It’s a very straightforward book.  The introduction opens with a promise not to waste space showing how to compile OpenSSH in text.  Chapter 2 ends with the sentence, “Now that you understand how SSH encryption works, leave the encryption settings alone.”  This stripping-down of the usual tech-book explanations gives it the immediacy of extended documentation on the Internet.  Not the multipage how-to articles used as vehicles for advertising, but an in-depth presentation from someone who used OpenSSH to do a number of things, and paid attention while doing it.

It’s a fun read, and there’s a good chance it covers an aspect of SSH that you didn’t know.  In my case, it’s the ability to attach a command to a public key used for login.  It even covers complex-but-oh-so-useful VPN setups via SSH.

If you’re looking for philosophical reasons to buy it, how about the lack of DRM?

The physical version is not available yet, but the electronic version is available at Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), or from Smashwords (every other format ever, including .txt).  The Smashwords variety of formats means that you’ll be able to read it on your phone, one way or another; I’d like to see more books that way in the future.

I was talking to a relative today who works at a large financial company, which is standardizing on Red Hat Enterprise.  I find it strange that Red Hat, which has a lot of money behind it, still ships a years-old and arguably broken version of perl.   By using pkgsrc, you’re getting more up-to-date software than people that actually shell out money for the privilege of compiling software.

http://avalon.dragonflybsd.org/iso-images/

I read it despite my knee-jerk reaction, and I didn’t need to reject it so suddenly.  Almost all of the book will apply to any Unix-like system.

My first real experience with something that wasn’t Windows or a Mac was at a summer job during college, sitting in front of a SparcStation 5 editing files and processing data for real estate.  Much of my muscle memory about vi and file manipulation dates from then.  This book, even though it’s technically for a different operating system, would have been just what I needed.  There’s no system administration in the book, just making your way around a filesystem and the tools you need to get results.  It’s the kind of skills I think people lose out on when they boot to a graphical interface in Ubuntu, for example, and then never experience these tools.

Negatives: a few areas won’t be of use to most BSD users, like the section on packaging, or the bash-centric instructions in the shell programming area.  There’s the occasional off comment, like that OpenSSH originates from “the BSD project”.  There’s surprisingly little of this however, and I had to think a bit to write this negative paragraph.

Positives:  The book puts the proper focus on some complex but rewarding aspects of command line use, like using vi (alright, vim) and understanding regular expressions.  Much of what it covers is the same material I’ve learned to use over time, and explained to others.

There’s clearly two areas to the book; the first half is about using the command line to accomplish work, and the second is about shell programming.  Making it at least through the first half will result in being able to work at a prompt with little issue, with the shell programming a nice bonus.  It’s not the normal mix of admin tasks and introductory text; it’s about working at the command line.  I imagine giving it to new software testers in a lab, or to a Windows user that has to deal with the occasional unfamiliar environment.  There isn’t an equivalent BSD-centric book like this, so it wouldn’t hurt a BSD user, either.

It’s available now at the No Starch website.

(David Shao, where are you?  If you’re reading this, hop into #dragonflybsd and tell us how things are going with your GEM/KMS work)

I’m hoping to try out Mailman (with NNTP) as a replacement soon…

• Here’s a useful idea: a server that allows (Linux) systems with encrypted file systems to boot unattended.  I’m not sure how that doesn’t defeat the concept, but actually reading the documentation may help with that.  (via, via)
• While on the topic, the EFF says “Encrypt your disk!“.  (via)
• The Commodore 64 is 30 years old, for those readers of a certain age who may have had one…  I was a Apple ][ kid.  (via)
• Aw, thanks.
• “What deduplicating file system should I use?”  Well, I can think of an answer.

Your unrelated link for the day: The Restart Page.  (via)  Make your browser full-screen when trying any of them.

• I like the line, “Please note that BSD manpages are usually better as compare to Linux” [sic] found on this odd page of where to find documentation.
• Hey, this encryption of DNS requests is a good idea.  Then again, so is DNSSEC.  I’ve done neither.
• Stop using GoDaddy, if you can.  There’s plenty of reasons, other than support for SOPA.
• There’s got to be at least one reader who gets this joke.
• If you don’t mind digging through all the comments in this Slashdot article about building a desktop environment, there’s some neat descriptions of different window managers and so on.
• A mild brain teaser to start the year: a regular expression to find prime numbers.
• This is a nice description of just what the Archive Team does.  (via)
• The Coming War on General Purpose Computing.  Sometimes the stuff on BoingBoing gives me the same irritated feeling as sensationalistic Wired articles, but this one is good to read if you happen to be working on your own operating system.  Also, the similar thing with APIs.
• This “best tech writing of 2011” summary on Verge (via) led me to this excellent article: “The Web Is a Customer Service Medium“.  There’s lots more reading in that summary.
• I’ve seen this mentioned before, but now it’s with a graph so it’s better!  On the continuing decline of the GPL.
• OK, I admit graphs are not always a good idea.  (via)
• Trivium, from which I yoinked that last link, also has an blog from its author, Chris Neukirchen.  It’s not updated often but there’s some entertaining sysadmin tidbits on there, such as going all-ed, or zsh tips, or Why I use the MIT license.

Your completely unrelated link of the day: Tiny Legs of Fire.  (video) Worth it for the origin of Beardslap.

 (Sorry about the giant text block.  This isn’t as readable as I’d like.)