book for
> reference.
> Does anyone have a recent RHEL linux reference book that
> you like, that you might suggest?
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[Linc Fessenden]

Jerry K wrote:

> This is probably off topic, so if you have a suggestion, please email me
> off line.
>
> At $WORK, there has recently been a push to begin looking at RHEL, and I
> would like to purchase a nice book for reference.  I have not had any
> luck searching either amazon.com or nerdbooks.com.  Actually I have, but
> everything I have come across has been pretty out of date.
>
> Does anyone have a recent RHEL linux reference book that you like, that
> you might suggest?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jerry
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Engineer-Linux-Study-Certification/dp/0072264543/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256059428&sr=8-2
That's what I used for my cert exam a few months ago.  And this one
looks pretty good too:
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Enterprise-Linux-Administration-Unleashed/dp/0672328925/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256059428&sr=8-1

--
-Linc Fessenden

In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded - Yeah right...
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[Robert Darlington]

I have no books to suggest, but would like to say that you're on the right
track with RHEL.  Past a handfull of machines, it becomes extremely
difficult to manage systems when there is no sane way to patch them.  I ran
several thousand at a former job with Uncle Sam.  I can't imagine doing it
without RHEL.  Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect script to
patch IRIX!

-Bob

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Jerry K <sun.mail.list47@...> wrote:

> This is probably off topic, so if you have a suggestion, please email me
> off line.
>
> At $WORK, there has recently been a push to begin looking at RHEL, and I
> would like to purchase a nice book for reference.  I have not had any luck
> searching either amazon.com or nerdbooks.com.  Actually I have, but
> everything I have come across has been pretty out of date.
>
> Does anyone have a recent RHEL linux reference book that you like, that you
> might suggest?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jerry
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

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[Bill Bradford]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 01:05:27PM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
> Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect script to patch IRIX!

"Expect pain and suffering."

Bill

--
Bill Bradford
Houston, Texas
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[Steve Sandau]

Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 01:05:27PM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
>> Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect script to patch IRIX!
>
> "Expect pain and suffering."
>

Ahhh, "pain and suffering" would also describe out experiences with
RedHat. The hardware is nowhere near as well-behaved as SPARC boxes,
meaningful documentation on kernel TCP parameters has been really hard
to find, and the config files appear to be designed to be convoluted and
confusing, not to mention some other problems like arp flux that we have
found. When I call support, they are helpful, but I have the feeling
that they are learning along with me.

Of all the  operating systems we admin, RedHat is taking up a *much*
larger percentage than HP, Solaris, AIX and even (ewwww) SCO.

I love Linux and have been using Slackware as a desktop and server for
15+ years, but for some things I really prefer Solaris, and when I use
Linux, RedHat is not my first choice.

Steve
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[Phil Stracchino-3]

Steve Sandau wrote:

> Bill Bradford wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 01:05:27PM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
>>> Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect script to patch IRIX!
>> "Expect pain and suffering."
>>
>
> Ahhh, "pain and suffering" would also describe out experiences with
> RedHat. The hardware is nowhere near as well-behaved as SPARC boxes,
> meaningful documentation on kernel TCP parameters has been really hard
> to find, and the config files appear to be designed to be convoluted and
> confusing, not to mention some other problems like arp flux that we have
> found. When I call support, they are helpful, but I have the feeling
> that they are learning along with me.

My experience is, at least some of them probably are.  I beta-tested
some of the Red Hat Brainshare courses at one point ... even leaving
aside cases where different whitespace meant being scored as a wrong
answer, there was only one "right" answer to any question, it was often
not the best answer, and sometimes it was technically outright wrong.
But even when it was the wrong answer, It Was The Red Hat Answer.


--
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric@...   alaric@...   phil@...
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.
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[Dave Fischer]

ssandau@... writes:

>Of all the  operating systems we admin, RedHat is taking up a *much*
>larger percentage than HP, Solaris, AIX and even (ewwww) SCO.

I don't know when SCO did this, or if they later abandoned it, but
the last time I used SCO Unix, they had reorganized the entire directory
tree, and recreated the standard tree in parellel, filled with symbolic
links over to their mutant universe. Really really horrific mess if you
had to... *do* anything to it.

