Building a Server with FreeBSD 7

[anomie]

Building a Server with FreeBSD 7
by Bryan Hong

From the product description:
Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 is for those of us who prefer to build our own server. If you're a small business owner looking for a reliable email server, a curious Windows administrator, or if you just want to put that old computer in the closet to work, you'll learn how to get things up and running quickly. Then, once you have a working system, you can experiment, extend, and customize as you please.

You'll learn how to install FreeBSD, then how to install popular server applications with the ports collection. Each package is treated as an independent module, so you can dip into the book at any point to install just the packages you need, when you need them...

[anomie]

My opinion:

I just had the chance to read through Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 earlier today, and I was pleasantly surprised. In the spirit of its writing style, I'll try to summarize in a terse and effective fashion: Mr. Hong is obviously a competent sysadmin, who took a lot of straight-to-the-point installation notes. He then organized them and formatted them nicely. The results of that exercise were polished, some interesting background history was added in, and finally the whole production was made into a book.

When I began reading the first few pages on the base system installation and configuration, I was thinking "Ah, good book for beginners." But as I progressed into the numerous port installations and configurations I discovered that this book, in reality, will appeal to several levels of users / sysadmins.

I'll stress this again: Mr. Hong is blunt and to the point. The goal of the book is clearly to get you up and running quickly and properly. A new user could follow his instructions - literally - step by step and get a powerful server built. But even an experienced sysadmin should find this book to be a valuable reference for server installations. The information is all in one place, it's easy to find (as it's organized by service/FBSD port), and there's plenty of it.

Thumbs up from me.

[scottro]

Just a quick thanks to anomie for all these book reviews. I think it's going to be a great resource for people.
You might even put together a super post, mentioning all the ones you've reviewed and a one sentence summary like, good for beginners, advanced users probably know it, good but pricey, that sort of thing.

By the way, what sort of dog is that in the picture--it's so small that I can't tell if it's a hunting dog type or pit bull type.

[anomie]

Just a quick thanks to anomie for all these book reviews. I think it's going to be a great resource for people.

Cool -- I hope so. I like your book "index" suggestion. I'll need to think about whether/how I could implement it well.


----------- OT info about the pooch -----------

By the way, what sort of dog is that in the picture--it's so small that I can't tell if it's a hunting dog type or pit bull type.

:)

The real answer to that question is: she's an adopted (from a kill shelter) dog. My wife and I suspect that she is a black lab & border collie mix. I don't think she has any pit mixed in there, but I can't be sure, and that wouldn't be unusual for a rescue dog in central Texas.

She's a sweet dog -- she keeps us on our toes and makes us laugh.

[scottro]

MORE OT
Thanks for the answer. Lab mixes and pit bull mixes are often not that dissimilar in appearance, oddly enough.

[tangram]

Both this one in the Holidays. Great stuff imho!

The most straight to the point book I've read about FreeBSD and must read book for anyone that wants to build a server (in my case a home server).

The first two chapter provide quick information of FreeeBSD installation and the ports system. From there on all is organized in term of services. Props for the appendixes: useful and clean stuff.