{"id":441,"date":"2006-11-14T09:35:21","date_gmt":"2006-11-14T14:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2006\/11\/14\/linux-performance-server-security-related-book-reviews"},"modified":"2006-11-14T09:36:43","modified_gmt":"2006-11-14T14:36:43","slug":"linux-performance-server-security-related-book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2006\/11\/14\/linux-performance-server-security-related-book-reviews","title":{"rendered":"Linux (performance, server, security) related book reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

I took a vacation recently, which involved heading down to Hobart, for some rest & relaxation. And lots of food (read: oysters, seafood, yum!). I packed my suitcase with some books for some late night reading, and am pleased to provide some form of review.<\/p>\n

Linux Server Hacks<\/a>\"\" by Rob Filkenger was definitely interesting. I’d say I found at least 1\/4 of the hacks useful, with others probably being common sense (or maybe I already knew them). There were some useful scripts, and overall while this book doesn’t earn a keeper on my shelves, I did take away some useful bits and pieces: xargs tips, looking for setgid\/setuid binaries, hdparm tuning, rsync backups, iptables fun, a tool called vtund that I’ve never used, ntop, their very own httptop, and a few more.<\/p>\n

Linux Performance Tuning and Capacity Planning<\/a>\"\" by Jason R Fink and Matthew D. Sherer had some rather basic and shallow information, that you’d have learnt as part of the LPI Level One certification at least. There was a section on network tuning as well, which is important with things like NFS. I was hoping I’d see some details about AFS (because I know a very large install base), alas zilch. But there are good bits of basic information, like if you’ve ever wondered what RSS means from the ps output? A good introduction to LVM exists; this book was published in 2001, you hardly notice much about IPV6 in their networking chapters. And afaik, TCP ECN has been enabled by default for a while – sure it caused misery for a while, its all good. This isn’t a keeper on my packed bookshelf.<\/p>\n

Linux Security Cookbook<\/a>\"\" by Daniel J. Barrett, Richard E. Silverman, and Robert G. Byrnes seems to be woefully out of date, but maybe its because it was published in 2003. I found the examples of creating PAM-aware applications useful, and there were some good tips about sudo (have you thought that restricting su to a sudo user would be a secure solution? Apparently it isn’t, thought combined with SELinux I’d think otherwise). Yet another non-keeper for the bookshelves, though it’d be helpful if there existed an updated review copy covering SELinux, AppArmor (of which I know nothing about) and a whole lot more new happenings in the last three years.<\/p>\n

What I did find as a keeper was: Optimizing Linux(R) Performance: A Hands-On Guide to Linux(R) Performance Tools (HP Professional Series)<\/a>\"\". I’ll review this later as I soak up more of the text.<\/p>\n

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Technorati Tags: book<\/a>, linux<\/a>, performance<\/a>, reviews<\/a>, security<\/a><\/p>\n

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