UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,
I would like to become Linux/Unix administrator. Of course I am aware that it is practically impossible to get that job immediately and in the beginning it will be Junior position or 2nd level of technical support.
But I would like to ask: how in-depth knowledge about daemons such like Apache, Sendmail, BIND, Samba should I have? Do you think that a description which is included in book "Unix Administration Handbook" is enough to apply for entry-level position?
I enjoy with tools such like vi, bash, awk etc. and I can learn it easily.
But I am not sure about how I should interpret sentences "good knowledge of Apache, Sendmail, ..." in job offers because I think that every has very specific requirements about how a given configuration should look so in my opinion it is more matter of ability to use manuals and documentation than a matter of knowledge of tools itself.

Greetings!

While ability to read manuals is essential, experience of what setting is responsible for what particular form of flaky behaviour you are witnessing is also vital. (Sendmail is a "special" case as it requires "experience" to configure).

For a junior position a good knowledge of $DAEMON is probably little more than its existence, default ports, configuration files and their format and the resources you'd expect it to use under a known load (eg. is 2G memory use reasonable for the service while netstat shows 200 open connections to it on $PORT or should we be looking at that?)

Thank you for response.

Could you give books which you think that every person who apply for junior administrator position should have read?