“First Sobell taught people how to use Linux . . . now he teaches you the power of Linux. A must-have book for anyone who wants to take Linux to the next level.”
–Jon “maddog” Hall, Executive Director, Linux International
New Chapters on Python and MySQL–Covers Perl, too!
- Learn from hundreds of realistic, high-quality examples, and become a true Linux command-line guru!
- NEW! Covers busybox, Midnight Commander, screen, and sshfs/curlftpf
- Covers the Mac OS X command line and its unique tools
- 295-page reference covers 98 utilities, including Mac OS X commands!
For use with all popular versions of Linux, including Ubuntu™, Fedora™, openSUSE™, Red Hat®, Debian, Mageia, Mint, Arch, CentOS, and Mac OS X, too!
The Most Useful Tutorial and Reference, with Hundreds of High-Quality Examples for Every Popular Linux Distribution
Linux is today’s dominant Internet server platform. System administrators and Web developers need deep Linux fluency, including expert knowledge of shells and the command line. This is the only guide with everything you need to achieve that level of Linux mastery. Renowned Linux expert Mark Sobell has brought together comprehensive, insightful guidance on the tools sysadmins, developers, and power users need most, and has created an outstanding day-to-day reference.
This title is 100 percent distribution and release agnostic. Packed with hundreds of high-quality, realistic examples, it presents Linux from the ground up: the clearest explanations and most useful information about everything from filesystems to shells, editors to utilities, and programming tools to regular expressions.
Use a Mac? You’ll find coverage of the Mac OS X command line, including OS X-only tools and utilities other Linux/UNIX titles ignore. Sobell presents a new MySQL chapter. There’s even an expert introduction to Python–today’s most valuable tool for automating complex, time-consuming administration tasks.
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, Third Edition, is the only guide to deliver
- A MySQL chapter to get you started with this ubiquitous relational database management system (RDBMS)
- A masterful introduction to Python for system administrators and power users
- New coverage of the busybox single binary collection of utilities, the screen terminal session manager/multiplexer, and the mc (Midnight Commander) textual file manager, plus a new chapter on using ssh for secure communication
- In-depth coverage of the bash and tcsh shells, including a complete discussion of environment, inheritance, and process locality, plus coverage of basic and advanced shell programming
- Practical explanations of 98 core utilities, from aspell to xargs, including printf and sshfs/curlftpfs, PLUS Mac OS X-specific utilities from ditto to SetFile
- Expert guidance on automating remote backups using rsync
- Dozens of system security tips, including step-by-step walkthroughs of implementing secure communications using ssh and scp
- Tips and tricks for customizing the shell, including step values, sequence expressions, the eval builtin, and implicit command-line continuation
- High-productivity editing techniques using vim and emacs
- A comprehensive, 295-page command reference section covering 98 utilities, including find, grep, sort, and tar
- Instructions for updating systems using apt-get and yum
- And much more, including coverage of BitTorrent, gawk, sed, find, sort, bzip2, and regular expressions
Praise for Previous Editions of A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming
“This book is a very useful tool for anyone who wants to ‘look under the hood’ so to speak, and really start putting the power of Linux to work. What I find particularly frustrating about man pages is that they never include examples. Sobell, on the other hand, outlines very clearly what the command does and then gives several common, easy-to-understand examples that make it a breeze to start shell programming on one’s own. As with Sobell’s other works, this is simple, straight-forward, and easy to read. It’s a great book and will stay on the shelf at easy arm’s reach for a long time.”
–Ray Bartlett, Travel Writer
“Overall I found this book to be quite excellent, and it has earned a spot on the very front of my bookshelf. It covers the real ‘guts’ of Linux– the command line and its utilities–and does so very well. Its strongest points are the outstanding use of examples, and the Command Reference section. Highly recommended for Linux users of all skill levels. Well done to Mark Sobell and Prentice Hall for this outstanding book!”
–Dan Clough, Electronics Engineer and Slackware Linux User
“Totally unlike most Linux books, this book avoids discussing everything via GUI and jumps right into making the power of the command line your friend.”
–Bjorn Tipling, Software Engineer, ask.com
“This book is the best distro-agnostic, foundational Linux reference I’ve ever seen, out of dozens of Linux-related books I’ve read. Finding this book was a real stroke of luck. If you want to really understand how to get things done at the command line, where the power and flexibility of free UNIX-like OSes really live, this book is among the best tools you’ll find toward that end.”
