Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Edition: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD

It was the correct 3rd Edition, so had the content I needed. Condition was essentially ‘new’ with wear you would associate with being on the shelf in a book store with only periodic handling. Binding not broken, no pages folded over and no markups on pages.

Disclaimers: I am not a system administrator and only a casual FreeBSD user.This book covers the FreeBSD operating system, system administration, and general UNIX in 620 pages (plus the Roman numeral pages in the preface). Given its broad scope, this is an impossible task, yet Lucas takes it on and delivers a really good product. Although it’s geared toward system administrators, anyone interested in any of those three topics can benefit from reading this publication.Expected audience skill level: relatively high. Lucas lays out in the preface what he expects readers to know prior to reading. For someone who has never used a UNIX-like system or done system administration, it would be substantial. When I came across things I didn’t know, a quick search on the internet got me back on track. As a teaching tool, the book best serves the reader by reinforcing the UNIX methodology of understanding a task concept -> testing it with a UNIX utility on the command line -> making the preferred setup for it permanent in a config file -> and optimizing the config file for ease of editing and readability. By the end of the book that pattern will become second nature to the reader. Lucas does a really nice job with that.The desktop: Lucas did this in his Absolute OpenBSD book with the cwm window manager description; he does not do that again here. There is too much else to cover. He does mention that he uses cwm and some other desktop applications. The desktop is a very personal realm and FreeBSD gives you a lot of choice; he probably did well to not spend valuable print space on this.Where Lucas does provide invaluable information for the desktop user is in a series of chapters on packaging and porting software in the middle of the book, as well as the chapter on operating system updates. He readily acknowledges the complexity of shared dependency library hell (he doesn’t call it that) and the UNIX make(1) system of managing it. Where to configure the network parameters for software downloads (if you are on a slow network, for example), how to run an older version of a program that uses different libraries, and how to run Linux programs are all covered.ZFS and filesystems: there are a few chapters towards the beginning of the book that cover these topics. They describe striping, mirroring, journaling, etc. ZFS itself, is a major change from the traditional Unix Filesystem (UFS) and it touches everything down to the kernel. Throughout the rest of the book Lucas makes it clear what you need to do depending on which filesystem you are using. In the performance monitoring chapter he spends a page or two covering how the UNIX top(1) utility output differs between ZFS and UFS. This was helpful for understanding how ZFS interacts with the kernel and uses and frees RAM.It was not possible or appropriate for Lucas to assume ZFS use for most systems at this date. If another edition of the book is published a decade or so from now, I suspect the focus on one filesystem will make the book a little shorter and more accessible.Read the whole book: there are useful nuggets throughout all 600+ pages. The performance monitoring and “fringe” chapters toward the end of the book included things I consider essential to using FreeBSD (how to switch between virtual terminals, for instance). The system administration topics are good for gaining comprehension (understanding how dhcp is administered on the server helps a user understand how to invoke it with dhclient, for instance).Physical book quality: no problems here. I abused the heck out of it while stuffing it in and out of a backpack on a train commute to work. Still in one piece.

book arrived in perfect condition

I have been a long-time user of Linux but recently have been hearing the siren call of FreeBSD. Having already purchased a number of Michael's books I was confident that his treatment of FreeBSD would be thorough. I was not disappointed. His writing is clear and his knowledge of the topic is obviously great.That said, I was somewhat shocked and dismayed to find that Michael appears to prefer Emacs to vi. On page 337 he states: "Here's how you'd install a vital program desired by all right-thinking sysadmins: pkg install emacs" and follows that up with "Those of you clinging to irrational biases against superior text processors probably want to remove it: pkg delete emacs"I was both stunned and dismayed. I find it almost impossible to believe that someone with Michael's apparent technical expertise would prefer an operating system masquerading as a text editor, emacs, over the one-true-editor: vi. Oh well.. no one is perfect. It does make me question the quality of the information provided throughout the book. I'm sure that his bias against vi was likely caused by his inability to figure out how to exit vi early in his career. But who can say?Anyway... if you would like a great introduction to FreeBSD and can hold your nose while wading through the emacs references then this is the book for you.

It is a good book for FreeBSD. However, I'm a casual user who started with FreeBSD 4.6, and over the years, I've used many UNIX derivative OSes. Again, I have never been a professional sysadmin or network admin, but mostly a developer, using BASH, PHP, Python, and Go. Reading this book, I learned some new stuff, but not as much as I expected. It seems that despite my hobbyist interest in *NIX OSes, I have learned a lot, and frankly, I expected to learn even more from this book. One drawback I can point out is that if you have already read Absolute OpenBSD, you will find a couple of sections that are exactly the same, which is not okay. However, it is a good book for the collection, with many useful things for new users. Also, I have read other books by the author, including Mastering ZFS/Filesystems/Jails, which may be why this book does not appeal to me as much. I will rate it 4 stars for the hard work and the cause!