DevOps Troubleshooting: Linux Server Best Practices

I feel as though I wrote this book. Two higher order systems administration troubleshooting concepts jumped out at me. The first is to not rely on Internet (i.e. Google) searches for your primary source for answers. The second is to use dysfunctional systems as a laboratory rat to get to root causes (i.e. don't reboot and be done with it). Rebooting systems is one of the worst things you can do because it destroys a lot of evidence that you would otherwise miss.

Incredibly useful for troubleshooting linux issues. Even after years as a linux sysadmin I learned a bunch of handy and practical stuff here. I love this style of book, one that shows problems and then how to solve them. A book of linux commands is a good first step to learning linux, even a next level book that talks about how underlying systems are designed is great, but this book took the cake for showing me common issues and best practices / handy tips for resolving them. I'd recommend this book to anyone who admins individual linux machines or someone looking to prep for linux troubleshooting interviews.FYI, this book is much more "ops" focused then "dev" focused, but I don't think that detracts from it's value at all, just something for folks to expect.

This covers many topics and helps give a very useful _brief_ explanation on tools to help (e.g. iostat, sysstat), in addition to explaining how to find extremely high loads reported by 'top' that are caused by disk issues; something I didn't know at all but was encountering a ton at work that puzzled us all.. thanks!While it covers a broad range of topics, the book itself is pretty short and doesn't go into much detail as I thought it would (those 240 pages go by very fast). I left it at our work library and it is a great reference when someone client is complaining about a random performance issue on their dedicated server that leaves us all puzzled.Overall, this book is definitely worth reading at least once, but you will probably want/need it as a reference as well :)

Excellent book, the only downside is that it totally ignores systemd assuming that you will not face it that much ! Maybe at the time of writing the book this was the case, but this point deserves an update from the publishers, and this update was due about two years ago at least.

This is the second book by Kyle Rankin that I have read and reviewed, the first being his co-authored Ubuntu Server book. From reading his articles in Linux Journal and other books, I enjoy his more direct questions and answers approach that is different from other Linux books. Instead of digging around the chapter for the command, Kyle Rankin has the steps and example clearly written, making this a very to the point guide. Reading other Linux books, I feel like I get more usable information from this book over larger volumes on the same topic.From reading DevOps Troubleshooting, I really enjoyed this focus on troubleshooting. Kyle Rankin touched on troubleshooting in the Ubuntu Server book for a chapter, covering many issues but really only so much can be written in a chapter. Glad to see that the demand for this topic lead to a whole book on the topic, especially since troubleshooting is really an art that so many, including myself, need practice on.The book covers the basics in the beginning about the basics of troubleshooting, how to make smart choices in testing the problem. This will give you a good base of building on your troubleshooting skills, instead of using a shotgun approach to solving problems. Also covers managing communication between teams. If you have ever worked on a critical issue, you know how dreaded it can be to "join the voice bridge", all the while working on the problem.The chapters cover the general checks of the Linux operating system from reading performance details, using basic tools like top to find why the system is slow. Other topics also covered are boot problems, disk space issues, tracking down problems between two hosts, dns, e-mail basics, web and SQL server basics, and hardware problems. Each chapter includes details on the basics of the technology, then briefing on the tools, then how to check or validate the service is working.While it sounds like this is a general command guide book, or a summary of man pages, the author also includes details why to use this tool or another, plus describes the path of troubleshooting. Personally, with only a few years of Linux experience I felt that I knew most of the tools mentioned, but the book really helped me use the tools in a much more efficient manner. Also Kyle Rankin describes each tool in detail to get all of the most usable information. I'll admit, I never knew what "wa" stood for in top and now it will be my top values to check on a system.One of the key points Kyle Rankin mentions in the book is the technology known the least will often be the most blamed problem. I agree 100% on this, and this book really gives no one the excuse to blame another team since they can rule out the issue themselves. Often I've seen DNS blamed endless times for random issues that no one else could explain.Overall, I really recommend this book to Linux users in production roles where they need to streamline their troubleshooting steps. But this book is also highly recommended for general Linux users as everyone will run into strange issues either at work or home. Personally, I found this book to help my knowledge in the subjects covered and will be sending a recommendation to my team at work to read this. I'm sure that even the more experience users will find new information from the book or at the very least, this will be a good reference book to send new users instead of explaining troubleshooting themselves.After reading this book, I did have some suggestions, if there was a 2nd edition. While the book focuses on Linux, more so on Debian than Red Hat, I would have liked to see some details on BSD. This is not an entire deal breaker, as BSD is less popular than Linux, and often the commands are not entirely the same. Another suggestion would be more real world examples of trouble shooting a problem. For example, a step by step time line of the problem, how it was reported, solved, and post mortem on what caused the issue. This might be a good read for people new to fast troubleshooting skills and want to understand which tool fits where in the steps.Besides these minor suggestions, the book is excellent and I'm keeping the hard copy on my desk at work for reference.