–Chad Perrin, Writer, TechRepublic
“I moved to Linux from Windows XP a couple of years ago, and after some distro hopping settled on Linux Mint. At age 69 I thought I might be biting off more than I could chew, but thanks to much reading and the help of a local LUG I am now quite at home with Linux at the GUI level. “Now I want to learn more about the CLI and a few months ago bought your book: A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, Second Edition.
“For me, this book is proving to be the foundation upon which my understanding of the CLI is being built. As a comparative ‘newbie’ to the Linux world, I find your book a wonderful, easy-to-follow guide that I highly recommend to other Linux users.”
–John Nawell, CQLUG (Central Queensland Linux User Group)
“I have the second edition of A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming and am a big fan. I used it while working as a Cisco support engineer. I plan to get the third edition as soon as it is released. We will be doing a ton of command-line work on literally 1000 boxes (IMS core nodes). I feel you have already given me a lot of tools with the second edition. I want to get your new book as soon as possible. The way you write works very well for my style of learning.”
–Robert Lingenfelter, Support Engineer, VoIP/IMS
Praise for Other Books by Mark G. Sobell
“Since I’m in an educational environment, I found the content of Sobell’s book to be right on target and very helpful for anyone managing Linux in the enterprise. His style of writing is very clear. He builds up to the chapter exercises, which I find to be relevant to real-world scenarios a user or admin would encounter. An IT/IS student would find this book a valuable complement to their education. The vast amount of information is extremely well balanced and Sobell manages to present the content without complicated asides and meandering prose. This is a ‘must have’ for anyone managing Linux systems in a networked environment or anyone running a Linux server. I would also highly recommend it to an experienced computer user who is moving to the Linux platform.”
–Mary Norbury, IT Director, Barbara Davis Center, University of Colorado at Denver, from a review posted on slashdot.org
“I had the chance to use your UNIX books when I when was in college years ago at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA. I have to say that your books are among the best! They’re quality books that teach the theoretical aspects and applications of the operating system.”
–Benton Chan, IS Engineer
“The book has more than lived up to my expectations from the many reviews I read, even though it targets FC2. I have found something very rare with your book: It doesn’t read like the standard technical text, it reads more like a story. It’s a pleasure to read and hard to put down. Did I say that?! :-)”
–David Hopkins, Business Process Architect
“Thanks for your work and for the book you wrote. There are really few books that can help people to become more efficient administrators of different workstations. We hope (in Russia) that you will continue bringing us a new level of understanding of Linux/UNIX systems.”
–Anton Petukhov
“Mark Sobell has written a book as approachable as it is authoritative.”
–Jeffrey Bianchine, Advocate, Author, Journalist
“Excellent reference book, well suited for the sysadmin of a Linux cluster, or the owner of a PC contemplating installing a recent stable Linux. Don’t be put off by the daunting heft of the book. Sobell has striven to be as inclusive as possible, in trying to anticipate your system administration needs.”
–Wes Boudville, Inventor
“A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® is a brilliant book. Thank you, Mark Sobell.”
–C. Pozrikidis, University of California at San Diego
“This book presents the best overview of the Linux operating system that I have found. . . . [It] should be very helpful and understandable no matter what the reader’s background: traditional UNIX user, new Linux devotee, or even Windows user. Each topic is presented in a clear, complete fashion and very few assumptions are made about what the reader knows. . . . The book is extremely useful as a reference, as it contains a 70-page glossary of terms and is very well indexed. It is organized in such a way that the reader can focus on simple tasks without having to wade through more advanced topics until they are ready.”
–Cam Marshall, Marshall Information Service LLC, Member of Front Range UNIX Users Group [FRUUG], Boulder, Colorado
“Conclusively, this is THE book to get if you are a new Linux user and you just got into RH/Fedora world. There’s no other book that discusses so many different topics and in such depth.”
–Eugenia Loli-Queru, Editor in Chief, OSNews.com
“I currently own one of your books, A Practical Guide to Linux®. I believe this book is one of the most comprehensive and, as the title says, practical guides to Linux I have ever read. I consider myself a novice and I come back to this book over and over again.”
