Rating: 
Summary: MORE THAN AN AVERAGE MANUAL.
Review: The lessons that this book provides will bring peace of mind to anyone interested in conjuring a reliable Linux Server. Its beauty is having outlined all the important security risks and precaution in a concise and easy-to-remember manner.
With this relatively small-sized text, you will master in a shortwhile, all the principles needed to build and maintain secured Linux servers. However, I will mention that the information provided in this book are meant to fulfil the needs of intermediate users. Most advanced users would need this book only as an easy-to-carry reminder. For reference purposes, they would benefit more by investing on a more detailed, more versatile textbook.
Rating: 
Summary: buy this book now
Review: There are many ways to do things right and many ways to do things wrong. This book goes into great detail about best practices for your DNS, web, mail, database and FTP servers. Specifically it covers BIND 8 and 9, djbdns, Apache, Mysql, Sendmail and Postfix, ProFTPd, scp, ssh, sftp, rsync, and many more applications. It also covers firewalls with good iptables examples. Although the subject may sound uninteresting I could not put the book down. So many questions I have thought of are answered here. Be warned, you will immediately want to upgrade your existing servers utilizing the suggestions in this book so be prepared for a lot of work.
Rating:
Summary: Great articles, but an incomplete book
Review: This book was created by gluing together the famous "Paranoid Penguin" columns that the author writes for Linux Journal. Now, the articles are great. When expanded into book form, there's more space available for detail. However this book doesn't have the breadth to be a good security book on it's own. Since it only pulls from the articles, it misses many key points that would be necessary for someone to really secure their machine. Many of the topics here are not geared toward securing your machine, or building a secure server at all - they're more "how to do things securely". Now that is a good thing, but the book title makes it sound like you need only this book to build a secure machine, and that is definately not the case.
Rating:
Summary: Great articles, but an incomplete book
Review: This book was created by gluing together the famous "Paranoid Penguin" columns that the author writes for Linux Journal. Now, the articles are great. When expanded into book form, there's more space available for detail. However this book doesn't have the breadth to be a good security book on it's own. Since it only pulls from the articles, it misses many key points that would be necessary for someone to really secure their machine. Many of the topics here are not geared toward securing your machine, or building a secure server at all - they're more "how to do things securely". Now that is a good thing, but the book title makes it sound like you need only this book to build a secure machine, and that is definately not the case.
Rating:
Summary: Wears blinders.
Review: This book, like the horse on the cover, is wearing blinders and can only see straight ahead. In this case, straight ahead is the assumption that you need only worry about the topics the author decides to cover.Now what Bauer discusses is explained well and very throroughly, as well as any other book on the subject. However there are many pieces of your overall security situation that need to be included in a security book. For example the utter lack of anything about physical security is unforgivable, given how many people will be colocating Linux servers. The book relies on graphical tools too often - if you're building a server, you should *NOT* be installing X11 on it! More command line activities would be better.
Rating:
Summary: Wears blinders.
Review: This book, like the horse on the cover, is wearing blinders and can only see straight ahead. In this case, straight ahead is the assumption that you need only worry about the topics the author decides to cover. Now what Bauer discusses is explained well and very throroughly, as well as any other book on the subject. However there are many pieces of your overall security situation that need to be included in a security book. For example the utter lack of anything about physical security is unforgivable, given how many people will be colocating Linux servers. The book relies on graphical tools too often - if you're building a server, you should *NOT* be installing X11 on it! More command line activities would be better.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent information, well organized
Review: With several years of network and server experience but very little Linux knowledge, this book is the perfect stepping stone to getting some practical experience. The book covers enough of the basics to help along without getting caught up in them. Excellent reference book or book to read cover-to-cover.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent information, well organized
Review: With several years of network and server experience but very little Linux knowledge, this book is the perfect stepping stone to getting some practical experience. The book covers enough of the basics to help along without getting caught up in them. Excellent reference book or book to read cover-to-cover.
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