Last week I briefly reviewed a few interesting and useful books that I have on the shelves of the Gibbs Universal Industries secret underground bunker. Today I have one more that, should you be planning on building a server using FreeBSD, you ought to rush out and purchase. The book is predictably titled Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 by Bryan J. Hong.

The subtitle of this book is A Modular Approach, which is exactly what it delivers. There’s a consistent layout used throughout the book for each component discussed: A summary, details on required and optional resources, explanations of the preparation, installation and configuration, and additional notes.

The book is divided into two parts, The Base System and Third Party Applications, and takes you logically from installing FreeBSD with its included utilities, the FreeBSDPorts, through installing OpenSSL and OpenSSH, to adding a Web server (ApacheHTTP) along with PHP, MySQL, content management, e-mail clients, a wiki and blogging services. There are also sections on installing mail services (SMTP, POP and IMAP), network services (DNS, DHCP and VPN), as well as print and file services.

The book extensively cross-references itself, ensuring that dependencies and related topics and issues are obvious in the context of the service or tool you are installing.

There’s nothing jokey about this book. There are no witty asides, no cartoons, no industry in-jokes – it is a focused how-to manual that assumes you are smart enough to understand what the author is talking about and that you want to actually get something done. If you are a Linux or Unix god this book might not be useful, but for the rest of us it is a great benefit as well as a labor and sanity saver. Highly recommended.

Something else I can highly recommend is the Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth headset. I have used Bluetooth headsets on and off since they first came out and this product is, without doubt, the best I have ever found, by far.

There are two reasons for my enthusiasm. First, the Jawbone is easy to wear. Many other headsets are somewhat uncomfortable because they trap a small moist pocket of air in your ear canal. The problem is that you have no choice about this if you want to be able to hear the speaker clearly – a snug fit seems to be required by most products. This little humid zone has always made my ear itch furiously within 15 or 20 minutes but not so with the Jawbone. Somehow the Jawbone is engineered such that it maintains enough contact for the speaker to be audible without trapping moisture.

Whitepapers

• Symantec State of the Data Center Report
• Gene Kim's Practical Steps to Mitigate Virtualization Security Risks
• Monitoring and Managing App Performance
• Monitoring and Managing VoIP
• SNMP Monitoring: One Critical Component to Network Management
• SNMP Monitoring: One Critical Component to Network Management

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Webcasts

• Managing the End User Experience-A Real World Example of Success
• Best Practices for Deploying WAN Optimization for Disaster Recovery
• Tips and Techniques for Remote Data Backup and Delivery
• WAN Optimization Landscape
• Oracle Database 11g: Advances in Compression, Real Application Testing and Data Guard
• Solutions to the Toughest IT Challenges in Remote Offices

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Special Reports

• Data Centers: At the center of the action
• Executive Guide: Data Center Decisions
• Get More From Your WAN
• Executive Guide: Storage Heats Up
• Network World Executive Guide: Perfecting Application Performance Management

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