Subject: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-4-7-14:41
From: "Linux Activists" <[email-masked]>
To: "Linux-Activists" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 22:20:00 +0300

Topics:
	 Re: Getting docs printed...
	 Re: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-4-6-20:6

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From: "Vincent D. Skahan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Getting docs printed...
Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 17:00:17 +0300

> From: [email-masked] (Andy Oram)
> 
> Now for the uucp guide.  I don't know much about uucp, but this looks
> full of information.  It's a traditional guide, and seems to meet its
> goals.  Unfortunately, it runs into a conflict for me, because as we
> all know, O'Reilly already has a uucp guide.  I think we'd want to
> incrementally change our existing guide, and adapt it for Taylor uucp,
> instead of putting out your guide.  Them's the breaks.

that's not 'BAD'.  That's a good thing.

The existing O'Reilly book seems to be the definitive guide in that
area and (IMHO) it would be a far better thing to update it and add
support for Taylor UUCP than it would be to write a lesser-quality
document that has some Taylor stuff in there.

I'd like to see the uucp doc in order to maybe get the uucp/news/mail
faq I write (at home) into it if that makes sense.  But I guess I need
to ask the inevitable dumb questions on the subject:

	- where again do I grab this stuff ?
	- how can I view them without (!) X-windows ?
	- how can I print 'em (ascii or postscript) ?
	- what software from SLS is needed to do the above ?
		(I have all the SLS distribution, it's just not
			clear what needs to be installed to do what).

-- 
 ----------- Vince Skahan ------ [email-masked] -----------

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From: [email-masked] (Lars Wirzenius)
Subject: Re: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-4-6-20:6
Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 19:08:50 +0300

[email-masked] (Andy Oram):
> Finally, the sysadmin guide.  This is half-way between the spec-like
> structure of the KHG and the guide structure of the uucp book.  There
> are already some valuable chunks of information there, and I can see
> from the notes that Lars is planning more useful stuff.  But I'm not
> sure it will end up as a beginner's guide.  

Thanks for the kind words.

I've been somewhat unclear in my goals at times, and I guess that
might show in the structure of the book.  I have never intended to
write a book directed at beginners only, since that would require
not diving too deeply into things (or at least most beginner's books
seem to be that way).  I definitely want to explain things in
nitty-gritty details (at least when the details aren't too
fast-changing), because that will be necessary for getting a full
understanding of how things work.  However, I definitely don't want to
leave beginner's in the cold: most of the potential audience for the
SAG is people who are using Unix/Linux for the first time, and only
have experience with DOS from before.

What I aim for, then, is a book that will explain things without
assuming too much of the background of the reader (except for a
working understanding on how to _use_ a Unix system: sh, ls, rm, cp,
mv, and an editor, at the least), but that still explains all details
for those who want or need the information.

I am not going to write a ``system administration in five easy steps''
type of book.  I want to explain how things work, so that people can
figure out for themselves what they must do to accomplish any given
task.  (I'm _am_ going to include canned instructions where
appropriate, but only after an explanation of what is going on.)

> It looks more like a FAQ (but more carefully written and more
> thorough).  That is, you browse the book to find a topic you need to
> learn about, and then you a get some useful tips.

That is how it is organized, yes.  I think that the various topics
fall fairly neatly into independent chapters, which don't require
reading the rest of the book to understand.  Personally, I think it is
a plus.

> I think you could turn the sysadmin book into an O'Reilly sort of
> guide.  You have to add a lot and organize it carefully -- this may be
> more work than you want to do.  Somewhere, you have to tell people
> what the job of system administrator entails, give an overview of the
> system and network and the sysadmin's role in keeping them up,
> describe what can go wrong and how to investigate it, etc.

I will try to do that (in the ``Discussion of System Administration''
chapter), at least as far as my abilities allow me.  If O'Reilly has
some specific suggestions of the organization of the book, I'd like to
hear them.  I might not follow them (due to workload, or if I think my
organization is better for Linux (that being the main goal, not
getting something published by O'Reilly)), but I definitely would like
to hear them.

The networking will be in a separate manual, which is good since I am
not very good on that topic.  (It seems to be progressing much faster
than my book is, as well.)

--
[email-masked]  (finger [email-masked])
   MS-DOS, you can't live with it, you can live without it.

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