






                  The Linux Network Administrators' Guide

                      Olaf Kirch, <okir@monad.swb.de>
                        Linux Documentation Project


                               18. Aug. 1994
                                Release 1.0



   Welcome to the public release of the new Linux Network Administrators'
   Guide!  After one year of work in (well, almost) seclusion, I'm  proud
   to  present  you  a  completely revised, greatly improved and expanded
   Networking Guide.


   1.  What's In It?

   The new NAG is an almost complete rewrite of the  version  I  released
   almost  exactly  one  year  ago.   It  features  several new chapters,
   including the setup of SLIP, PPP, and NIS.  It  also  has  a  complete
   sendmail chapter now, written by Vince Skahan.

   The  NAG is written mainly for networking rookies (as I have been when
   I started this project almost two years ago), but I hope  it  will  be
   useful to more experienced networkers alike. It explains everything in
   pretty much detail, beginning with the basics of networking and slowly
   working  its  way  up  to the configuration of mail and news, covering
   both the setup of TCP/IP-based services and UUCP. The  following  list
   shows the table of contents:

      +      Preface

      +      Introduction to Networking

      +      Issues of TCP/IP Networking

      +      Configuring the Networking Hardware

      +      Setting up the Serial Hardware

      +      Configuring TCP/IP Networking

      +      Name Service and Resolver Configuraton

      +      Serial Line IP

      +      The Point-to-Point Protocol

      +      Various Network Applications

      +      The Network Information System

      +      The Network File System

      +      Managing Taylor UUCP

      +      Electronic Mail

      +      Getting smail Up and Running

      +      Sendmail+IDA

      +      Netnews

      +      C News

      +      A Description of NNTP

      +      Newsreader Configuration

      +      Glossary

      +      Annotated Bibliography

   The  level of detail comes at a certain cost, which is the size of the
   book. When running it through LaTeX, it comes out at around 350  pages
   at  the  moment, counting table of contents, glossary, and index. This
   is quite a bit. I hope you'll enjoy it nevertheless.


   2.  With a little help...

   The NAG wouldn't be what it is today if it wasn't for the  involvement
   of  O'Reilly  and Associates in this project, who are going to publish
   the Official Printed Version of the NAG some  time  later  this  year.
   Since  December 1993, I've been working with Andy Oram at O'Reilly who
   read everything I wrote, and sent me countless reviews, so much of the
   quality in this book is actually due to him.

   Still,  the NAG will remain freely distributable under the Linux Docu-
   mentation Project's License, just the way the  previous  release  was.
   Thus,  no-one  will  be  shut  off; rather, you will be able to choose
   between the online version and a high-quality printed version.


   3.  Obtaining the NAG

   The NAG is available both as LaTeX source, and preformatted in several
   ways. The primary FTP sites are

               sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/LDP
               tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/docs/LDP

   The following packages are available:

   nag-1.0.tar.gz This  file  contains  the LaTeX source of the NAG. I've
        tried to make it as portable as possible, so I do  hope  it  will
        compile cleanly on most LaTeX installations.  Some nuances of the
        DVI and Postscript output can be controlled  by  a  configuration
        file  which  allows  you, among other things, to select a tighter
        printing which reduces the size of the printed book by almost 100
        pages.  For  details,  please  refer to the installation notes in
        that archive.

   nag-dvi-1.0.tar.gz This file contains the preformatted DVI  output  of
        the NAG, suitable for printing on US Letter paper. All figures in
        the NAG are  done  using  using  xfig,  from  which  I  generated
        epic/eepic  output  for the DVI version. The eepic macros rely on
        some LaTeX \special's that some DVI printer drivers may not  have
        implemented.  If  you  don't see any figures on your printout, or
        get pages full of error messages about \special's  not  supported
        while printing the NAG, your best option may be this: Convert the
        DVI file to PostScript and print the offending pages  from  using
        ghostcsript.

   nag-ps-1.0.tar.gz This  file contains the preformatted PostScript out-
        put of the NAG, again suitable for printing on Letter Paper. This
        should be almost painless to use.

   nag-ascii-1.0.tar.gz This  is the ASCII version, which is provided for
        the benefit of those without the disk space or printer  capabili-
        ties  to  handle a full TeX or ghostcript installation. As things
        go with ASCII, the output is not very high quality, will eat hor-
        rendous  amounts of paper when actually printing it (close to 400
        pages), and doesn't have any figures (anybody who is  willing  to
        try his or her hand on ASCII art is very welcome).

   All these files are gzipped tar archives.


   4.  Feedback

   If  you have complaints, suggestions, fixes, or questions, please mail
   me at the address given above. However, let me say a word about  `bug'
   reporting:  if you have fixes to the NAG itself, please don't use ref-
   erences like `page 87, second paragraph', but rather give me a section
   number,  or  even a detailed description like `In the mount section of
   the NFS chapter'. Although I may find the sentence you refer  to  when
   you  use page numbers, there's no guarantee the mistake you spotted is
   anywhere close to that page on my printed copy.

   I hope I didn't forget anything,
   Enjoy
                   Olaf Kirch


