Bauer has a written a very thorough book. It could also be described as comprehensive, extensive, excellent, and well researched, but overall, “thorough” is the most fitting description. This is alarming. In our rapidly changing technical environment, there is only time to be “thorough” after a product has matured, which is that brief period between “almost reliable” and “obsolete.” While some might claim Unix is old enough to be obsolete, it is far too soon to say goodbye to Linux.

The author says he has been using computers for 20 years, and Unix for ten. I have another ten years on him in both categories, and have also run Unix data centers. There is always more than one way to accomplish a task in Unix, so I could frequently think of other solutions than his. However, I never came up with an alternate solution that I would swear was more reliable, more portable, and easier to maintain. He provides solid solutions, while avoiding security and portability pitfalls, and teaches us something in the process.

I do have one complaint about this book, however. The title implies more coverage of commercial Unix systems than Bauer actually provides. Open-source systems are his focus, meaning that Linux (especially Red Hat), GNU, and FreeBSD get more attention than Solaris, HP/UX, or AIX. The open-source audience is admittedly larger than the commercial one, but an inexperienced systems administrator looking for help in this book could find his or her particular platform neglected.

And that brings us to the proper audience for this book. Bauer says he wanted to include everyone from expert to newcomer. I do believe that other experts could find something new and interesting in this book, but I doubt they would even be looking for yet another Unix admin book. And while newcomers are welcome (an appendix covers shell basics, perl, grep, awk, regex, and sed, but no vi!), I believe they would be overwhelmed. The ideal reader would be an intermediate to advanced Unix user who wants to go deeper, someone who wants to go beyond superstition into knowledge, or who just got promoted to caring for more systems than she or he can handle. This would also make an excellent text for teaching Unix system administration, where a mentor could guide beginners through the difficult parts.

The book is 574 pages long, including a 25-page index. There are 13 chapters (covering basics of automation, secure socket shell (SSH), scripts, net management, customizing installations, automatic sysconfig, sharing data, packages and patches, system maintenance, monitoring, security, backups, and user interfaces) and three appendices (on basic tools, automating Red Hat installation, and building RPM Package Managers). The text is clean and easy to read, although I am not fond of the imitation console font used for headings and the table of contents. Examples are very readable, and cautions, warnings, and other notes are clearly marked and informative. This is a well-made paperback text.