Where's a good all purpose reference site for administering a Unix server?

August 17, 2004 7:06 AM

Where's a good all purpose reference site for administering a Unix server (a Raq4 if it makes any difference). I've read the manual and thus have the basics, but having absolutely no grounding in Unix, simple tasks take a lot of blundering around Google hoping to hit the right keyword.

For example; it took me a good half hour (twenty minutes search and ten minutes working out how to use Vi (have since discovered Pico) to keep my log files for more than a week (rotate was set to 1 in logrotate.conf)
posted by Hartster to computers & internet (4 comments total)

My friend is a big fan of Unix Power Tools, but it's a book.
posted by jeb at 7:42 AM on August 17, 2004

Well the problem is that there are many kinds of Unix and Linux operating environments, each with its own potentially different arrangement of configuration files. "logrotate", for instance, is a Red Hat invention that has become popular and is included in some Linux distributions. But no single reference covers all Unix-like operating environments.

Google says that the Raq4 runs "a hacked Red Hat 6.2", so you should probably start with the Red Hat 6.2 documentation. And I second jeb: for general Unix admin tricks, you should have a copy of Unix Power Tools.
posted by nicwolff at 7:44 AM on August 17, 2004

Some other titles you might want to check would include Voodoo Unix,
The Underground Guide to UNIX, and When You Can't Find Your UNIX System Administrator.

Jon "Hannibal" Stokes of Ars Technica fame is a Cobalt Qube3 owner,
and is familiar with the Red Hat variants. You could check out the OpenForum posts for related information, or could even post a query,
which he'd be more than happy to answer.
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:12 AM on August 17, 2004

Aeleen Frisch's Essential Unix System Administration (O'Reilly) is one of the classic books and I highly recommend it.

If you're after Linux-specific stuff the Linux Documentation Project is a good place to start.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:59 PM on August 17, 2004