www.linuxformat.co.

uk 28 LXF66 MAY 2005

REVIEWS Books
Exim came top of this months mail server Roundup just as Paul Hudson
finished reading the leading book on the topic
The Exim SMTP Mail Server
AUTHOR Philip Hazel
PUBLISHER UIT Cambridge
ISBN 0-9544529-0-9
PRICE 37.50
PAGES 595
BUYER INFO
If it were possible to extract from
the brain of Exim creator Philip Hazel
all that he knew about his popular
mail server then have it committed to
paper, the result would be only
marginally different from this book. To
say that The Exim SMTP Mail Server is
comprehensive is an understatement
akin to saying that the Pacific Ocean is
a bit damp. It is a huge work that
covers every area of Exim 4 that you
could ever need to know about.
The previous edition of this book,
in which Hazel discussed Exim 3.x, was
produced by OReilly, and thus infused
with the publishers usual amusing
tone. In contrast, this one has little in
the way of spark and style, which
made reading the best part of 600
pages feel very, very slow (we only just
managed to finish it in time for this
issue of LXF).
Of course, this is a book about a
mail server if youre expecting thrill-
a-minute content youre looking in the
wrong inbox.
Crammed with info
Although some masochists might try
to read this book from cover to cover,
its best used as a reference guide. For
example, if you want to build Exim
from the source, just flick to chapter
22 and find the part that helps you.
Similarly, the coverage of encryption,
database lookups and filtering is
separated into chapters, which deal
with each topic wholly and
independently of the other chapters.
This approach works up to a point,
but there is a noticeable lack of
summarising that means that you
really do need to wade through quite
a few pages before you gain a firm
grasp of a topic. Whats needed are
some bulleted lists at the end of each
chapter that give a brief recap of the
topic so that people who want
immediate answers dont have to read
30 pages first.
Surprisingly, there is one such list;
and the surprise is that it comes right
at the end, after the index (which, on
a tangent, is one of the best indexes
we have seen in a long while), where
the list of the books sponsors are.
One of the sponsors, the Norwegian
Linux firm Linpro, provides six quick
ways to tune Exim, and it works
wonderfully well lets hope the next
edition follows Linpros example!
LINUX FORMAT VERDICT
RATING 7/10
Brusque and dry, but if that floats your
boat this is the Exim book for you.
Nick Veitch looks for buried treasure in the latest Hacks book.
Knoppix Hacks
Knoppix is almost certainly the
best-known Live CD Linux distro, and
with good reason. Its versatility is
such that its just as happy being
used as a hot-desking tool as a
system recovery utility disc. This is
why Knoppix Hacks could have done
with a more explanatory subtitle than
the boastful 100 industrial-strength
tips and tools, because the book isnt
so much about hacking Knoppix as
about hacks you can perform while
using Knoppix.
The format of the book follows
that used by previous titles in
OReillys Hacks series think up
some cool stuff, write a few hundred
words on it then try to group the tips
together into categories. In that
respect, the approach definitely
seems to work better when applied to
topics such as wireless networking.
The book starts off with some
hacks that really just form a users
guide to Knoppix. Unfortunately,
including such chaff dilutes the really
useful material such as how to use
Knoppix as a repair disk or for
forensic analysis of a hacked system.
The section on how to customise
Knoppix and build your own Knoppix
modules has some original material
not available on the Knoppix website,
and hacks such as recovering trashed
hard disks or resetting NT passwords
are genuinely useful. However, this
reviewers overall impression is that
many of the hacks have been
conjured up from the everyday in an
attempt to squeeze out a magic,
publisher-pleasing 100 for the cover.
Most readers would have preferred
50 really good hacks.
A useful guide, then, to the
potential uses of Knoppix that has
some useful tips but not much more
than the sort of information readily
available on the Knoppix website.
LINUX FORMAT VERDICT
RATING 5/10
Needs more hacks, less fluff.
AUTHOR Kyle Rankin
PUBLISHER OReilly
ISBN 0-596-000787-6
PRICE 20.95
PAGES 316
BUYER INFO
LXF66.rev_book 28 15/3/05 4:05:00 pm
www.linuxformat.co.uk LXF66 MAY 2005 29
REVIEWS Books
Graham Morrison forgets all he knows about Linux to review this
introduction to command-driven development.
Linux Application Development
Youre a systems programmer,
perhaps a good one. Youre well-
versed in Unix and eager to learn, but
Linux is a whole new world to you. This
may well be the book to help you get
there. Its an ambitious attempt to
encompass Linux application
development, from the perspective of
experienced C programmers who dont
necessarily know anything about Linux.
