Re: PDF version of handbook

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006, Bob Bagwill wrote:

> At 587 pages, it's a lot to print, and most of it is generic UNIX/BSD info.
> IMHO, a shorter "This is what's unique to DragonFly" novella would be useful.

Yes!

It has been mentioned a little before but I have not worked on it yet.

I hope to provide a detailed table of contents and outline of what we 
expect should be in an introduction to DragonFly book.

This book (in my opinion) would not cover Unix shell fundamentals (except 
in the case where DragonFly differs). And the book would not cover every 
option or configuration possible, but just common switches and common 
configurations as seen in normal usage.

Please share your ideas here. The following is my table of contents from 
my FreeBSD courseware (some chapters removed and changed to DragonFly 
and pkgsrc):

What is DragonFly?
Interactive operating system installation
DragonFly console basics
DragonFly hierarchy
Differences between standard Unix tools
Standard system administration skills
System bootup and init
System startup configurations (using rc.conf and rc.d)
Shutting down
Networking setup and troubleshooting
User administration
Group administration
Intro to DNS and configuration basics
Enabling caching name server
The system clock
Installing software with pre-built packages
Mail service basics
inetd -- the internet superserver
Using cron
Rotating log files
Scheduled tasks
Basic filesystem creation and maintenance
Installing software using pkgsrc
Setting up an authoritative DNS server (using BIND)
Customizing and building the DragonFly kernel
Using sysctl
Using kernel modules
DragonFly development process
Updating source (and pkgsrc) with cvsup
Updating a DragonFly system
Updating packages
Unix security topics
Security features for DragonFly
Tools for performancing monitoring and tuning
Introduction to packet filtering
Setting up NAT (Network Address Translation)

Maybe add chapter on Sendmail basics (since my courseware has Postfix).

Here is the table of contents of a Lehey's book:

Intro (and some history)
Before install
Quick install
Multi OS install
Installing
Post install config (still in sysinstall)
Tools (KDE, fvwm, KD, shell basics, filenames, emacs, etc)
  ** that chapter is not needed or could be really stripped down ***
Control (users, groups, processes, cron, time, logs, smp, pc cards, Linux 
   emulation)
Ports (install, building, upgrading)
File systems and devices (permissions, MAC, snapshots, mount, devices, 
   terminals)
Disks (adding, formatting, sysinstal, disklabel, newfs, moving, recovery)
Vinum
CD-Rs and ISO-9660
Tapes, backups, floppies
Printers
Networking (layers, ports. physical, ethernet, wireless)
Local networking (sysinstall, manual, dhcp, wireless, routing, etc)
Internet (DNS, ISP)
Serial connections
PPP
DNS (zones, server, records, reverse, slave, delegation, named, security)
Firewalls, IP aliasing, proxies
Network debugging
Network clients (web, ssh. ssh tunnels, ftp, rsync, NFS)
Network servers (inetd, ftpd, apache httpd, nfs, samba)
Mail clients (mostly using mutt)
Mail servers (postfix, spam, POP3, majordomo)
XFree86
Starting and stopping system (loader.conf, KLD, single user mode, network 
  booting)
Config files
Keeping up to date (CVS tags, cvsup)
Updating system (kernel, userland, merging configs)
Custom kernels
Bibliography
Evolution (compare with old FreeBSD)

(By the way, Lehey has made his O'Reilly book as open source recently.)

Several of the above chapters and topics are not needed in a quick book 
covering DragonFly.

I think we need to decide on what is wanted. I agree that the FreeBSD 
Handbook in two unorganized (in my opinion) volumes is too long.

Do we want a book that that is short. We can set a limit (like 200 
letter size pages) and define what is required and make it happen.

Once we have a good outline here, we can commit to docs and begin merging 
in the content we want and writing new content.

I'd be willing to do work on this, but do we even have an audience who is 
interested?

(More important to me: would we have at least 100 people purchase a low 
cost printed book?)

 Jeremy C. Reed

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