BSD, Linux, UNIX and related books
The lists are fairly self explanatory in their own right. If anybody has any of the books that I list in my 'Intend to buy' list, that they are no longer using, please feel free to contact me to see if we can arrange a deal of sorts. I'm always happy to save a few pounds and it would make sense to allow somebody else to recover at least some of their outlay on a book that they no longer need. Although I've researched the wanted books for suitability for my needs, I am always happy to listen to advice, if you have a better suggestion. The books that I find useful, are obviously books that I already own. Finally, I have four books that I no longer need and might be useful to others, these are listed at the end. If you would like any of these, again, please feel free to contact me. Something that you might notice, is that I am a big fan of books published by O'Reilly. My first O'Reilly book was the Perl Cookbook, but it wasn't until I had bought Programming PHP and Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, shortly followed by Cascading Style Sheets - The Definitive Guide, that I really got the bug. Their standardisation within particular ranges of books, really makes you feel at home from the start.
However, I have recently been buying books published by No Starch Press. I started off with Absolute BSD and found it to be a breath of fresh air, in the technical genre. That was followed by Absolute OpenBSD and then The Book of Postfix, both of which have really impressed me. While I was browsing through their site, I came across The Web Programmer's Desk Reference, which appears to be a complete reference on HTML, CSS and Javascript, in over a thousand pages. Considering that I was intending to buy books on HTML and Javascript, from the O'Reilly range, I have decided instead to go for this one and it is now on order. I have every faith that I will be similarly impressed with it, as I have their other books. I'll probably look to get their guide on PGP/GnuPG next, to really hone my privacy knowledge. I have always been a fan of O'Reilly books, but comparing their Postfix book to the No Starch Press equivalent, I think I have found a better publisher in the latter. It is just a shame that they do not have such a huge range of technical books as O'Reilly. I understand that there is a business relationship between the two and only hope that the No Starch Press style is maintained and that their range is expanded. For me it is a winner.
My pride prompts me to add, that where I mention books that I want to buy, it doesn't mean that I want to learn the applicable subjects. It means that I want to learn more about those subjects. Nobody can know it all and I don't claim to, but we can go through all of our lives and still be learning new things, right along the way. For example, I am forever finding new things about Apache, despite running it for a good few years now. I like books, as they are just one method of absorbing a subject, with hands on experience being another. I read to wind down and so I really appreciate a book that makes good reading and also teaches me something. The No Starch range and to a slightly lesser extent, a lot of the O'Reilly books I own, provide those aspects very well. No matter how knowledged you are, or think you are, there is always more to learn.
Books that I find useful
A rare commodity in the field of computing literature, Michael Lucas writes with style, humour and honesty and this makes it a very good read and difficult to put down. It's one of those books where I just had to finish each chapter before lights out. Ideal for the UNIX newbie and I mean ideal, but also has enough real technical content to remain useful for some time to come. Highly recommended! It was after reading this book that I bought Absolute OpenBSD, without any reservations.
Another excellent read, covering all the major generals, that takes an in-depth look into the world's most secure operating system. Once again, Lucas' style of writing makes this an enjoyable read, whilst also giving you the information you really need. Regardless of your experience of OpenBSD, this book has something for you but I would not recommend it as an introduction to UNIX or BSD. As with OpenBSD itself, it is not for absolute beginners and you would be well advised to cut your UNIX and BSD teeth on something a little more user friendly, like FreeBSD and the Absolute BSD book mentioned above. Once you know what you are doing to some extent, then by all means move onto OpenBSD and by then, this book will be ideal for you. This book has some excellent chapters on pf, which could give you just enough to set up your own firewalls. If it's more than just your personal stuff you need to protect, you'd be well advised to get Jacek Artymiak's book, mentioned further on.
If you are already comfortable with PHP programming and want to move on to more accomplished fields, then this is an ideal book for you. It covers, amongst other subjects API design, project management with CVS, stand alone scripting using the CLI version of PHP and Object Oriented Programming with PHP. Schlossnagle is clearly an expert in the field, and has a wealth of experience including participation in the development of PHP itself and writing Apache modules, on top of his PHP coding credentials. The foreward is provided by our old friend Rasmus Lerdorf
An excellent guide to securing the Apache web server, with examples of vulnerability test scripts. Includes a brief primer on hardening PHP and offers some sound theory, to help you to understand some of the aspects of running a web server that you really need to know. It also recommends some other excellent books and plenty of online resources, should you need to educate yourself further on the subject.