------ David Fischer ------- dave@... ------- http://www.cca.org ------
----------------- Young-goon! The vending machine says hi! ----------------
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[Steve Sandau]

>> Ahhh, "pain and suffering" would also describe out experiences with
>> RedHat. The hardware is nowhere near as well-behaved as SPARC boxes,
>> meaningful documentation on kernel TCP parameters has been really hard
>> to find, and the config files appear to be designed to be convoluted and
>> confusing, not to mention some other problems like arp flux that we have
>> found. When I call support, they are helpful, but I have the feeling
>> that they are learning along with me.
>
> My experience is, at least some of them probably are.  I beta-tested
> some of the Red Hat Brainshare courses at one point ... even leaving
> aside cases where different whitespace meant being scored as a wrong
> answer, there was only one "right" answer to any question, it was often
> not the best answer, and sometimes it was technically outright wrong.
> But even when it was the wrong answer, It Was The Red Hat Answer.
>

Yeah, I seem to have that feeling when I do any computer-based training.
I apparently know too much background and I answer with something that
is technically the best answer, but it is not the one *they* want. I
give the short version, and the course wants me to parrot back the exact
syntax they used in the text.

One of my favorite RedHat questions had to do with what color "vim"
highlighted something with. Who cares? I don't do that color crap; I do
what works on as many operating systems as possible, and that means just
plain "vi" 'cause it is always there. I don't see that knowing how vim
highlights something is important in administering RedHat. *sigh*

Steve
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[Phil Stracchino-3]

Steve Sandau wrote:
> One of my favorite RedHat questions had to do with what color "vim"
> highlighted something with. Who cares? I don't do that color crap; I do
> what works on as many operating systems as possible, and that means just
> plain "vi" 'cause it is always there. I don't see that knowing how vim
> highlights something is important in administering RedHat. *sigh*

Exactly.  If you're relying on syntax coloring to be able to do system
administration tasks, you're sunk without a trace already.


--
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric@...   alaric@...   phil@...
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.
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[Lord Doomicus-2]

On Oct 20, 2009, at 6:57 PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Steve Sandau wrote:
>> Bill Bradford wrote:
>>> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 01:05:27PM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
>>>> Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect script to  
>>>> patch IRIX!
>>> "Expect pain and suffering."
>>>
>>
>> Ahhh, "pain and suffering" would also describe out experiences with
>> RedHat. The hardware is nowhere near as well-behaved as SPARC boxes,
>> meaningful documentation on kernel TCP parameters has been really  
>> hard
>> to find, and the config files appear to be designed to be  
>> convoluted and
>> confusing, not to mention some other problems like arp flux that we  
>> have
>> found. When I call support, they are helpful, but I have the feeling
>> that they are learning along with me.
>
> My experience is, at least some of them probably are.  I beta-tested
> some of the Red Hat Brainshare courses at one point ... even leaving
> aside cases where different whitespace meant being scored as a wrong
> answer, there was only one "right" answer to any question, it was  
> often
> not the best answer, and sometimes it was technically outright wrong.
> But even when it was the wrong answer, It Was The Red Hat Answer.

Like it or not, Linux is the future.  I agree that PC"s suck compared  
to real UNIX systems, but the future is Linux.  And RHEL is the number  
one used in business.  In the many years I've moving from UNIX to  
Linux, It's always been RHEL.  It gets better with every release.

Oh, yea, I am an RHCE.  It is at hard of a test, but it is passible.  
It's all hands on now, no written part.

As far as kernel docs go, you have the source code.  It doesn't get  
much better than that for understanding it.

There is documentation out there, you just have to go looking for it.

- Derrik
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[Jerry Kemp-3]

I love Expect!!

I'm not going to write the next Lotus 123 or Word Perfect with it, but I
have automated task that other admins either said couldn't be done (or
were too lazy to do it) using Expect.

Jerry


On 10/20/09 14:07, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 01:05:27PM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
>> Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect script to patch IRIX!
>
> "Expect pain and suffering."
>
> Bill
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[Jerry Kemp-3]

I wear several hats, and I have noticed uniqueness and oddities
surrounding most certification test.

I have never taken any linux/red hat cert test, I would comment that if
you had left red hat out of your comments below, I would have guessed
that you were talking about an IBM AIX test.

Jerry


On 10/20/09 17:57, Phil Stracchino wrote:

>
> My experience is, at least some of them probably are.  I beta-tested
> some of the Red Hat Brainshare courses at one point ... even leaving
> aside cases where different whitespace meant being scored as a wrong
> answer, there was only one "right" answer to any question, it was often
> not the best answer, and sometimes it was technically outright wrong.
> But even when it was the wrong answer, It Was The Red Hat Answer.
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[Jerry Kemp-3]

I have never really cared for vim and typically prefer the original Bill
Joy vi.

