As promised, I went to my bookshelf and picked four books that are recommended. Depending on your interests, some might not apply for you. The first book is for people who want to really dig into the UNIX kernal, file descriptors, inodes, etc The Design and Implementation of the 4.2BSD UNIX Operating System This book is out of print and is mostly for those who want to really have a good historical background on the UNIX OS and it not something most UNIX admins would read. One of the most important books for all UNIX folks (a most know and have) is:





DNS and BIND is perhaps one of the most important foundation books for understanding UNIX networking; and without networking UNIX is not very useful. Everyone must have this book! Another MUST HAVE is TCP/IP Network Administration better known as THE CRAB BOOK. Without understanding TCP/IP network adminstration you can only swim in the 'UNIX baby pool'




Switching gears, understanding history is always fun and very important. This is the best and most factual history book on the Internet without a doubt:




Where Wizards Stay Up Late - The Origins of the Internet. This book has the names, faces and stories of the real heros of the Internet, not the false heros of todays media. In this book you will read how Dr. Kleinrock sent the worlds first email message to locate his lost razor! Messaging is the most important core service that the network offers. Regardless of your career path, you must understand messaging. That brings me to the last MUST HAVE book of this post:




SENDMAIL is critical in your studies. You don't have to master every flag and switch, that is impossible!! However, you must understand the basics of heterogenous messaging systems and sendmail is the great-grandfather of the Internet. Learn about messaging and always be an expert in heterogeneous email architectures. No organization can survive without robust messaging.

That is all for today. I have a few more on networking that are essential academic texts for those who, like me, do not see UNIX as an OS but as a networking philosophy. If you would like, I will post the networking books as well.

Thanks everyone, and Neo please post the networking books as well, and as many as you can that are worth posting about.
Keep them coming!

theA

Another good one is The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. It details the true story of a sysadmin that discovers a $0.75 accounting error which leads him into a chase for an international spy ring. A must read for any sys-admin.

What about the two monsterous additions of "Unix Unleashed" :
System Administrator addition
& Internet addition.

These are not bad books for Unix either...

YOu may place them aside the Sendmail book and fill the shelf

Hezki

P.S. Thanks for the nice image of Unix in a Nutshell, Neo.

Another book I saw while browsing at Chapters was

"Optimizing Unix for Performance" -Author Amir H. Majidimehr

Seemed very interesting, I was just wondering if anyone has read this book and could give an opinion on it.
But I the cover was orange and not white.

And Neo when you said "without understanding TCP/IP network adminstration you can only swim in the 'UNIX baby pool'

I noticed that a lot of networking courses teach TCP/IP for Windows NT and not unix. So is it just having knowledge about TCP/IP or should you get a course on unix TCP/IP.
theA

We recommend this above to UNIX.COM Forum members for checking out the recommended books.

Also, visit a previous thread for more book ideas from forum members:

[Edited by Neo on 01-21-2001 at 10:45 AM]


Link corrected -- Perderabo

This book is one of the most popular (current) system admin books. Reviews are great.