As with all of the O'Reilly Definitive books, this one covers every angle and is exhaustive in its detail. It makes a particularly good reference manual and bed time reading and should help you along, regardless of how you run things on your server. Script interpreters, all the redirect and rewrite tricks and everything else in the httpd.conf files. Focuses on the 1.3 branch, which is right as the 2.0 branch isn't really production. Unix/Linux and Windows versions are covered also.
A good reference and tips book that can not only teach you some of the tricks of the trade, but also provide inspiration for your own small hacks and projects. Seems to have a focus on FreeBSD, but also explains some of the differences to be considered if you are using OpenBSD or NetBSD, where applicable. Not ideal for the newbie and as I say, it's very FreeBSD oriented, but if those points suit you, then it's a great book to flick through.
This book fully deserves the respect and accolades that it receives from the OpenBSD community. Start asking broad questions about firewalling and OpenBSD on almost any list, forum or group and it's likely that you'll receive the answer, "Read 'Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF' by Jacek Artymiak...", or words to that effect. An essential and excellent book which contains most of what you need to know and also makes a good read, unlike many other books which are more akin to manuals or tech sheets.
Cascading Style Sheets are one of those rare commodities in web authoring, something that can save you time, effort, bandwidth and allows you to do more than you would be able to with your existing markup. Using CSS, you can make universal changes across any number of pages, by editing a single file, amongst many other benefits. It can help save bandwidth and thus loading times for your pages and save you money on your hosting provider bill. Best of all it's not a proprietary technology, but a standard defined by the leading web standards body. Eric Meyer writes with humour and an awesome knowledge of the subject. One of my best book buys, on any subject, I learned so quickly from his words it's unbelievable. If only he could teach me how not to be such a lethargic bum!
The UNIX shell can be a very powerful resource and used correctly, it can save you a lot of time. Classic Shell Scripting will help you to learn how to leverage the power and flexibility of the UNIX tool set and other programs that can help you automate tasks and even build complete, ad-hoc application scripts. A brilliant read!
Another excellent O'Reilly book and an absolute must have, if you are to have any involvement in DNS and DNS servers. Contains good background information to explain the workings of DNS, before going on to configuring BIND in the various roles that it is intended to serve. Useful chapter on security to help you keep things tight.
I'm not familiar with CVS and so have bought this book to get up to speed with it and make use of this very powerful system for source code management. It is one of the few arrows that I lack in my quiver, that I would want there. On first impressions it looks like a very informative book, covering CVS and related tools, on Unix/Linux, Windows and Macintosh. Along with learning Python, brushing up on XML/XSLT and improving my Perl knowledge and experience, CVS was something that I really wanted to learn more about. Now I have the perfect book to help me along.
PHP gets some pretty bad press and if you believe the hype, you will find that it is a security nightmare. However, this is not true. PHP itself is not really much less secure as any other web scripting language and fixes for newly discovered vulnerabilities are implimented as needed. What can be insecure about it, is you the programmer. I believe that because PHP is a very easy language to pick up, a lot of novice programmers are taking to it and that their naive code is mainly responsible for the high number of PHP related vulnerabilities. That and its popularity, result in a lot of vulnerabilities being found. With correct coding, awareness of the operating environment and some forethought, you can quickly and easily develop feature rich web based applications. This short, concise guide to PHP Security, will point out most, if not all of the issues that you need to consider and provides example code to demonstrate and enforce the theories. Short, sweet and sound!
A great book for those new to HTML/XHTML, those who have been writing it for years and need to pick up on some of the finer points or missed nuggets, or those who could do with a great reference on the specifications and the tags. I fall into both of the last two of those three categories and am very impressed with this book. I'd planned to buy it for a long time, only to allow other books to jump the queue and now I wish I had bought it sooner. It is also a decent read and gives a good grounding in the markup languages. A definite must have, for those new to the subject, you won't regret it.
Where many of the books in this list will give you information on various aspects of web communications and the protocols that allow web sites to work, nothing comes close to this definitive guide to the HTTP protocol. One of the unsung heroes of the web, the HyperText Transfer Protocol is responsible for most of the fundamental workings of the web. Optimising HTTP headers and proxies, response codes, SSL and every other facet of web serving and transport. If you are a web server admin or hope to be, then this is an absolute must have.
