Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 16:33:31 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Mayo <mark@quickweb.com> To: Chris Coleman <chris@bb.cc.wa.us> Cc: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>, mcgovern@spoon.beta.com, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Constructive criticism (was: bashing everyone for fun and profit) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.94.970130160647.5182A-100000@vinyl.quickweb.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.94.970130123942.29097A-100000@aries.bb.cc.wa.us>
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On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Chris Coleman wrote: > > On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Julian Elischer wrote: > > > > > > > What is the intent of your book? What specific areas will it cover? > > > What kind of existing material are you looking for? > > > > how will it differ from the "FreeBSD book" that Walnut Creek CDROM sell? > > I have to document the 5 existing FreeBSD Machines that I set up for the > College. I am required to produce enough documentation so that the > Student interns that work in the computer science area can administrate > the system after I leave. These Student Interns are trained only in > Novell. Therefore I need to produce a document that will show them the > basics of FreeBSD Unix. Basically this will be a newbie book. I noticed that you called your book "A USERS GUIDE TO INSTALLING AND RUNNING FREEBSD". Perhaps you should contact Greg Lehey, he wrote a book called: "Installing and Running FreeBSD", published by Walnut Creek. The book is 3 hundered pages long, and came with my 2.1R CD-ROM. If you check out http://www.cdrom.com/os/bsdbook.htm you'll notice that it's now called: "The Complete FreeBSD". I'm assuming this is an updated version of the book I have. Greg's book is fairly good, dealing mostly with the Installation. He doesn't really get into network setups, ppp, etc.. in great detail. It was excellent for me, as it introduced me to the whole kernel build procedure, installation concepts, and hardware setup. He also gets into XFree86 configuration details, although I would have like a slightly more expanded chapter on X11R6 - maybe with a little less focus on XFree86 and on X11 in general (config file locations, better explanations of xdm, etc..) I think maybe some of the things you could cover would include an explantion of some of the BSD traditions (slice a is for / filesystem, b for swap, c for entire disk, etc..) and maybe even a step-by-step approach to "Setting Up a High-Performance Internet Server with FreeBSD". Ever see those SAMS books around that explain how to setup a Linux Internet server? I don't know the quality of them, but my friend at a local book store tells me they sell like hotcakes! Whatever you decide, contact Greg Lehey and see what he has done, and I'm certainly willing to help out considerably with stuff as well (I suspect I'm at a similar technical level as yourself - relatively new to freeBSD, but after having to learn everything from scratch to make real FreeBSD servers, I'm feeling more comfortable with the OS. At least from an administration standpoint). FreeBSD is a great OS suited for a wide variety of tasks - I would like to see sort of a "Do it Yourself Server, with FreeBSD" book. Almost a motivational book of sorts to show a new admin (who's undoubtably been asked to perform network magic with low funding) the types of things that FreeBSD excels at: - You don't need to by NT Server, use Samba as a SMB server for small to medium sized Windows LANS - You don't need to buy NT server, use FreeBSD for Dial-up WAN access - You don't need to buy NT server, use FreeBSD to connect your LAN to the Internet - with on demand dialing, and a firewall - You don't need to buy NT server, use FreeBSD and Apache to create a high perforance, stable web server. - DNS? Email? You don't need NT or a commercial Unix, use FreeBSD and named/sendmail - You don't need to buy a Cisco router, use FreeBSD and Gated with a cheap PC card! (Emerging Technologies, for ex.) - Etc.. If only I were finished school - so many things to do, so little time :( Good luck, -Mark ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Mayo mark@quickweb.com RingZero Comp. http://vinyl.quickweb.com/mark ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity." Cicero (106-43 B.C.) > > > Christopher J. Coleman (chris@aries.bb.cc.wa.us) > Computer Support Technician I (509)-766-8873 > Big Bend Community College Internet Instructor > FreeBSD Book Project: http://www.bb.cc.wa.us/~chris/book.html > Death is life's way of telling you you're fired. > >
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