The authors assume readers have
some Unix knowledge, so scrimp on
general information but splash out on
Linux ideas. This second edition has
been written with reference to the 2.6
kernel and the GNU C library version
2.3, and the considerable amount of
source code included in the book is
available from a well-organised
accompanying website.
The authors have managed to
squeeze all the essentials of Linux
programming into the first 100 pages.
This section covers almost as many
subjects as there are pages, any of
which could fill a whole book, but the
highlights include chapters on Emacs
and Vi, gdb, GCC, open source
licensing, the GNU C library, memory
debugging tools, libraries and the
Linux system environment.
The pace makes for an
entertaining read, but dont expect to
gain anything more than a perfunctory
understanding of the many subjects
covered. The authors dont want to
waste time introducing Linux tools that
Unix users will already be familiar with,
preferring to dedicate more of the
book to discussing how Linux works.
Whats missing from the extensive
list is anything on GUI design or
custom widgets. In fact, the book
doesnt deal with modern user
interfaces in any way. It takes a more
Unix-like, command-driven approach,
and the word application in the
books title is used to denote any of
the thousands of command-driven
components responsible for holding
Linux together: the kind of application
you find in the shell or running in the
background. Its the considerable
second section of the book that really
starts to delve into the details of
system programming.
Clarifying the unclear
For a solid grounding in Linux
development theres no better place to
start than with the process model
and thats exactly where this second
section kicks off. The process model is
something Ive often personally
misunderstood. If like me youve had
only a basic idea of how it all hangs
together, this chapter makes use of
familiar terminology and some good
examples to pull the whole concept
into order for you.
Process management also
presents the opportunity for some
excellent sub-headings, such as
10.4.6 Killing Yourself, followed by
10.4.7 Killing Others.
To help with many of the concepts
used in the book, the authors develop
throughout the book a subset of the
Unix command shell called ladsh. Each
chapter progressively adds to the
source code, to produce a minimal
shell featuring built-in commands,
external command execution, I/O
redirection and job control. As an
example, the file I/O is describes the
terms of file access, everything from
file ownership to ext3s extended
attributes, before applying the same
principles to the ladsh shell in the form
of redirection through files and pipes.
A signal processing chapter is just
as illuminating as the one on process
management. From there, the book
quickly moves on to cover a bevy of
subjects including advanced file
handling, memory mapping and job
control. Theres an interesting chapter
on terminals, which (along with many
other parts of the book) provides an
excellent historical explanation for
much of what we consider esoteric
Linux behaviour.
This gives the book broader appeal
it would be a good read for practised
Linux users who want to understand
more about why their systems work
the way they do.
Sample code to try
There follows a good section on
networking with sockets, including
manipulating IP addresses for both
IPv4 and IPv6. This section also
includes some excellent example code,
including an executable version of
getaddrinfo(), featuring several well
thought-out options for the command
line. Another example is a Unix
domain server written in two pages of
code, which will listen on a certain
port before copying data to the
standard output. The absolutely
colossal system programming section
draws to a conclusion with security,
covering both common security holes
and access restrictions.
If we had to criticise any part of
the book it would be the final section,
which touches on several subjects
under the loose definition of
development libraries. The authors use
this as an excuse to focus on
everything from regular expressions to
screen management and hashed
databases. It feels a little like an
afterthought, being not quite so
comprehensive in its treatment as
other parts. Theres a small section on
dynamic loading and callbacks, but
the reader is presumed to have a
good understanding of functioning
libraries already.
Linux Application Development
makes what was previously a specialist
area accessible to anyone with Unix
programming experience and the
desire to write applications. (Windows
programmers may struggle without
knowledge of the basic terms, despite
the authors encouraging assertion to
the contrary).
Each chapter not only works well
as a reference to a Linux tool but also
sparks ideas about how that tool could
be developed. Using a real
implementation of a Unix shell is a
great idea, bringing a greater
relevance to many of the examples,
and you find yourself with a useful tool
at the end of it. For a technical
manual the book reads very well and
is relatively easily to understand, which
is to the authors credit.
The real value, however, comes
from being able to refer to the various
sections of the book after closing the
final page and feeling inspired
enough to sit down and actually write
something. LXF
LINUX FORMAT VERDICT
RATING 8/10
A whole new world of application
development handed to you on a plate.
AUTHOR Michael K Johnson and
Erik W Troan
PUBLISHER Addison-Wesley
ISBN 0-321-21914-7
PRICE 41.99
PAGES 702
BUYER INFO
LXF66.rev_book 29 15/3/05 4:05:06 pm