A broad but expert guide on network security. Not a how-to with step-by-step instructions, but speaks about generals and fundamentals, covering a host of operating systems. Covers all the major aspects of network security. Northcutt's credentials are superb and he writes a good book. As I've said, this isn't a hands on, how to style of book, at least not in my mind, but it does help in helping you to think in the right ways, about network security.
The rhino book as it is affectionately known, lives up to the tag of being the definitive guide to JavaScript and also covering aspects of Microsoft's JScript equivalent as well as the ECMAscript specification. DOM standard and the major modern browsers up to MSIE6 and the Netscape / Mozilla equivalents. Probably not the ideal book if you are new to JavaScript but an absolute must have once you are on the road.
An excellent book if you run a Linux server and a good book if you run any UNIX-like server. Covers most of what you need to know, to run a tight ship in serverland and don't know exactly what you are facing. If you're just starting out then be prepared to be scared as this book points out things that you might have overlooked. However, a little paranoia goes a very long way.
This book is the bible of regular expressions, an absolute must have for anybody writing scripted applications where text is parsed and matched using regular expressions. From Perl, PHP and Python to VB.Net and back to shell scripting, regexp's are everywhere that text needs to be matched and parsed for processing, and this book covers all the dialects. I've been competent with regexp's for a good while now, but wanted to become an expert of sorts and be able to really leverage the power of them. With this authorative book, I'm well on my way.
A recent addition to the collection and one that makes good reading, away from the screen. The Postfix MTA is an industry standard replacement to sendmail, with a focus on security and efficiency through simplicity. This book makes a good reference and from my point of view, fills in some gaps in my email server knowledge.
PostgreSQL is touted as the most advanced Open Sourced database system around and who am I to argue? This excellent book will take you from novice to expert, help in the transition from other database systems, assist you in writing applications that utilise databases and much more. From installing PostgreSQL, through database design and on to programming using established PostgreSQL APIs, you won't be left wanting if you have this book. It contains more than you are likely to need, but certainly everything you need, no matter what your involvement with PostgreSQL.
Another recent addition to the collection, as I begin my journey into the C programming language. My initial impressions are that this book has been honed very well, for it's target audience, namely people new to the language. Having read the first few chapters so far, I'm pleased to see that I was right about my experience of various script languages, has put me in a good position to learn C. I'm able to fully grasp and understand the examples and everything said so far. Looking through the Table of Contents, I don't think I will need to be in any great hurry to buy the Kernighan and Ritchie book, 'The C Programming Language', although it still remains high on my list of 'must haves'. An ideal book for beginners in C, on my first impressions I would definitely recommend it.
PHP is a powerful scripting language, ideally suited but not limited to producing dynamic HTML content although it can also be used locally in the shell. It's focus is on rapid development of web based applications, with one eye on helping the programmer avoid classic gotchas that might compromise their website and the server on which it resides. It has had it's share of security issues, but as time passes these are closed and we move on. Support and interfaces to many components popular in dynamic content environments, including database and mail integration and runtime manipulation or creation if graphical images are just some of the tricks it has up it's sleeve. I have also found PHP to be a great language to help teach good program structure. An excellent book for any aspiring web developer. Rasmus Lerdorf is the man who created PHP which helps make this such a great book.
Updated revision of the above title, now covering PHP5. Probably not worth buying if you have the First Edition, but if you don't have a PHP book, then this one is a great starting point.
If you are a reasonably experienced UNIX(like) user, looking to migrate to OpenBSD, then this has to be the book for you. Covers most aspects of the operating system and has great sections on IPsec and firewalls. A good read and an even better introduction to this highly respected, secure operating system.
The sed (stream editor) and awk (named after it's creator's initials - which includes a certain Mr Kernighan, Aho and Weinberger being the others) are two of the most used tools in UNIX. sed is a simple program, suitable for use on the command line or in scripts, whilst awk is a text processing oriented language in it's own right. Where ever text needs to be parsed or changed, you will find that one or the other of these two programs will get the job done for you. The time you spend reading this book and learning to use sed and awk and developing your own solutions using them, will be repayed many times over, when your scripts begin turning hours of manual labour, into fast, automated tasks.
SSH is one of my most used network tools and provides security and integrity in 99% of everything that I do over the wire. As with all the O'Reilly Definitive guides, this is a comprehensive guide to one of the best network security tools around. Coverage of the ever popular OpenSSH, as well as SSH Tectia and clients for Unix, Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, configuration, theory, under the bonnet and general primers to every facet of its internals and best practices. An absolute must-have for anybody working over a network, including the biggest and most hostile of them all, the Internet.
