Sams Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 21 Days (Teach Yourself -- Days)

Rating:
Summary: Definitely not for beginners.
Review: I am a casual user of the UNIX OS, trying to learn something about Unix administration. In the first 2 chapters (!) of the book, the author tells us about how grand you will become as a UNIX administrator and its associated immense responsibility. We are even told about some interpersonal skills and psychology needed for the job. You can browse these 2 chapters in about 1 hour, not having learnt at the end of it any UNIX administration whatsoever. You are suggested, very helpfully, told to write down this or that important number in "a paper, or a post-it note or whatever". Then the third chapter comes, with the installation of the OS (the author admits it is an old version, but this is presented as a positive feature, as if life is not complicated enough), and immediately, almost entire pages of output are shown. Only parts of this output are explained, and in a very casual mode. I suspect that, if my knowledge was superior, I would find this book outdated and cumbersome. As a beginner, I have not read more and I will look for other books.

Rating:
Summary: Jump Start your way into UNIX
Review: I borrowed several books including the first edition of this book to get to learn the basics of UNIX. I rate this one the best of the lot for an intro book. It got me up to speed and productive in a UNIX development envirnoment quickly. It covers all the basics commands plus the C-shell. There was no information on ksh. It gives an overview of vi which I hate, but did not mention textedit which is my choice for a GUI script editor. If you are an advanced user you should skip this book. For a beginner it is great.

Rating:
Summary: All you want to know in one book
Review: I never thought a book on Systems Administration could be written like this one, it has lots of tips, rules, recommendations and a great appendix (like a fourth week) full of useful resources like UNIX commands, samples, links and even legal stuff. The book not only covers UNIX System Administration technically but ethically too, which is very important for this profession. And technically speaking, I found it covers enough technical matter for a Teach Yourself and leaves the more advanced stuff to the specific OS documentation. A great buy, worth every penny!

Rating:
Summary: Sams Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 21 Days
Review: This book has cons and pros. The style, the idea, the way how material is grouped is good. But SunOS 4.1.4 is obviously outdated. The author installes it to an old crapy Sparc with 500MB hard drive? I bought this book to use with Solaris 7 and returned it to the store. Everything is different. And the last. There are many places in the text that need better explanations. For example, how to share files: the sequence of actions? It looks that it is all in the text, but when you try to do it you realize that definitely you are missing smth.

Rating:
Summary: Not nearly enough
Review: This book should have an addition to it's title. "In Your Dreams" This book is just awful. Please don't waste your money on it. If you are a total beginner, you will be lost from the start. If you are an accomplished user trying to move into administration (as I am), you'll find that there is no meat in this book whatsoever. It is padded with the authors philosophies about administration rather than with any real information. The end of the book is just a meaningless collection of junk added for thickness purposes. Unless you are a UNIX administrator before you begin reading this book, you WILL NOT be a UNIX administrator when you finish.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely not for beginners.
Review: This book should have an addition to it's title. "In Your Dreams" This book is just awful. Please don't waste your money on it. If you are a total beginner, you will be lost from the start. If you are an accomplished user trying to move into administration (as I am), you'll find that there is no meat in this book whatsoever. It is padded with the authors philosophies about administration rather than with any real information. The end of the book is just a meaningless collection of junk added for thickness purposes. Unless you are a UNIX administrator before you begin reading this book, you WILL NOT be a UNIX administrator when you finish.

Rating:
Summary: Learn UNIX in more than 21 days.
Review: Uhh, "Sams teach yourself UNIX system administration in 21 days" is a nice book with some content about older or more advanced systems such as Sun OS, IRIX, AIX. I find this book a bit complicated, since i personally do not work with Operating Systems like these. This book is 100% for advanced UNIX system administrators with expirience. I give it 4 stars, because i found it very interesting and knoweledgable about older Operating Systems, i think i will definately need this knoweledge some day. Oh and the part where author explains how you should behave in front of your boss is very nice also. In other words i would recommend this book to anybody who's absolutely insaine about UNIX like systems, definately should read.
P.S.
(You definately won't understand a thing if you finish whole book in 21 days)

Rating:
Summary: Learn UNIX in more than 21 days.
Review: Uhh, "Sams teach yourself UNIX system administration in 21 days" is a nice book with some content about older or more advanced systems such as Sun OS, IRIX, AIX. I find this book a bit complicated, since i personally do not work with Operating Systems like these. This book is 100% for advanced UNIX system administrators with expirience. I give it 4 stars, because i found it very interesting and knoweledgable about older Operating Systems, i think i will definately need this knoweledge some day. Oh and the part where author explains how you should behave in front of your boss is very nice also. In other words i would recommend this book to anybody who's absolutely insaine about UNIX like systems, definately should read.
P.S.
(You definately won't understand a thing if you finish whole book in 21 days)