This is a great book to read through if you have an interview coming up to refresh yourself on topics that simply are not going to come up each day at work. I also love this book because it gives you guidelines to troubleshoot common technologies such as email that you may not get exposure to very often in your role. You can take these examples and sharpen up on any weak points in your toolbox as a sys admin. Amazing book I hope the make an expanded version I will buy it!

Very good product I really love it 5 star thank you

If you've been into system engineering for at least 1-2 years, nothing new to be learned here. Good read for Developers tho to learn some basic troubleshooting skills.

In a nutshell: This is an amazing book for a developer or junior sysadmin who wants bite-sized and extremely focused recommendations for administrating a Linux box and the applications that are running on it.I'm primarily a Java developer, and working as a contractor in small startup companies I often have to work across the entire stack from instance/OS administration right though to creation of web-based UIs. The term 'DevOps' is obviously getting a lot of attention in the computing/development press, and the type of companies I work for are increasingly expecting this to be a skill I should have (even if they don't know exactly what DevOps encompasses!).I needed to improve my DevOps skills fast, and coming at this from a developer's point-of-view the primary skills I need to learn are the Ops-based System Administration (sysadmin) tasks - this book meets that requirement exactly. The book is small, but don't take this as a negative - it is highly focused, and contains a wealth of knowledge. I managed to devour the contents over a day, mainly by reading a chapter, taking a pause to experiment with my new-found knowledge and commands using a Linux-based box, and then dipping back into the book if I got stuck.A particular use case that this book matches perfectly is the new wave of developers deploying to the Cloud. Over the past few years I am increasingly deploying a client's app to Cloud-based infrastructure such as AWS (EC2, RDS etc), and the rules of engagement are quite different here in comparison to when deploying to in-house boxes. I've lost count of the amount of time I've thrown away trying to figure out performance problems with Cloud apps - is the app poorly designed, or am I IO/Compute/network bound? The skills you'll acquire from this book will help considerably here (for example, I didn't know about the sar command, which is *extremely* useful for monitoring resources over time!)If you're coming from a similar background to me and are looking for a good package of Linux sysadmin knowledge then in addition to this book I would recommend the Linux Pocket Guide for day-to-day reference (I always keep this book close by, and it helps greatly when I'm struggling to remember the netstat syntax or vim shortcuts) and the Pro Linux System Administration (Expert's Voice in Open Source) for the complete 'weighty-tome' reference.If you're coming from a developer background and are looking to break into the murky world of DevOps then I strongly recommend this book as a starting point - the author has clearly thought about the goals of this book and has done a great job in meeting them! Linux Pocket GuidePro Linux System Administration (Expert's Voice in Open Source)

This book covers all the basics in managing / troubleshooting a Linux server and its basic services. It's both highly useful and readable. I read it from cover to cover. I loved the sections about how to use top / sar and uptime to diagnose the state of the server. Yes, this might seem obvious stuff but do you really understand what all the numbers mean exactly? I've been managing Linux servers for over 8 years but there were loads of little tips and tricks which I hadn't noticed or properly understood before. I would buy this again.

If you have real world experience like myself, this book will help build upon that as well as reinforce what you know. The sections referring to resource contention and network troubleshooting will be helpful to most if not everyone. The sections regarding websites etc... perhaps not so much due to the variety of webapps out there. However what it does offer is a very good grounding on the subjects.

concise guide on trouble shooting

Well written. All you need for fast troubleshooting in just a few pages. Clear cut explanations.

This is a *perfect* complement toUnix & Linux System Administration HandbookI'd recommend you get both of these, DevOps forIF this, THEN what??type info,& the Handbook for in-depth *understanding*.Years ago wasted money on "Running Linux", when I /should/ have bought both of these.BTW, the amount of understanding offered in the Handbook makes its price small, for the immense wealth you get...Do Well!Namaste! ( : Unix & Linux System Administration Handbook

This book provides knowledge on how to troubleshoot almost every scenario you will face as a sysadmin. It is just 200 pages and you can finish this in two days if not less ,but you will gain years of troubleshooting knowledge. So your money well spent.Hope author writes some more books and Linux ..

Good book...explain how to get the job done.

If you started now to Linux or if you know it for years, its a powerfull reading! Enjoy the book

Ein sehr gutes Buch! Für Praktiker und/oder Systemadministratoren bestens geeignet. Man merkt, dass der Autor weiss wovon er spricht. :-)