System Administration (Formally Webmin)

[Nikolas Britton]

Joaquin Menchaca wrote:

> Hey can I jump in. :-)  I am totally of the faith that one should 
> learn the command line way.  However, there's nothing like a graphical 
> interface that can bring many concepts together, as well as expose the 
> user to new concepts.  I am a right-side thinker (er or was that left 
> side), and I understand things visually and abstractually.  I started 
> on Mac OS 6  (System 6), migrated to Windows platforms, and now I am a 
> big time advocate of open source and love UNIX. :-)
> I couldn't have gotten here if it wasn't for the GUIs (some good some 
> bad) that exposed me to many concepts.  Once, I know the concept(s) 
> and I merely ask, How do I do that on platform X...
>
> I hope that there can always be the best of both worlds, both a great 
> UI, but excellent under-the-hood configuration through text config files.
>
I agree that gui's can be great (phpMyAdmin, for example), but for 
(UNIX) system administration (what Webmin is mainly for) you REALLY need 
to learn it the hard way first, heck just to setup Webmin (and others; 
Samba, Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, OpenLDAP, PHP, etc.) you need to have 
at least basic system administration skill's.

* The commands "whatis" and "man" are essential, learn them!
* UNIX is like your toolbox, your toolbox may have; screw drivers, 
hammers, drills, drill bits, pliers, saws, tape measures, wrenchs, 
ratchets, and sockets, every tool has it's purpose and does it well. You 
use these tools together to do whatever needs to be done, this is the 
underlying philosophy of UNIX (as opposed to windows do everything (and 
nothing well) gizmos), we use "redirectors", "pipes" and scripts to get 
the hammer to pound the nail in. With the right tools in your toolbox 
you can do anything!

If you need help (and can read) these books WILL help you!!!:

Absolute BSD:
Author: Michael Lucas, Jordan Hubbard (foreword)
Publisher: No Starch
ISBN: 1886411743

The Complete FreeBSD, 4th Edition:
Author: Greg Lehey
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN: 0596005164

Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition:
Author: Shelley Powers, Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly, Mike Loukides, and 
many others
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN: 0596003307

UNIX System Administration Handbook, 3rd Edition:
Author: Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass, Trent R. Hein
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
ISBN: 0130206016
------------------------------------------------
These online resouces WILL help as well:

The FreeBSD Handbook:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html

UNIX Tutorial for Beginners:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/index.html

Introduction to Unix (Ohio State University):
http://wks.uts.ohio-state.edu/unix_course/unix.html

Picking Up Perl (this 60 page mini book is all meat getting right to the 
point!, if you want to learn Perl (essential to unix administration) 
read it!!!):
http://www.ebb.org/PickingUpPerl/