From owner-freebsd-doc Thu Sep 23 21: 0: 0 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from picnic.mat.net (picnic.mat.net [206.246.122.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4EED514F41 for ; Thu, 23 Sep 1999 20:59:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chuckr@mat.net) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by picnic.mat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA48172; Thu, 23 Sep 1999 23:58:25 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from chuckr@mat.net) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 23:58:24 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey To: chris@tourneyland.com Cc: Neil Blakey-Milner , doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Tasks for junior documentation hackers! In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.19990923224452.0088d180@mail.9netave.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Thu, 23 Sep 1999 chris@tourneyland.com wrote: > I'd like to do something like 'Administering a student server'. I'm making > a jump to FreeBSD from Windows, and trying to administer a little 3-5 node > network off my ADSL line. I don't think that currently people like me are > as well served as possible by the documentation (or culture) that's out > there. For example, when I posted to the questions list about how to do > name serving, I think every single response told me to Buy The O'Reilly > Book (I'm surprised BTOB hasn't been hallowed by acronymity along with > RTFM). When I said "Geez, do I really have to read a 500 page book to learn > how to do DNS for my puny network?", a lot of people got mad at me for > being lazy and ignorant. But come on! Unfortunately, the question you asked, DNS, just isn't a 20 word answer. Maybe if you'd asked about one tiny part of DNS, perhaps it would have been, but it's not. If you think this is one big conspiracy against you, then I *very* reluctantly would tell you that you'll really have to consider going back to Windows. We're not out to get you, we would like you to succeed, but the answers are NOT simple, else the book wouldn't be that fat. > > That's just an example. In general, I'd like to tackle this and other > subjects to come up with a "How To Become A FreeBSD Administrator Of A > Small Home Network When You Don't Know A Damn Thing About Unix" > guide/handbook/whatever. You can get guides that introduce you to Unix administration, O'Reilly sells a fine one, as do many others. They give you enough info often to figure out what your problem is, but they don't usually give you enough to do your own setups from scratch, hence the larger books. We're really not out to get you, but the answer stays the same. Go visit your bookstore, or buy the FreeBSD book from Walnut Creek. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include C programming, Electronics, 213 Lakeside Dr. Apt. T-1 | communications, and signal processing. Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run picnic.mat.net: FreeBSD-current(i386) and (301) 220-2114 | jaunt.mat.net : FreeBSD-current(Alpha) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message