–Albert J. Nguyen
“Thank you for writing a book to help me get away from Windows XP and to never touch Windows Vista. The book is great; I am learning a lot of new concepts and commands. Linux is definitely getting easier to use.”
–James Moritz
“I am so impressed by how Mark Sobell can approach a complex topic in such an understandable manner. His command examples are especially useful in providing a novice (or even an advanced) administrator with a cookbook on how to accomplish real-world tasks on Linux. He is truly an inspired technical writer!”
–George Vish II, Senior Education Consultant, Hewlett-Packard Company
“Overall, I think it’s a great, comprehensive Ubuntu book that’ll be a valuable resource for people of all technical levels.”
–John Dong, Ubuntu Forum Council Member, Backports Team Leader
“The JumpStart sections really offer a quick way to get things up and running, allowing you to dig into the details of the book later.”
–Scott Mann, Aztek Networks
“I would so love to be able to use this book to teach a class about not just Ubuntu or Linux but about computers in general. It is thorough and well written with good illustrations that explain important concepts for computer usage.”
–Nathan Eckenrode, New York Local Community Team
“Ubuntu is gaining popularity at the rate alcohol did during Prohibition, and it’s great to see a well-known author write a book on the latest and greatest version. Not only does it contain Ubuntu-specific information, but it also touches on general computer-related topics, which will help the average computer user to better understand what’s going on in the background. Great work, Mark!”
–Daniel R. Arfsten, Pro/ENGINEER Drafter/Designer
“I read a lot of Linux technical information every day, but I’m rarely impressed by tech books. I usually prefer online information sources instead. Mark Sobell’s books are a notable exception. They’re clearly written, technically accurate, comprehensive, and actually enjoyable to read.”
–Matthew Miller, Senior Systems Analyst/Administrator, BU Linux Project, Boston University Office of Information Technology
“This is well-written, clear, comprehensive information for the Linux user of any type, whether trying Ubuntu on for the first time and wanting to know a little about it, or using the book as a very good reference when doing something more complicated like setting up a server. This book’s value goes well beyond its purchase price and it’ll make a great addition to the Linux section of your bookshelf.”
–Linc Fessenden, Host of The LinuxLink TechShow, tllts.org
“The author has done a very good job at clarifying such a detail-oriented operating system. I have extensive Unix and Windows experience and this text does an excellent job at bridging the gaps between Linux, Windows, and Unix. I highly recommend this book to both ‘newbs’ and experienced users. Great job!”
–Mark Polczynski, Information Technology Consultant
“Your text, A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux®, Third Edition, is a well constructed, informative, superbly written text. You deserve an award for outstanding talent; unfortunately my name is not Pulitzer.”
–Harrison Donnelly, Physician
“When I first started working with Linux just a short ten years or so ago, it was a little more difficult than now to get going. . . . Now, someone new to the community has a vast array of resources available on the web, or if they are inclined to begin with Ubuntu, they can literally find almost every single thing they will need in the single volume of Mark Sobell’s A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux®.
“I’m sure this sounds a bit like hyperbole. Everything a person would need to know? Obviously not everything, but this book, weighing in at just under 1200 pages, covers so much so thoroughly that there won’t be much left out. From install to admin, networking, security, shell scripting, package management, and a host of other topics, it is all there. GUI and command-line tools are covered. There is not really any wasted space or fluff, just a huge amount of information. There are screen shots when appropriate but they do not take up an inordinate amount of space. This book is information-dense.”
–JR Peck, Editor, GeekBook.org
“I have been wanting to make the jump to Linux but did not have the guts to do so–until I saw your familiarly titled A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® at the bookstore. I picked up a copy and am eagerly looking forward to regaining my freedom.”
–Carmine Stoffo, Machine and Process Designer to pharmaceutical industry
“I am currently reading A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® and am finally understanding the true power of the command line. I am new to Linux and your book is a treasure.”
–Juan Gonzalez
“Overall, A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux® by Mark G. Sobell provides all of the information a beginner to intermediate user of Linux would need to be productive. The inclusion of the Live DVD of the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu makes it easy for the user to test-drive Linux without affecting his installed OS. I have no doubts that you will consider this book money well spent.”
–Ray Lodato, Slashdot contributor, www.slashdot.org
