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Publisher: No Starch Press Author: Brian Ward Pages: 392, B&W ISBN: 978-1-59327-567-9 http://nostarch.com/howlinuxworks2 Now in its second edition, “How Linux Works” is a useful reference for any would-be system administrator, or even just a technically curious user. It's a whistle-stop tour of a typical Linux system – from booting up right through to a graphical desktop. On the way, it visits shell scripts, file systems, processes and networking – although each stop on the journey is but a brief one. You won't find much in-depth coverage here, but rather a broad collection of topics that are briefly introduced. To that end, the author does a great job of including suggestions for other books and resources that cover each element in more detail. For example, although SSH gets a mention, the four pages dedicated to it aren't enough to talk about using key-based authentication rather that passwords, nor any details about how to forward ports over an SSH connection. Instead, there is a short overview of the client and server configuration, together with suggestions of a pair of dedicated SSH books, and another on cryptographic algorithms. In this way, “How Linux Works” manages to cover a lot of ground without getting caught up in the minutiae of every single command.

Éditeur : No Starch Press Auteur : Brian Ward Pages : 392, N et B ISBN : 978-1-59327-567-9 http://nostarch.com/howlinuxworks2

Aujourd'hui à sa deuxième édition, How Linux Works est un livre de référence utile pour toute personne qui envisage de devenir administrateur système, ou même pour tout utilisateur curieux des choses techniques. C'est un tour rapide d'un système Linux typique - du démarrage jusqu'à l'environnement de bureau. En chemin, il parle des scripts shell, des systèmes de fichiers, des processus et des réseaux - bien que chaque arrêt du voyage ne soit que bref.

Vous ne trouverez pas beaucoup de détails ici, mais, au contraire, un vaste ensemble de sujets qui sont présentés brièvement. Pour ce faire, l'auteur fournit un excellent travail comprenant des suggestions d'autres livres et ressources qui traite chaque élément en profondeur. Par exemple, bien que SSH est mentionné, les quatre pages sur le sujet ne sont suffisant ni pour parler de l'utilisation d'une authentification basée sur des clés à la place des mots de passe, ni pour donner des détails sur le transfert de ports sur une connexion SSH. À la place, il y a un bref aperçu de la configuration client et serveur, accompagné de la suggestion de deux livres dédiés à SSH et un troisième sur les algorithmes cryptographiques. De cette façon, How Linux Works réussit à aborder beaucoup de sujets sans se laisser prendre par les minuties de chaque commande.

This is a book for people who don't know what they don't know. The sort that will sit on a shelf until you find yourself faced with an odd question about how your machine boots, how to configure systemd, or what the hell PAM is. If nothing else it will provide you with enough basic details of a topic to make your online searches more productive. Despite its title, this book doesn't really tell you much about how Linux, the kernel, really works. You won't find a discussion of different scheduling algorithms, and kernel structures really get mentioned only when they relate to user-space tasks. At a higher level, if you want to know about how all the files on your Linux box fit together, and the contribution each one makes to your system, you'd be better off setting up a “Linux From Scratch” system on a virtual machine – although this book would probably be a useful companion to the official LFS documentation. Similarly, a competent system administrator with a few years experience of Linux, isn't likely to find much in this book that will surprise him/her – although there's enough detail that you're bound to learn a few things along the way. But if your admin skills are new, or you feel there are some gaps in your knowledge, this book could easily help to fill those holes. Even for a user on a home machine, if you're interested in learning about the nuts and bolts of your operating system, this book would be a good starting point.

My one complaint about “How Linux Works” is that too much space is wasted on unnecessary detail – space that could have been better used to provide more information elsewhere. Nobody picking up this tome is likely to need an introduction to the shell right down to the level of the “cd” and “mv” commands, whilst at the other end of the spectrum (and the book), there are two whole chapters dedicated to development tools and installing from source. The content here is not only less relevant in a world of unofficial repositories and development PPAs, but concentrates on how to locally resolve the sort of build and compilation issues that should probably be raised with the upstream developers anyway. Meanwhile, a subject such as printing gets just over a page in the book, and the Apache web server warrants a single mention in a final chapter that just reels off different ways in which you can use a Linux box. Despite this minor complaint, there's still plenty of information to be gleaned from this book and I'd definitely recommend it to would-be administrators, or just the technically curious. With references and suggested reading dotted liberally around, this could be the book to start you descending into a rabbit hole of information if you're so inclined. But even if you choose not to follow up on any of the topics in more detail, this is a handy guidebook to the extensive collection of bits that make up a Linux box these days.

Table of Contents Chapter 1: The Big Picture Chapter 2: Basic Commands and Directory Hierarchy Chapter 3: Devices Chapter 4: Disks and Filesystems Chapter 5: Linux Booting: Boot Loaders and Kernel Chapter 6: How User Space Starts Chapter 7: System Configuration: Logging, System Time, Batch Jobs, and Users Chapter 8: A Closer Look at Processes and Resource Utilization Chapter 9: Understanding Your Network and Its Configuration Chapter 10: Network Applications and Services Chapter 11: Introduction to Shell Scripts Chapter 12: Moving Files Across the Network Chapter 13: User Environments Chapter 14: A Brief Survey of the Linux Desktop Chapter 15: Development Tools Chapter 16: Compiling Software from Source Code Chapter 17: Building on the Basics