Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

Unfortunately, this book is extremly obsolete. It's full of old 1.3x code and examples and a few chapters have 2.0.x ones, and the worst: this book has contradictory and wrong paragraphs in several chapters against the official Apache 2.1 docs. It's mainly focused on Unix and it's a total waste of time and money for Windows users running Apache (Unix users that have experience with Apache shouldn't waste their money with this book).

Seems that the authors have a kind of contract with FreeBSD group because this is the only OS that mainly appears on the book, it's a shame. Also seems that the authors doesn't know anything about Apache 2.0.x releases, do they want to live in the past?. By the way, the chapter related with "Security" is a complete joke.

If you're running recent Apache releases, for example 2.0.4x (with the most interesting and useful features) forget about this outdated and biased book and invest your time with the Official 2.1 Apache docs.

Sorry O'Reilly, better luck with the 4th Ediiton.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

This is the second book I had worked through from Orielly. Quite good for most of aspects. It needs some knowledge of Linux and computer networking for better understanding this book. The third edition have some typo and the example download contains some misconfigure file. However, if you look at this book closely, you can solve it by yourself. This can be regards as a practice for the reader. Quite good, hope that more information and improvment in next edition.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

This is a fairly comprehensive, 600-page guide to the Apache web server software. The book begins with an overview of what a web server and browser clients do, how they work, and planning/installing Apache. The book covers versions 1.3.x and 2.0.x, and the differences between them. After installation, the next few chapters explain the initial configuration required to get a working webserver, including the various directives blocks, access control, and setting up virtual hosts.

Chapter 5 discusses how to implement authentication, passwords, and more on access control, such as using .htaccess files. Following chapters describe how to change settings for various web filetypes, indexing, imagemaps, and redirection of web page requests. Chapters 9 and 10 explain using a proxy, and the multitude of logging and status options which can be configured.

One of the longer (and important) chapters, Chapter 11, goes into excellent detail about the security aspects of running a webserver. It includes discussion and examples on signatures, certificates, using SSL, and firewalls. General security precautions, real life scenarios, and even potential legal issues are addressed.

The next section goes over building and administering a large website, and the issues associated with that. Also there is a chapter on adding web applications to your site to allow flexible user interaction, such as forms submission. There are then several chapters regarding add-ons and extensions to get even more from the webserver. These include PHP, CGI, Perl, mod_perl, XML, and Cocoon. There are numerous examples of coding provided, although most of them are somewhat basic in nature. One subject that I thought should have been addressed more was integrating the webserver with a database (such as MySQL), as this is a very common requirement.

The last two chapters go over the Apache Application Programming Interface (API), and how to write Modules for Apache. This may be useful to more serious developers, but is probably too technical and difficult for the average casual user. The book closes with a good Index and there is also a very handy foldout inside the back cover which contains quick-reference data for the most commonly used configurations and commands.

Overall this book seems to "cover all the bases". It was useful to me as a beginner to set up a testing webserver, and yet has extra details and information for those more advanced webmasters. The quick reference section especially, should be very useful to experienced Apache users. I would highly recommend the book for anyone wanting to start or improve their knowledge in running the Apache webserver.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

I've been consistently impressed with O'Reilly's pubs until this book. I bought it with the little "Covers 2.0 and 1.3" on the cover as a key element. However, it appears that "Covers 2.0" is very much a marketing afterthought. There are so many basic differences between 1.3 and 2.0 that this book is almost completely useless. Poorly done, fellas.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

I ordered this book to learn apache from the ground up, but the examples download will not work out of the box for apache 2.0 (distributed with RedHat 9). It requires knowledge of apache and extensive editing of each httpd.conf file to make them workable. The book has great information, but could be a much better learning experience if the examples could be used.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

This book offers a step by step process of installing the Tomcat webserver to Unix (primarily) and Windows servers. at every stage, the authors have taken the time to include the information about windows operating system. the authors have taken the time to arrange the flow of the chapters to match the events in a real world server configuration exercise of an apache. the book also describes the differences in the versions of Apache for the benefit of users.

In all, the book is good material for the not-so experienced apache user.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

This book is written well and is thorough enough, but Apache already comes with rather thorough documentation and I didn't find much new here. Might be worth it if you really want a bound manual, but otherwise, check the Apache documentation first and save yourself some money.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

I was very impressed with the second edition of this book, and didn't think there was much room for improvement. I was wrong... very wrong. What did the do different? An improved quick start guide, support for Apache 2.0, better layout (specific chapters for a specific topic), how to add PHP, CGI, mod_perl, mod_jserv / Tomcat, and Cocoon have been added. Just in shear pages it's over 200 additional pages. This book is better than the 2nd Edition in many ways. It has earned it's place on my bookshelf.

Comments about oreilly Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition:

Apache: The Definitive Guide

I bought this book to catchup with the open source initiative's webserver, apache. The book clearly explains all the different settings and commands the apache webserver can use ! Both versions (1.3 and 2.0) are covered in good detail.

WebDav

What i missed was a description of the dav_module and dav_fs_module used in version 2.0. The only place it was mentioned was on the quick reference card. WebDAV is used more widely now and the apache foundation has incorporated it in version 2.0. Nothing was mentioned ! A missed chance !

Win32

In the book the installation of apache is covered on both Unix and Win32 platforms. The last one, Win32, is not covered in detail, which i find quite poor for such a detailed book. In some passages the Win32 platform is critisized for its stability and security, not giving a non biased statement of the writers about that platform. Topics like security are very important for sysadmins using apache on the Win32 platform. Hopefully the 4rd edition will cover this subject in more detail !

Overall

A good readible book with lots of detailed descriptions and comments. Unix installation and configuration is detailed, the Win32 platform is not that detailed. Missed webdav module description and configuration. But still it is a good book to have !