BSD Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools

by Dru Lavigne

In the world of Unix operating systems, the various BSDs come with a long heritage of high-quality software and well-designed solutions, making them a favorite OS of a wide range of users. Among budget-minded users who adopted BSD early on to developers of some of today's largest Internet sites, the popularity of BSD systems continues to grow. If you use the BSD operating system, then you know that the secret of its success is not just in its price practical, reliable, extraordinarily stable and flexible, BSD also offers plenty of fertile ground for creative, time-saving tweaks and tricks, and yes, even the chance to have some fun. "Fun?" you ask. Perhaps "fun" wasn't covered in the manual that taught you to install BSD and administer it effectively. But BSD Hacks , the latest in O'Reilly's popular Hacks series, offers a unique set of practical tips, tricks, tools--and even fun--for administrators and power users of BSD systems. BSD Hacks takes a creative approach to saving time and getting more done, with fewer resources. You'll take advantage of the tools and concepts that make the world's top Unix users more productive. Rather than spending hours with a dry technical document learning what switches go with a command, you'll learn concrete, practical uses for that command. The book begins with hacks to customize the user environment. You'll learn how to be more productive in the command line, timesaving tips for setting user-defaults, how to automate long commands, and save long sessions for later review. Other hacks in the book are grouped in the following If you want more than your average BSD user--you want to explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools, and come up with fun things to try on your own-- BSD Hacks is a must-have. This book will turn regular users into power users and system administrators into super system administrators.

Genres: Technical, Computers

447 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2004

About the author

Dru Lavigne is a network and systems administrator, IT instructor, author and international speaker. She has over a decade of experience administering and teaching Netware, Microsoft, Cisco, Checkpoint, SCO, Solaris, Linux and BSD systems.

She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Source Business Resource, a free monthly publication covering open source and the commercialization of open source assets. She is founder and current Chair of the BSD Certification Group Inc., a non-profit organization with a mission to create the standard for certifying BSD system administrators. She recently joined the Board of the FreeBSD Foundation.

Reviews

[Joseph II · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a Unix users (in various flavors) for over twenty years. I had heard about BSD in the early 2000s, but I could never find a copy of installation media (disks, CDROMs) to get it started up... until 2008. After I obtained a copy of FreeBSD 7.0, I've kept a copy on at least one system in my inventory... but not until I read Dru Lavigne's book "BSD Hacks" did I actually unlock some of the potential in that BSD box.

The learning curve is steady throughout the book, allowing you to tweak your system with Dru's hacks. A lot of the security related ones deal with OpenBSD or OpenBSD-derived commands on FreeBSD. It was a great read first-time through, and a irreplaceable reference for my BSDing.

The only downside is... since O'Reilly has seemingly discontinued the "Hacks" series, there will probably not be an update for this book. Some programs mentioned with (CVS comes to mind), has been deprecated in BSDs, and totally removed in current versions. So those hacks fall flat, now. Others just require tweaks from the older code/commands to newer versions.

BSD-derived variants took a Public Relations hit in the early 1990s, with the AT&T/Univ of California Berkeley fight... hence the reason Linux leapt in popularity. Dru's book helped drag BSD out of obscurity for a Unix-lifer like me... and if you get a (used) copy, it can do the same for you!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you have aspirations of becoming a leet haxor, then this book is for you. in no time you'll know all sorts of tricks that were left out of the freebsd handbook online. i used information from this book to shamelessly steal wifi, secure my webserver and to keep my mind busy while sitting on the king's throne. btw, theo was right when he said that the difference between bsd and linux is that bsd admins have actually kissed girls. i've kissed many!

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

These hacks are pretty useful...OK, not all of them, but
a number of them can make your life easier or at least let
you feel like after all these years of learning linux/unix
while Windows users are happily pushing buttons like monkeys
has finally paid off :)

Yes, it says BSD hacks, and I do use BSD, but many of these
hacks can easily extend to Linux (which I also use).

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

BSD may look a lot like linux but it isn't in so many ways. OTOH many of these tips work under linux too. Definitely good for BSD newbies such as myself, but linuxoids may also find interesting and/or useful nuggets.

[Scuppers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a deep appreciation for books that take an abstract, technical topic and describe it in a way that makes complete sense. In BSD Hacks, Dru Lavigne does just that.