This book is a compilation of tips, tools, and tricks to help you manage a network server computer that runs the Linux operating system. Many high traffic Internet websites run on Linux systems where security and reliability are an absolute requirement. Examples include Google, Amazon, and NASA.

Whereas I wish to deftly sidestep the over-hyped “Linux versus Microsoft” controversy, I do wish to emphasize that both of these fine computer systems and their related products, like Apache and IIS, are here to stay, ill advised lawsuits and assorted radical assertions notwithstanding.

This book is laid out cookbook style – it is a listing of 100 server management tricks well grouped into sensible categories. A deeper description of its contents and style would be better approached by saying what it is not:

It is not an introduction to the Linux operating system.
It is not an introduction to server management / administration.

But after a book or two on each of these two above subjects, and after renting some server space to practice on, this book will definitely ease the transition to your becoming an intermediate server admin from a mere beginner.

These 100 tricks, or “hacks” as they are sometimes casually referred to, are arranged in eight sections:

1. Server Basics -- Carefully guides you through the basics of how to be a Good Shepherd over not just the server itself, but the community of people who contribute material to whatever websites that lives there.
2. Revision Control -- How to carefully upgrade your server to a higher version to take advantage of the expanded capabilities of newer, higher versions, and how to drop back down to the earlier versions if the new stuff proves to be buggy, insecure, inconvenient or otherwise troublesome. Aside form server software itself, though, this section also teaches how to manage and synchronize versions of documents that get worked on, rewritten, and updated by many people, not just one.
3. Backups -- How to back up the files that your users create, edit, or download. Also covers ISO files as well as CD / CD RW disk burning as it applies to making system backups.
4. Networking -- Covers networking basics, simple firewalling, other defenses, the use of IP tables, and tunneling.
5. Monitoring -- How to see what is going on in your server. Scanning and monitoring network and disk accesses, and usage of other system resources.
6. SSH -- This entire section is devoted to teaching how to establish secure, difficult-to-tap connections to your server from remote locations in order to log in and control it.
7. Scripting -- Sadly this tiny chapter only includes four measly tricks for working with your server. I grudgingly admit that server scripting can be (ok, it is) the subject of many other entire volumes of computer lore.
8. Information Servers – This meaty section is about as big as Section 1: Server Basics. It deals with setting up MySQL, the free database program that powers huge numbers of e-commerce and nonprofit websites, and Apache, the server software that arguably forms the backbone of the Internet. More servers run Apache than all other known web servers combined (“Your Mileage May Vary”. This book was published in January 2003 and it’s a first edition. If this info went obsolete while you were reading this review, I’m gonna try and plea bargain!). Apache and MySQL can power a website of good size.

Upshot: If you think you are ready to tackle running a server for a small business, an interest group of some kind or other, or maybe just trying to keep a far-flung family connected and up to date, then this book will see you through the tough times at the beginning. We’ve all been there in some context or other. BUT: if you haven’t tried Google yet ‘cause you’re still getting used to Yahoo, or if you just want to use e-mail and surf the web and that’s all, then you’ll want to pass on this book -- it would be Way Too Much!

Buy this book from

Disclaimer: Microsoft, a company many of you are familiar with, has many products that duplicate the functions of the software described in this book. All fine and good. This review is not to be interpreted as an attack against Microsoft or a slur against their many, many fine software products. That said: Linux, Apache, and MySQL also have a proven track record of excellence, reliability, security, ease of use, and they are free, free, free! They encourage and promote the kind of “tinkering around” with your system that some of us seem to be born needing to do, and they make it cheap, easy, and safe to try out new things and new ways of doing the old things.