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About This Book
When Olaf Kirche joined the LDP in 1992, he wrote two small chapters
on UUCP and smail, which he meant to contribute to the System
Administrator's Guide. Development of TCP/IP
networking was just beginning, and when those "small
chapters" started to grow, he wondered aloud whether
it would be nice to have a Networking Guide.
"Great!" everyone said.
"Go for it!" So he went for it and
wrote the first version of the Networking Guide, which was released
in September 1993.Olaf continued work on the Networking Guide and eventually produced a
much enhanced version of the guide. Vince Skahan contributed the
original sendmail mail chapter, which was completely replaced in that
edition because of a new interface to the sendmail configuration.In March of 2000, Terry Dawson updated Olaf's
original, adding several new chapters and bringing it into the new
millennium.The version of the guide that you are reading now is a fairly large
revision and update prompted by O'Reilly Media and
undertaken by Tony Bautts. Tony has been enthusiastic Linux user and
information security consultant for longer than he would care to
admit. He is coauthor of several other computer security-related
books and likes to give talks on the subject as well. Tony is a big
proponent of Linux in the commercial environment and routinely
attempts to convert people to Gentoo Linux. For this edition he has
added a few new chapters describing features of Linux networking that
have been developed since the second edition, plus a bunch of changes
to bring the rest of the book up to date.The three iptables chapters (Chapters 7, 8, and 9) were updated by
Gregor Purdy for this edition.The book is organized roughly along the sequence of steps that you
have to take to configure your system for networking. It starts by
discussing basic concepts of networks, and TCP/IP-based networks in
particular. It then slowly works its way up from configuring TCP/IP
at the device level to firewall, accounting, and masquerade
configuration, to the setup of common applications such as SSH,
Apache, and Samba. The email part features an introduction to the
more intimate parts of mail transport and routing and the myriad of
addressing schemes that you may be confronted with. It describes the
configuration and management of sendmail, the most common mail
transport agent, and IMAP, used for delivery to individual mail
users. Chapters on LDAP and wireless networking round out the
infrastructure for modern network administration.Of course, a book can never exhaustively answer all questions you
might have. So if you follow the instructions in this book and
something still does not work, please be patient. Some of your
problems may be due to mistakes on our part (see
"How to Contact Us," later in this
Preface), but they also may be caused by changes in the networking
software. Therefore, you should check the listed information
resources first. There's a good chance that you are
not alone with your problems, so a fix or at least a proposed
workaround is likely to be knownthis is where search engines
are particularly handy! If you have the opportunity, you should also
try to get the latest kernel and network release from http://www.kernel.org. Many problems are
caused by software from different stages of development, which fail
to work together properly. After all, Linux is a
"work in progress."
The Official Printed Version
In Autumn 1993, Andy Oram, who had been around the LDP mailing list
from almost the very beginning, asked Olaf about publishing this book
at O'Reilly & Associates. He was excited about
this book, but never imagined that it would become as successful as
it has. He and Andy finally agreed that O'Reilly
would produce an enhanced Official Printed Version of the Networking
Guide, while Olaf retained the original copyright so that the source
of the book could be freely distributed. This means that you can
choose freely: you can get the various free forms of the document
from your nearest LDP mirror site and print it out, or you can
purchase the official printed version from O'Reilly.Why, then, would you want to pay money for something you can get for
free? Is Tim O'Reilly out of his mind for publishing
something everyone can print and even sell themselves?[1] Is there any difference between these versions?[1] Note that while you are allowed to print out the online
version, you may not run the O'Reilly book through a
photocopier, much less sell any of its (hypothetical) copies.
The answers are "It depends,"
"No, definitely not," and
"Yes and no."
O'Reilly Media does take a risk in publishing the
Network Administrator's Guide, but it seems to have
paid off for them (since they've asked us to do it
two more times). We believe this project serves as a fine example of
how the free software world and companies can cooperate to produce
something both can benefit from. In our view, the great service
O'Reilly provides the Linux community (apart from
the book becoming readily available in your local bookstore) is that
it has helped Linux become recognized as something to be taken
seriously: a viable and useful alternative to other commercial
operating systems. It's a sad technical bookstore
that doesn't have at least one shelf stacked with
O'Reilly Linux books.Why are they publishing it? They see it as their kind of book.
It's what they would hope to produce if they
contracted with an author to write about Linux. The pace, level of
detail, and style fit in well with their other offerings.The point of the LDP license is to make sure no one gets shut out.
Other people can print out copies of this book, and no one will blame
you if you get one of these copies. But if you
haven't gotten a chance to see the
O'Reilly version, try to get to a bookstore or look
at a friend's copy. We think you'll
like what you see and will want to buy it for yourself.So what about the differences between the printed and online
versions? Andy Oram has made great efforts at transforming our
ramblings into something actually worth printing. (He has also
reviewed a few other books produced by the LDP, contributing whatever
professional skills he can to the Linux community.)Since Andy started reviewing the Networking Guide and editing the
copies sent to him, the book has improved vastly from its original
form, and with every round of submission and feedback, it improves
again. The opportunity to take advantage of a professional
editor's skill is not to be wasted. In many ways,
Andy's contribution has been as important as that of
the authors. The same is also true of the production staff, who got
the book into the shape that you see now. All these edits have been
fed back into the online version, so there is no difference in
content.Still, the O'Reilly version
will be different. It will be professionally
bound, and while you may go to the trouble to print the free version,
it is unlikely that you will get the same quality result. Secondly,
our amateurish attempts at illustration will have been replaced with
nicely redone figures by O'Reilly's
professional artists. Indexers have generated an improved index,
which makes locating information in the book a much simpler process.
If this book is something you intend to read from start to finish,
you should consider reading the official printed version.
