I am interested in learning system administration for when our system admin is not available. I don't want to be an expert or anything just know my way around. Can anyone suggest any books that might be good to read on this?

Kind of old (1995), but the title is right.

"What You Need to Know When You Can't Find Your Unix System Administrator" by Linda Mui

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565921046/qid%3D1022606952/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/103-8143690-1503839

Here's a good one if you are going to be using *nix:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565921275/qid=1022608365/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/102-4669361-8328160

It's a little old, december '96, so maybe you should look for them to put out a new version (I have no idea if or when they are going to do that).

These two I find useful:

Running Linux, 3rd Edition by Matt Welsh, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Lar Kaufman
Linux Network Administrator's Guide, 2nd Edition by Olaf Kirch, Terry Dawson

Both of these could be found either at your local bookseller or at O'Reilly's (http://oreilly.com) web site.

Regards,

Jeff

With the speed of current development, regular books are almost always lag behind in my opinion. Online documentation is better, you can find a lot Linux documentation on http://tldp.org

There is also a review of 4 different Admin books (http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=2427/uni1021415646771/0205g.htm) -- all new mind you -- with Linux Apache Web Server Administration by Charles Aulds, coming out on top.

if you want to go slightly more indepth - 'tcp/ip network administration' and 'bind / dns' both by o'reiley are very very good books. I would also pick up a good security book.

Again.. it all depends upon how indepth you want to go.

-neil

linux administrator survival guide
linux security and optimization
linux system admin

all are from redhat press.

the other one coming soon in August is redhat Internet Server

Hi,
I am system admin of some Cobalt servers and unix teacher as well ....would u like to consult me?
atif