On Unix clone systems, I will typically download and compile/install the
original stuff from source.

http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/

The original does have a couple shortcomings, depending on your needs
and requirements.  When that is the case, I have had much better luck
with nvi.

http://www.bostic.com/vi/

YMMV, depending on your needs.

Jerry


On 10/20/09 19:17, Steve Sandau wrote:

STUFF DELETED HERE

>
> One of my favorite RedHat questions had to do with what color "vim"
> highlighted something with. Who cares? I don't do that color crap; I do
> what works on as many operating systems as possible, and that means just
> plain "vi" 'cause it is always there. I don't see that knowing how vim
> highlights something is important in administering RedHat. *sigh*
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

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[Rick Hamell]

Jerry Kemp wrote:
> I wear several hats, and I have noticed uniqueness and oddities
> surrounding most certification test.

ANY certification test. I have a really hard time getting certs of any
type for this reason because the answers they want usually don't make
sense. And the afore mentioned white space thing bit me on the ass a
couple of times.

--
Rick Hamell

Linkedin Profile - http://www.linkedin.com/pub/6/946/27
Technology Blog - http://www.1nova.com/blog
Pacific Northwest Photo Blog - http://www.1nova.com/photoblog
http://RickHamell.com
http://Hamell.Net

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type text/x-vcard which had a name of hamellr.vcf]
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[Dan Duncan-2]

> On 10/20/09 17:57, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>
> My experience is, at least some of them probably are.  I beta-tested
>> some of the Red Hat Brainshare courses at one point ... even leaving
>> aside cases where different whitespace meant being scored as a wrong
>> answer, there was only one "right" answer to any question, it was often
>> not the best answer, and sometimes it was technically outright wrong.
>> But even when it was the wrong answer, It Was The Red Hat Answer.
>>
>
>
>On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Jerry Kemp <sun.mail.list47@...>wrote:
>I wear several hats, and I have noticed uniqueness and oddities surrounding

most certification test.

>I have never taken any linux/red hat cert test, I would comment that if you
had left red hat out of your comments below, I would have >guessed that you
were talking about an IBM AIX test.

I've taken RHCT and RHCE exams and there were no questions to be answered
unless you count filling in my name and signing the NDA.  The whole exam is
practical and you deliver a system configured as requested.  How you get
there (GUI, CLI, clay tablets) is entirely up to you.  The whitespace used
in the config file would be correct if it worked with the application in
question.  (bind, ftp, whatever)





--
Dan Duncan
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[Lionel Peterson-2]

On Oct 20, 2009, at 3:05 PM, Robert Darlington <rdarlington@...>  
wrote:

> I have no books to suggest, but would like to say that you're on the  
> right
> track with RHEL.  Past a handfull of machines, it becomes extremely
> difficult to manage systems when there is no sane way to patch  
> them.  I ran
> several thousand at a former job with Uncle Sam.  I can't imagine  
> doing it
> without RHEL.  Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect  
> script to
> patch IRIX!

At $WORK I am the resident *nix expert, since I've debated against it  
with a few well-intentioned idiots in the community who feel that we  
should trim our $70K license fees with MS and go from Apple/Win  
environments to all Linux. Debian, to be specific.

The issue boils down (for me) to the reality that you can't manage  
1,500 desktops as easily under Linux, since the tools either don't  
exist or cost more than comprable MS/apple tools (depending on  
distribution choosen). As a educational facility, we pay under $40/
desktop per year for OS (WinXP, Vista, or Win7) and Office Enterprise  
2007. Server licenses are equally affordable.

Is there a comprable management suite for Linux that is closer to Free  
than $40/desktop? The Ubuntu management package is around $400/
machine, but designed for servers, not really desktops...

Lionel
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[Ray Arachelian]

Steve Sandau wrote:
> Ahhh, "pain and suffering" would also describe out experiences with
> RedHat. The hardware is nowhere near as well-behaved as SPARC boxes
Oh HP (ok, Compaq really) hardware with ILO's, it's not half bad.  It's
not as tightly integrated to the hardware as is Solaris on UltraSPARC
machines, but it's quite good.
As with any OS that's not Solaris, it's just not Solaris. :-)  So you
can't expect it to be the same.  I too prefer Solaris over RHEL, but I
suspect that's because that's where I spend most of my time with.

I do find that out of the box RHEL is a lot friendlier than Solaris.
For instance their adduser program allows you to pass a password hash
(not the password, but the hash out of /etc/shadow), so you can easily
clone accounts across many machines without resorting to OpenLDP or
NIS.   tar recognized j and z options properly, and the default shell is
bash.  Their /proc file system is a lot nicer.

