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Into the already crowded Linux desk-reference market (which threatens to push my monitor off my desktop) comes O'Reilly's third edition of Linux in a Nutshell by Ellen Siever and colleagues. The ever-expanding horizon of Linuxology makes the editorial task of circumscribing it in a nutshell impossible--even from the venerable O'Reilly sources. We ask, "What didn't they cut, and do we really need it next to the coffee cup?" The success of this attempt is spotty, at best.

From agetty to znew, this Nutshell book contributes half of its contents to alphabetically arranged synopses of 400 user, programmer, and administrator commands and utilities. The online manual page for "ps"--the process status program--produces over 14 screens of command-line options, environment variables, output formatting statements, utility cross-references, and author credits. The abstracted Nutshell entry contains only three textual pages of command-line options and bare-bones output abbreviations.

We learn that "yes" is an obscure little utility that's used ostensibly for driving scripts like ./configure. When misused, "yes" can create a 5-MB file on your hard drive in one CPU second; but the entry contains neither a warning to that effect nor a description of its relationship to big brother "expect"--which is alarming in its absence from both the alphabetical parade of commands and the index altogether.

Consequently, the first half of the book is intended for the curious and possibly nonexistent subpopulation of well-trained users who want to remind themselves of command-line flags, but would rather not use the online manual pages as a reference.

The meat in this Nutshell is contained sparingly in its second half. Here, it compares favorably with online how-tos for providing technical details of Linux kernel loading and boot parameterization, package management, bash/tcsh/csh shell use, and the underused CVS version-control system. The technical specifics of the popular editors emacs and vi are of marginal use to the experienced administrator whose manual muscle memory is full. The gawk and sed tutorials are somewhat more reference-worthy, and the tome ends with introductions to the barely discussed gnome, JDE, and fvwm2 window managers. The gaping crack in this book is the absence of X11 configuration guidelines, which often takes 80 percent of system configuration time, even for experienced administrators.

If you can't spare a better patch of pine, you might consider wedging 75 percent of this desk reference under your monitor, where it might contribute more to the ergonomics of coding than to the content. The remaining 25 percent will slip into your blotter for easy access. --Peter Leopold
Book Description
Linux in a Nutshell covers the core commands available on common Linux distributions. This isn't a scaled-down quick reference of common commands, but a complete reference to all user, programming, administration, and networking commands with complete lists of options.

Contents also include:

• LILO and Loadlin (boot) options
• Shell syntax and variables for the bash, csh, and tcsh shells
• Pattern matching
• Emacs and vi editing commands
• sed and gawk commands
• Common configuration tasks for the GNOME and KDE desktops and the fvwm2 window manager

New material in the third edition includes common configuration tasks for the GNOME and KDE desktops and the fvwm2 window manager, the dpkg Debian package manager, an expanded investigation of the rpm Red Hat package manager and CVS, and many new commands.

Linux in a Nutshell is a must for any Linux user; it weighs less than a stack of manual pages, but delivers everything needed for common, day-to-day use. It also covers a wide range of GNU tools for Unix users who have GNU versions of standard Unix tools.

	Preface	xi
Chapter 1	Introduction	1
	The Excitement of Linux	1
	Distribution and Support	3
	Commands on Linux	3
	What This Book Offers	3
	Sources and Licenses	5
	Beginner's Guide	6
Chapter 2	System and Network Administration Overview	11
	Common Commands	11
	Overview of Networking	17
	Overview of TCP/IP	18
	Overview of Firewalls and Masquerading	23
	Overview of NFS	26
	Overview of NIS	27
	Administering NIS	28
	RPC and XDR	28
Chapter 3	Linux Commands	29
	Alphabetical Summary of Commands	30
Chapter 4	Boot Methods	399
	The Boot Process	399
	LILO: The Linux Loader	400
	Loadlin: Booting from MS-DOS	411
	Dual Booting Linux and Windows NT/2000	412
	Boot-time Kernel Options	415
	Initrd: Using a RAM Disk	417
Chapter 5	Red Hat and Debian Package Managers	418
	The Red Hat Package Manager	419
	The Debian Package Manager	430
Chapter 6	The Linux Shells: An Overview	446
	Purpose of the Shell	446
	Shell Flavors	447
	Common Features	448
	Differing Features	449
Chapter 7	Bash: The Bourne-Again Shell	450
	Overview of Features	450
	Invoking the Shell	452
	Syntax	453
	Variables	462
	Arithmetic Expressions	468
	Command History	469
	Built-in Commands	472
	Job Control	498
Chapter 8	csh and tcsh	500
	Overview of Features	501
	Invoking the Shell	501
	Syntax	502
	Variables	506
	Expressions	517
	Command History	520
	Command-Line Manipulation	524
	Job Control	529
	Built-in csh and tcsh Commands	529
Chapter 9	Pattern Matching	551
	Filenames Versus Patterns	552
	Metacharacters, Listed by Linux Program	552
	Metacharacters	553
	Examples of Searching	555
Chapter 10	The Emacs Editor	558
	Introduction	558
	Typical Problems	558
	Summary of Commands by Group	560
	Summary of Commands by Key	567
	Summary of Commands by Name	570
Chapter 11	The vi Editor	576
	Review of vi Operations	577
	vi Command-Line Options	579
	ex Command-Line Options	580
	Movement Commands	581
	Edit Commands	583
	Saving and Exiting	585
	Accessing Multiple Files	586
	Interacting with the Shell	586
	Macros	587
	Miscellaneous Commands	587
	Alphabetical List of Keys in Command Mode	588
	Syntax of ex Commands	590
	Alphabetical Summary of ex Commands	591
	vi Configuration	603
Chapter 12	The sed Editor	607
	Conceptual Overview	607
	Command-Line Syntax	608
	Syntax of sed Commands	609
	Group Summary of sed Commands	610
	Alphabetical Summary of sed Commands	611
Chapter 13	The gawk Scripting Language	619
	Conceptual Overview	619
	Command-Line Syntax	620
	Patterns and Procedures	622
	gawk System Variables	624
	Operators	625
	Variable and Array Assignments	625
	Group Listing of gawk Commands	626
	Alphabetical Summary of Commands	626
Chapter 14	CVS and RCS	634
	Basic Concepts	634
	The CVS Utility	636
	CVS Administrator Reference	638
	CVS User Reference	655
	The RCS Utility	683
	Overview of RCS Commands	683
	Basic RCS Operations	684
	General RCS Specifications	685
	Alphabetical Summary of RCS Commands	689
Chapter 15	GNOME	701
	Desktop Overview	702
	The Panel	704
	The Main Menu	706
	The GNOME Control Center	707
Chapter 16	KDE	724
	Desktop Overview	725
	The Panel and Taskbar	730
	The KDE Control Center	732
Chapter 17	An Alternative Window Manager: fvwm2	748
	Running fvwm2	749
	Configuration Files	749
	A Modular Approach	750
	How to Implement Window Manager Customizations	751
	A Quick Tour of the fvwm Environment	751
	Specifying Click-to-Type Focus	753
	Raising the Focus Window Automatically	754
	Changing the Size of the Desktop	754
	Having Multiple Desktops	755
	Making the Same Window Appear on Every Page	757
	Starting Windows on Different Desktops and Pages	758
	If It's Too Hard (or Easy) to Move the Pointer Between Pages	759
	Adding Keyboard Shortcuts	761
	Customizing Menus	765
	The FvwmWinList: Switching the Focus	766
	Index	771