Linux in Action

by David Clinton

Linux in Action is a task-based tutorial that will give you the skills and deep understanding you need to administer a Linux-based system. This hands-on book guides you through 12 real-world projects so you can practice as you learn. Each chapter ends with a review of best practices, new terms, and exercises.

Genres: Computer Science, Software

384 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2018

About the author

David Clinton is an AWS solutions architect and a Linux system administrator. He is the author of a dozen books and two dozen Pluralsight courses on AWS, Linux, IT security, and server virtualization.

Reviews

[Daniel van Dorp · Rating 4 out of 5]

One might recognize the author's name, David Clinton, from another well-written book from the same publisher (Manning), called "Learn Amazon Web Services in a Month of Lunches". This time, the book is called Linux in Action, and the book is project-based rather than skill-based. Clinton will guide you through some real-world tasks, such as automated system backups, web servers including PHP and MySQL to setup MediaWiki, system security and encryption, remote connectivity, system performance and networking/hardware troubleshooting, and even some DevOps deployment orchestration with Ansible. However, you will still learn the lower-level details along the way such as the command-line syntax, as Ansible is only introduced in the very last chapter of the book (on purpose). Other topics that are touched include Linux virtualization, archive management, emergency system recovery, Nextcloud file-sharing, web server securing, system hardening including auditing and an IDS, VPN and firewalls, system monitoring and network file sharing. The operating system chosen is the one that dominates the enterprise and cloud system markets, and specificly the distributions Ubuntu and CentOS, because each of them represents an entire family of distributions. Ubuntu itself derives from the Debian family, while CentOS is closely related to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Fedora.

The book begins with a page describing the books topics together with the keywords of technologies used in those chapters. The first chapter describes what makes Linux different from other operating systems, and the basic skills needed to work with Linux. The second chapter describes the difference between virtualization and containers and how to work with both of them. The third chapter mainly touches ssh. The fourth chapter helps with archive management considerations and tools. The fifth chapter touches bash, AWS S3 and cronjobs. The sixt chapter describes recovery/rescue mode, live-booting and chrooting. The seventh chapter describes the manual setup of a MediaWiki server. The eighth chapter describes the manual setup of a Nextcloud file-sharing server. The ninth chapter describes securing, hardening and encryption. The tenth chapter describes securing network connections. The eleventh chapter describes system monitoring, mostly via logfiles. The twelfth chapter describes NFS and Samba for network file sharing. Chapter thirteen, fourteen and fifteen then describe troubleshooting of system performance, networking and hardware respectively. The sixteenth and last chapter describes how a lot of this previously done manual work can be automated with the help of DevOps related tools like Ansible.

While I have previously reviewed a book by Manning on a related topic, which was titled "Learn Linux in a Month of Lunches" by Steven Ovadia, the different level of this book is clear. While the former was a quick primer to enable the user to run Linux on his desktop, this book is instead trying to help the user to step up his game in Linux and potentially would like to pursue a career in Linux System Administration, or would at least like to be able to run and use Linux for work or hobby reasons and feel comfortable doing so. Recommended!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed (reading about) the example projects that were listed in the book.
However I did have my own issues with trying to do them...
Granted, because technology is always changing and things in print go out of date so quickly it made it hard to follow along.
Along with not knowing exactly why I was doing each step, it made it hard to troubleshoot.

Also, I was kind of disappointed by some typos and a few errors in the review question answers

Overall it was a good book.
I found the troubleshooting hardware and monitoring system performance to be quite helpful.


Kudos to the publisher: Who makes an online version available (in .pdf/.Epub/browser) upon validating a physical copy!
I will definitely keep Manning on my radar in the future, as they do this with all their books!

[Gene Ishchuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on Linux.
It might be a bit shallow but as the author notes: 'he gives you the overview for you to dig deeper if interested'. Fair enough.

I can tell I have learned enough about my desktop ParrotOS, stuff I had no idea about, especially memory/space management.

The SSH / archivation part was extremely useful

Thanks, David!

[Tony Poerio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it. This is a broad and very practical overview of the main tools you'll need as a day-to-day Linux admin. I'd consider myself well versed in the subject, and still picked up some new tricks. Good writing; clear exposition, and useful material.

[Weekend Critic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good beginner introduction. Focuses a bit more on IT-level administration than DevOps.
But still a great introduction into Linux ecosystem. Highly recommend for beginners or developers who want to learn a bit more about Linux.

[Frank-Mich L'Heureux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good tooling reference guide that covers a broad range of topics. It shows the basics, makes you aware that tools exist and then you can go on your own to learn more.