The Paranoid Penguin Connection
Another reason I wrote this book has to do with the fact that I write
the monthly "Paranoid Penguin"
security column in Linux Journal
Magazine. Several years ago, I realized that all
my pieces so far had something in common: each was about a different
aspect of building bastion hosts with Linux. By then, the column had gained a certain amount of notoriety, and I
realized that there was enough interest in this subject to warrant an
entire book on Linux bastion hosts. Linux
Journal generously granted me permission to adapt my
columns for such a book, and under the foolish belief that writing
one would amount mainly to knitting the columns together, updating
them, and adding one or two new topics, I proposed this book to
O'Reilly, and they accepted. Predictably, the book project was exponentially more work than I
could have imagined. I spent a great deal of effort re-researching
and expanding all of it, including retesting all examples and
procedures. I added entire (lengthy) chapters on topics I
hadn't yet covered at all in the magazine, and I
more than doubled the size and scope of others. In short, I allowed
this to become The Book That Ate My Life in the hope of reducing the
number of ugly security surprises in my readers'
lives. |