Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Edition: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD

Disclaimers: I am not a system administrator and only a casual FreeBSD user.This book covers the FreeBSD operating system, system administration, and general UNIX in 620 pages (plus the Roman numeral pages in the preface). Given its broad scope, this is an impossible task, yet Lucas takes it on and delivers a really good product. Although it’s geared toward system administrators, anyone interested in any of those three topics can benefit from reading this publication.Expected audience skill level: relatively high. Lucas lays out in the preface what he expects readers to know prior to reading. For someone who has never used a UNIX-like system or done system administration, it would be substantial. When I came across things I didn’t know, a quick search on the internet got me back on track. As a teaching tool, the book best serves the reader by reinforcing the UNIX methodology of understanding a task concept -> testing it with a UNIX utility on the command line -> making the preferred setup for it permanent in a config file -> and optimizing the config file for ease of editing and readability. By the end of the book that pattern will become second nature to the reader. Lucas does a really nice job with that.The desktop: Lucas did this in his Absolute OpenBSD book with the cwm window manager description; he does not do that again here. There is too much else to cover. He does mention that he uses cwm and some other desktop applications. The desktop is a very personal realm and FreeBSD gives you a lot of choice; he probably did well to not spend valuable print space on this.Where Lucas does provide invaluable information for the desktop user is in a series of chapters on packaging and porting software in the middle of the book, as well as the chapter on operating system updates. He readily acknowledges the complexity of shared dependency library hell (he doesn’t call it that) and the UNIX make(1) system of managing it. Where to configure the network parameters for software downloads (if you are on a slow network, for example), how to run an older version of a program that uses different libraries, and how to run Linux programs are all covered.ZFS and filesystems: there are a few chapters towards the beginning of the book that cover these topics. They describe striping, mirroring, journaling, etc. ZFS itself, is a major change from the traditional Unix Filesystem (UFS) and it touches everything down to the kernel. Throughout the rest of the book Lucas makes it clear what you need to do depending on which filesystem you are using. In the performance monitoring chapter he spends a page or two covering how the UNIX top(1) utility output differs between ZFS and UFS. This was helpful for understanding how ZFS interacts with the kernel and uses and frees RAM.It was not possible or appropriate for Lucas to assume ZFS use for most systems at this date. If another edition of the book is published a decade or so from now, I suspect the focus on one filesystem will make the book a little shorter and more accessible.Read the whole book: there are useful nuggets throughout all 600+ pages. The performance monitoring and “fringe” chapters toward the end of the book included things I consider essential to using FreeBSD (how to switch between virtual terminals, for instance). The system administration topics are good for gaining comprehension (understanding how dhcp is administered on the server helps a user understand how to invoke it with dhclient, for instance).Physical book quality: no problems here. I abused the heck out of it while stuffing it in and out of a backpack on a train commute to work. Still in one piece.

I have been a long-time user of Linux but recently have been hearing the siren call of FreeBSD. Having already purchased a number of Michael's books I was confident that his treatment of FreeBSD would be thorough. I was not disappointed. His writing is clear and his knowledge of the topic is obviously great.That said, I was somewhat shocked and dismayed to find that Michael appears to prefer Emacs to vi. On page 337 he states: "Here's how you'd install a vital program desired by all right-thinking sysadmins: pkg install emacs" and follows that up with "Those of you clinging to irrational biases against superior text processors probably want to remove it: pkg delete emacs"I was both stunned and dismayed. I find it almost impossible to believe that someone with Michael's apparent technical expertise would prefer an operating system masquerading as a text editor, emacs, over the one-true-editor: vi. Oh well.. no one is perfect. It does make me question the quality of the information provided throughout the book. I'm sure that his bias against vi was likely caused by his inability to figure out how to exit vi early in his career. But who can say?Anyway... if you would like a great introduction to FreeBSD and can hold your nose while wading through the emacs references then this is the book for you.

This book should ship with every single copy of FreeBSD downloaded and installed. Mr. Lucas has written a comprehensive and thorough guide to FreeBSD. This is the kind of book where you will learn something new in every chapter!The chapters that jumped out to me:Chapter 6 - Kernel Games which goes into great detail about the FreeBSD kernel, sysctl settings and options, and building a custom kernel.Chapter 9 - Securing Your System which talks about securelevels, user security, group security, shells, root access, file flags, and more)Chapter 12 - ZFS. The entire chapter is packed with useful info.Chapter 15 - "Making Your System Useful" - which goes into ports and the pkg utility. Mr. Lucas demonstrated a number of features to make pkg management on FreeBSD soooo much easier.Chapter 16 - Ports - which goes into great detail about how the ports tree works, how to search for ports, how to customize ports behavior, and more.Chapter 18 - Upgrading FreeBSD. Mr. Lucas shows how to upgrade a FreeBSD server from one release to another.Chapter 19 - Advanced Security Features - which talks about tcp wrappers, packet filtering (pf), blacklistd, global security settings, and mtree (which is used to monitor for system intrusions.)Chapter 21 - System Monitoring - where Mr. Lucas walks through a number of tools used to monitor CPU, disk I/O, RAM, network I/O, and more.The entire book is essential reading for anyone who works on, builds, and/or supports FreeBSD servers - especially public-facing FreeBSD servers. I find myself referring to this book daily...even hourly. It's THAT good.I've learned so much from this book in just two weeks that my FreeBSD servers are running better, security is better, and I'm even having fun working on FreeBSD.Thank you, Mr. Lucas, for writing a masterpiece of a book.

This book is one of the few diving deep into FreeBSD and that touches most of set up and admin aspects of FreeBSD. If you like BSD or run some of them in your job, definitely an excellent book to help you learn more of it.If you are new in tech and admin systems other than BSD, the skills here are helpful on those other systems and can broaden your career.

If you use FreeBSD and you're not proficient/expert enough to write this book, then you probably should have a copy on your shelf. Excellently written - with humour ;) - it gives very clear explanations of 'what' you need to know and 'how' to do it. I'd have been lost without it when I started with FreeBSD and it's still my goto whenever I'm not sure or don't know what/how to do....

Excelente, muy bien explicado y muy ameno, totalmente recomendable.

This book offers a solid foundation on how to manage and operate your FreeBSD server. The author guides you through everything you need and his writing style keeps you engaged. It doesn't come off as too technical like a long man page, written by a programmer. He has a great sense of humour and that really helps when you're going through this heavy tome. He does not go through everything BSD can possibly do in depth, but he even mentions that in the book (I can only imagine how many volumes it would take) and that's fine. Once you get a strong foundation you can build upon that.Would absolutely recommend it to anyone wanting to get a good grasp on FreeBSD.

It's easy to read and covers almost every topic about FreeBSD.It's meant to be read from the beggining to the end on the first time. After which, it's a perfect source to refer to when you face any problem using the system.