[buug] Recommend a Unix reference?

[f.johan.beisser]

On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, Skip Evans wrote:

> I need to get a Unix reference book here for my FreeBSD box. I have the
> BSD manual, but figure I need a good Unix reference as well. Any
> recommendations? Places on the web I can find a used one?

depending on the kind of reference you want..

	O'Reilly's UNIX in a Nutshell
	http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/unixnut3/
	Tends to be fairly SYSV specific, but some is very applicable to
	your linux or BSD box. it's mostly Man Pages, and summeries of
	them.

	O'Reilly's Essential System Administration
	http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/esa3/
	General UNIX reference book. Worth the cash.
	2nd edition is a bit old, published in 1995.
	3rd edition will be out in August, or so.

	O'Reilly's UNIX Power Tools, 2nd Ed.
	http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/upt2/
	Good for the "right tool, right job" and "how can i do this"
	type of reference. find a used copy, though. much of the info
	can be found with a little work on the Web.

	The Purple Book (UNIX System Administration Handbook, 3rd Ed)
	[1] an URL..
	Another SA book, i hear good things about it, but i've never
	read it myself.

	The FreeBSD Handbook
	[2] another URL..
	FreeBSD specific, covers most basic FreeBSD things in decent
	detail.

The URLs from above.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130206016/qid=1028070974/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-8219430-9087010
[2] http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html

this is, of course, off the top of my head. there's more and better
references out there, i suspect.

and remember, apropos(1) is your friend.

as far as finding used tech books, i think you're mostly trapped. i'm a
bit of a pack rat, and have loaned out older copies of various books, but
my standby are in the shelf, just in case i need them.

 -------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+
  http://caustic.org/~jan                      jan at caustic.org
    "John Ashcroft is really just the reanimated corpse
         of J. Edgar Hoover." -- Tim Triche