SECTIONS
I was delighted to see that Eric S. Raymond’s “How to become a hacker” was excerpted in the front matter. It was Raymond’s work that first nudged me down the hacker’s path; any book that quotes from the Cathedral and the Bazaar is off to a good start.

CHAPTERS

Server Basics

Although the hacks presented in this chapter do indeed cover many of the basic tasks that make up the regular routines of server administration, don’t be fooled into thinking that the word “basic” in the title means that only utter newbies need to read this chapter. Many of the hacks described here are reasonably sophisticated, and none could be described as obvious. In reading this chapter, I discovered that many of the unnecessary-daemon-killing and resource-hog-hunting hacks can be combined with performance-milking hacks in ways that had never even occurred to me before.

Revision Control

Revision control is an undisputed necessity in any system administration effort, so it really goes without saying that this chapter is a must-read. That being said, however, the three RCS-specific hacks are really just enough to allow RCS to make a token appearance in a chapter that is otherwise entirely dominated by CVS-specific hacks. One almost gets the impression that a collection of RCS reference materials could be relegated to a sidebar in subsequent editions, thereby making more room for the author’s obvious favorite, CVS. It’s not that the RCS hacks are not useful—far from it!—but simply that there are two few of them to build upon, unlike the CVS hacks which have the additional benefit of being numerous as well as useful.

Networking

Expect very little hand-holding in this chapter. If you don’t already understand networking jargon, this book is not going to explain it to you. The author expects readers to have a solid understanding of those concepts already, so that he get get on with explaining more advanced topics, like how to thwart DoS attacks, drop packets that seem to be infected, or create tunnels across the Internet from one private network to another.

This is also perhaps the real jumping off point, where the book really dives into hacks on a level that only true professionals can sufficiently appreciate. The earlier chapters presented hacks for purposes that even Linux hobbyists could use, things like version control and backups, but this chapter breaks away from those basic things and goes far beyond. (For one thing, the hacks about tunneling require multiple private networks, which it seems safe to assume the hobbyist will not have.) Some might say this is where the book starts to get really interesting. Whether you agree with that sentiment or not, this chapter is the dividing line between the hacks for all and the hacks for pros.

Monitoring

In order to make sure that everything is running the way it should and to get the best performance out of your particular setup, it is imperative to know what’s going on and when. That means monitoring. The catch, though, is knowing what to monitor on any given system, as no two are necessarily alike. Monitor everything and you’ll soon end up with a disk full of information you don’t really need. Monitor too little and you run the risk of “poking variables in the dark”, as the author puts it. Obviously, neither of these alternatives is acceptable, so the author thoughtfully provides numerous hacks that will help you pinpoint exactly the information you need, including information that you may have never even realized was available.

SSH

This chapter, all by itself, cleared up many of the things I found hard to understand in SSH: The Definitive Guide. Books dealing with data encryption can be abstruse and exceedingly dense (which make it a chore to read them), but Flickenger manages to focus solely on practical applications of SSH, with an eye on helping you get back as soon as possible to what it is you were working on before SSH entered the picture.

Scripting

Although this book is not about programming per se, this chapter is the author’s nod to the value of applying programming techniques to common, repetitive tasks as a time-saving measure. A bit of Perl goes a long, long way!

RECOMMENDATIONS/OBSERVATIONS
If there are shortcomings in this author’s approach, they are quite beyond my ability to detect. The sensible advice found herein condenses a great deal of experience, making it possible to absorb a lot of concentrated knowledge without actually having to relive those same experiences yourself. This is in keeping with the Hacker’s Ethic, as described in the preface: No problem should ever have to be solved twice.

For a book intended for hackers and geeks, Linux Server Hacks is remarkably well written. This is a refreshing change from most geek-oriented books, many of which are tediously dull. Quite the contrary with this book. Flickenger has a gift for levity that makes what would normally be monotonous into something light-hearted, even funny—and this remains true even when he’s chiding you for doing something foolish. Such is the mark of an able mentor. You’ll find it hard to read this book with a straight face, which could be good or bad, depending on who happens to be nearby when you are reading.

All the hacks are numbered, and the number of the hack being discussed appears in the outside corner at the top of each page, which makes it remarkably easy to flip through pages while looking for a hack that was referred to in another section. That’s probably as close as you can get to hyperlinks in a dead-tree publication.

One sure sign that you are getting candid, professional advice is when the author points you to books and resources other than those produced or owned by the publisher, as Flickenger does a number of times in this book. (Conversely, you know that you are being lured into a marketing ploy when most of the references in a book are to other titles by the same publisher. A little bit of cross-marketing is fine, but outright inbreeding really dilutes the value of the entire gene pool, so to speak.) It’s a small point, perhaps, but one that speaks volumes about the author’s true intentions.

A noteworthy side-effect of these collected hacks is that they stimulate ideas about how you could be handling tasks differently, more effectively. In the process of going about making these changes, however, you may find yourself in a position where you need to hack the hacks you had planned to use, thereby improving them (at least for your own purposes, if not in general). In this sense, each collection of hacks contains the seeds of the next generation of hacks. Therein lies the real value of this book: it leads you up to the point where you must forge ahead on your own. Sure, it’s great if you buy this book and find solutions to your problems in its pages, but you’ll know that you’ve really gotten your money’s worth when you buy this book and find even better solutions within yourself.

CONCLUSION
Serious professionals should have a copy of this book, even if only to hand to their less experienced brethren. Would-be pros and serious amateurs should definitely have a copy. People who are merely curious about how to run a Linux server can certainly learn a lot from this book, but might be better served by a resource targeted at a less advanced audience. Strongly recommended.