USAH, 3E is a general guide to the care and feeding of Unix systems. It's a fairly complete overhaul of the second edition, which was published in 1995. The third edition has a purple cover; the second edition was red.

Here's what the marketing blurb says:

"This new edition of the world's most comprehensive guide to Unix system administration is an ideal tutorial for those new to administration and an invaluable reference for experienced professionals. The third edition has been expanded to include "direct from the frontlines" coverage of Red Hat Linux. Unix System Administration Handbook describes every aspect of system administration—from basic topics to Unix esoterica—and provides explicit coverage of four popular Unix systems: Red Hat Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and FreeBSD.

"This book stresses a practical approach to system administration. It's packed with war stories and pragmatic advice, not just theory and watered-down restatements of the manuals. DIfficult subjects such as sendmail, kernel building, and DNS configuration are tackled head-on. Examples are provided for all four versions of Unix and are drawn from real-life systems—warts and all."

You can identify which printing of the book you have by looking on the back of the title page. Right underneath the words "Printed in the United States of America" there is a series of numbers (e.g., 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2). The last number shown is the printing of the book you have. In this example, the book would be from the second printing.

See the errors page for a list of specific corrections.

Not anymore. Prentice Hall formerly sold the update CDs under the title Tools for Unix System Administrators. However, it has been several years since the last edition of the CD was released (October, 1997). Even if you could obtain a copy of that CD, we wouldn't recommend that you use it; the contents are too old.

To locate current versions of the software packages that were on the CD, search for them at Yahoo or Google. You can also consult the files in the index directory on your old CD to find out where the master copies of the software were kept at the time the CD was compiled. Many packages are still distributed from the same locations.

The short answer is that you can order the book from most any Internet bookstore. Bookpool and Fatbrain specialize in technical books; Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble carry it, too. All of these vendors will ship internationally. Try searching at MySimon to find the lowest price.

For a slightly expanded version of this answer, see the ordering information page.

We've tried to list the technical books we really like in the Suggested Supplemental Reading section at the end of certain chapters in USAH. Check any chapters you think might be relevant to your particular X.

We like most books in the O'Reilly "nutshell" series and think they do a good job of explaining individual software systems. If your question is about a specific topic or system, we suggest those books as a starting point. Be aware that a lot of bricks-and-mortar bookstores don't carry the whole product line. Your best bet is to look up the O'Reilly offerings online at www.ora.com.

Reader feedback at Amazon.com is an excellent source of information about individual books. Just look up the book by title; reader comments appear near the bottom of the page. By default, Amazon shows only a few recent comments. To see the rest, click the See all X customer reviews... link at the end. People seem to give high star ratings to most books, so it's important to read the actual comments.

If you are looking for the answer to a specific question, we suggest starting at deja.com. This site maintains a searchable database of Usenet articles going back for several years. It's a terrific resource for system administrators.

Current Usenet FAQs of all kinds are archived on the FTP server rtfm.mit.edu.

Most vendors' web sites provide technical support areas where FAQs and updates can be downloaded free of charge. You can search the web at large at AltaVista and Google, as well as many other sites. And don't forget topical indexes such as Yahoo.

Maybe. We are willing to read email and send you a quick response if anything comes to mind. However, you should know that our track record on answering these queries isn't great.

The questions we get tend to be either a) requests for pointers to other sources of documentation, or b) last-ditch pleas of the form "I have an incredibly weird problem that I've been trying to solve for three days, and now I'm desperate!" Usually the a-type questions are better answered by consulting the resources listed under "Your book doesn't cover X," above. The b-type questions tend to be so convoluted that we rarely have anything useful to offer. Much as we would like to help, such questions are hard to answer without research and hands-on experience with the problem.