What is the single most influential book every sysadmin should read?

Question

For software developers, there are some books you must absolutely read.

What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

How about for sysadmins? Is there a similar list of books?

Answer 1

The only essential I have is The Practice of System and Network Administration by Limoncelli, Hogan, et al. My first edition copy lives on my desk

Answer 2

Time Management for System Administrators

Answer 3

It may be a bit dated, but you can't learn how to properly do your job (or how not to, I forget which one) without looking into the writings of the Bastard Operator From Hell.

Edit: Here are some links

• http://bofh.ntk.net/
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/

Answer 4

UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook - 4th Edition

Answer 5

The Art of Deception

Answer 6

For network admins: TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols. You should know how TCP/IP works.

Answer 7

"Essential System Administration" by Æleen Frisch

Answer 8

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

(Often regarded as one of the best books on any topic.)

This quote (found here) is relevant:

My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all. God, I don't want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There's a place for them but they've got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource - individual worth.

Answer 9

"DNS and BIND" by Paul Albitz, Cricket Liu

Answer 10

Unix Power Tools. I own three copies of this, two in the office and one at home. If you like to become a Unix guru, grow a beard and read this book.

Essential System Administration was already mentioned. Espescially useful if you are the boss to a group of SA's

Answer 11

For me a very exciting must read book was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoos_Egg

Answer 12

The Story About Ping

Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and intuitive explanation of one of Unix's most venerable networking utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working with a very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared in 1933, years (decades!) before the operating system and network infrastructure were finalized.

Answer 13

"TCP/IP Network Administration" by Craig Hunt

Answer 14

Unix System Management Primer Plus, by Jeff Horwitz.

Best choice: Unix System Management Primer Plus, by Jeff Horwitz.

This book is almost criminally unknown, if you ask me. There's a ton of excellent technical books out there that will tell you specific details of operation of a particular piece of hardware, or a piece of software. There's lots of good ones on scripting, automation, and programming.

This isn't the book to teach you every aspect of administering your server or application, but this is the one that teaches you how to be a System Administrator.

It covers things that you just don't find in other books, including chapters on infrastructure and data center design and build out, server deployment, patching and upgrades, monitoring, user support, outages, high availability, capacity planning, automation, security, and more.

If you want to run one Unix/Linux box in your basement as a home server, this isn't the book for you. If you want to work as a System Administrator, particularly with Unix/Linux, you absolutely should read this book.

Answer 15

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Cliff Stoll

This isn't a technical book, but a true story about how a real person stumbles upon a hacker. He watches the hacker operate and notifies various three letter agencies with little or no response.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg_(book)

Answer 16

Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vol 1 by Douglas E. Comer

Like Stevens, a classic.

Answer 17

Surprisingly enough nobody came up with this one:

Networking All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies

Answer 18

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet

Answer 19

The book that shaped my life as a sysadmin, it's a bit outdated but written from the dads (at least one of them) of UNIX.

Get it here.

Answer 20

(ug, I think my comment got eaten)

Anyway, while I wouldn't quite call it the most influential book that every sysadmin should read, I enjoyed The Craft of System Security. It does a good job of covering (at least from a high level) the history, theory and practice of security. Oh, and it's even written well enough it won't consistently put you to sleep!

Answer 21

Essential System Administration by AEleen Frisch.

Answer 22

Not for the faint of heart, this is the only book I know that tries to describe and explain adiministering complex systems using systematic, scientific principles and mathematical models.

From the author of cfengine:

Mark Burgess: Principles of Network and System Administration

Answer 23

While not technical (and maybe a bit cliched now?) the principles are fantastic and highly applicable to sysadmin work.

Answer 24

In the beginning was the command line

Not exactly SysAdmin related but it has to be one of the most influential IT books out there.

Answer 25

SED AWK saves you time and money!

Answer 26

I vote for UNIX hints and hacks. A lot of the content is out of date now but it still helped me to think like a UNIX admin.

Answer 27

Network Troubleshooting Tools

Answer 28

I think the most influential book that you can read is Sex, Drugs and Economics: An Unconventional Introduction to Economics.

It's a pop economics book written by a british economist.

Since System Administration involves many different skills and it's usually different tasks depending where you're working, I believe it's important to develop a mindset using this book and making your own choices about what's best.

Answer 29

I'll second the Limoncelli, et.al. 'The Practice of System and Network Administration,' but I'll add another, and possibly place it higher - Eliyahu M. Goldratt's 'The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement' I think it places any enterprise SysAdmin in the mindset of 'how do all plates spinning lead to a company's common goal.' When I worked QA/Field Engineer work at an ERP software co., prior to getting into SysAdmin work, this was 'the bible.'

Answer 30

Wwhen i was starting to work as a Systemadministrator alot of changes pass my life. The Point at this time was i had no idea what i had to expect with this changes. And i desided to read [1]. In a little distanced view i think that gave me alot of improvement for my daily work.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People/dp/0743269519/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244200902&sr=8-1