This book is widely regarded as the Bible of TCP/IP. The accolade is fully deserved and despite the age of it, it's obviously still relevant. If you are serious about networking and network security you should have this on your shelf. If you want to learn about the TCP/IP protocols, this might not be the best starting point, but you will need to get it eventually.
Another great buy from the No Starch Press range. I only wish that I had bought this one instead of the O'Reilly - 'The Definitive Postfix'. I've pretty much read the O'Reilly book from cover to cover, but it just didn't quite seem to sink in. With the books from No Starch Press, there is a different approach which makes the books far more readable and as a result, the facts tend to sink in better. There is usually some injection of humour and a connection to the real world, which humanises the books. I can only recommend that you buy at least one No Starch Press book and see how you get along with their style. You may, like me, find that you are so impressed that you start checking their website to see what is in the pipeline. Excellent publisher.
This book won't teach you anything that isn't readily available on the internet, but is an invaluable book to have at hand, when dealing with FreeBSD systems. Very comprehensive book with plenty of nuggets of gold for the FreeBSD enthusiast. It is basically a rework of the online docs, so I can't recommend it that highly, especially if you have more than one computer at your disposal. However, for "away from the keyboard" reading, or to assist in trouble shooting with no internet connection, it can be a life saver.
I'm a novice with C and time limitations are restricting how much I can spend learning the language but I have been slowly working my way through the chapters and exercises in 'Programming in C', mentioned above. I will continue to work from that book, until I have completed it. However, once that's finished, I'll start afresh with this book from the fathers of C. I had been lead to believe that this would not be a great book to start off with, but after looking through the examples and reading a few brief sections, I would have happily started with this one. Being from the creators of the language, it teaches code correctness and good style. This second edition covers the Ansi C specification, so it is suitable for and relevant to the present day. Has a tutorial style, interspersed with excellent descriptions. Widely regarded as the Bible of C, or at least the first edition was.
Although I have other books on the subjects covered in this one, it still offers great value in that it covers HTML, CSS and Javascript specifications and handily details the differences between the main browser engines from Netcape (now in the Mozilla guise) and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Although I only design my own sites with Firefox users in mind, until Microsoft start complying to standards, I occasionally have to put together sites that I cannot dictate the browser support in the markup. This book is a fantastic and thorough reference of the main technologies you need to know about. In short, it lives up to its title and doesn't disappoint. Well worth buying, although rarely for a No-Starch publication, it's not exactly a riveting read, but then reference books never are.
Where do I begin? The title says it all really, in the sense that a Unix administrator is a craftsperson and along with their knowledge, this book is their tools. From the first time that you make use of this book, you will be hit in the face by it's quality of information. From seasoned pros, to the technically minded Unix novice, this could be the only book you need to arm yourself with in the world of Unix. A little pricey, but then all the very best books are and the price is fully justified. This third edition is 1000+ pages of pure Unix gold!
Although I am at ease with MySQL database use, administration and programming scripts that utilise databases, I have found this book to be an excellent read and freely admit to learning quite a few things from it. The book also provides some great examples that demonstrate best practice and help you to unlearn or avoid learning bad habits. An excellent all round book which I highly recommend if the subject is relevant to your needs.
A handy little time saver, when I really have to use XML, which to be honest is as seldom as I can manage as I don't really have much knowledge of XML and have several other things that I need to swat up on before I indulge in the luxury of XML. On the odd occasion when I have had to make use of XML, this book as been able to give me enough of an outline to continue coding.
I also have the following books, which I believe are no longer in print and in some cases have been superceded by newer editions. I mention them as their newer (and available) editions may prove useful to you. As these titles are no longer available, I won't add descriptions or authors, but will provide ISBNs to help you pinpoint the books easier. Suffice to say that these books have helped me greatly over the years.
- Perl Cookbook - ISBN: 1565922433
- Instant CGI/Perl - ISBN: 0072133872
- Essential Perl 5 for Web Professionals - ISBN: 0130126535
- UNIX Unleashed - System Administrator's Edition - ISBN: 0672309521
Feel free to drop me a line, via my feedback form, if you have questions or suggestions about technical books. Alternatively, you can post a comment below. For those who notice, I've removed the Amazon links from these pages, as I'm not impressed with their handling of particular issues regarding security and I have suffered as a result. I'm also no longer comfortable sending people their way after recent events regarding my account with them.
Post a comment:
| 
| 