One thing I've found really annoying in RHEL is that cpio throws
*needless* warnings - there is an option to silence it, but it's only in
the Linux version of cpio, so you can't run the same script on both
Solaris and Linux to do backups.  So, there are enough differences to
make porting scripts across machines a bit of a chore sometimes, though,
unless you actively install GNU tools on Solaris.  But then that freaks
out your users ("Should I use /usr/bin/tar or /usr/local/bin/tar?
What's the difference? Why are there two of them?" and so on.)

That said I find AIX far more different than either RHEL or Solaris.


Original Poster asked about some books.  I recently picked up this book,
and I'm quite happy with having spent only $5 total on it. :)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0471754919/ref=sr_1_olp_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256124333&sr=8-2&condition=used

Granted, it's for RHEL4 and more than half of the book is wasted on
beginner stuff, which if you already know Solaris, you can skip over,
but we do have RHEL4 at $work, and whatever 5 has that's different, I
can always RTFM the docs off redhat.com.  I did notice a huge change
with RHEL5.4, they've switched from Xen to KVM for their virtualization.

There is a newer RHEL5 version of the above for $37.


I haven't looked that deeply, but there's probably some RHEL for Solaris
administrators book/faq/reference out there somewhere.   I found the IBM
redbook "AIX for Solaris admins" useful.
There's probably something that's the opposite of this:

http://wikis.sun.com/display/SolarisDeveloper/Migrating+from+Linux+to+Solaris+or+OpenSolaris

Unfortunately google seems to return job listings instead of guides when
queried for "RHEL For Solaris Admins" :)  So deeper digging is needed.


What I'd wish for is something that was a short FAQ that shows how to do
various sysadmin things (so far googling RHEL and the item usually gets
me to the right thing, but would be nice to have a central place to look):
i.e.

How to use the LVM, specifically how to set it up, how to replace failed
disks.
How to tell if the interface is 100FDX
How to tell if an interface has errors?
How to configure limits for file handles, memory, and the like per user.
How to optimize various parameters (you've mentioned TCP/IP for instance)
add/remove swap
add/remove LUNs from a SAN
How to multipath?
How to tell if a hard drive has errors?
How to setup a cluster?
how to virtualize?
How to tell what kinds of CPUs you have and how many? (hint, /proc has a
cpufinfo file)
How to do kickstarts and boot off the network?
How to add routes (yes, route add, but it's syntax is very different
than on Solaris or *BSD for that matter)

I find most of the books/manuals out there do have some of the above,
but they're generally beginner Admin things, so would be nice to have a
more concise guide to those things.
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[Linc Fessenden]

Lionel Peterson wrote:

> The issue boils down (for me) to the reality that you can't manage 1,500
> desktops as easily under Linux, since the tools either don't exist or
> cost more than comprable MS/apple tools (depending on distribution
> choosen). As a educational facility, we pay under $40/desktop per year
> for OS (WinXP, Vista, or Win7) and Office Enterprise 2007. Server
> licenses are equally affordable.
>
> Is there a comprable management suite for Linux that is closer to Free
> than $40/desktop? The Ubuntu management package is around $400/machine,
> but designed for servers, not really desktops...

What is it you are trying to *do* exactly with the desktops?

--
-Linc Fessenden

In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded - Yeah right...
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[Patrick Finnegan]

On Wednesday 21 October 2009, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> The issue boils down (for me) to the reality that you can't manage
> 1,500 desktops as easily under Linux, since the tools either don't
> exist or cost more than comprable MS/apple tools (depending on

?!?

> distribution choosen). As a educational facility, we pay under $40/
> desktop per year for OS (WinXP, Vista, or Win7) and Office Enterprise
> 2007. Server licenses are equally affordable.
>
> Is there a comprable management suite for Linux that is closer to
>  Free than $40/desktop? The Ubuntu management package is around $400/
>  machine, but designed for servers, not really desktops...

GNU cfengine, Reductive Lab's Puppet, etc.  They're $0.

What's the difference between a Linux server and desktop as far as
management goes?

At work we currently maintain a bit over 2000 machines using cfengine
2.2.  Purdue's Engineering Computer Network maintains at least hundreds
of machines using in-house software called IGOR, which they have used to
maintain configurations on Windows, Linux, HP/UX, Solaris, and AIX (and
possibly more).

I don't understand how Windows can be easier or cheaper to maintain huge
numbers of machines than Linux is.

Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing ---  http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge                  ---  http://computer-refuge.org
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