CentOS is just like Red Hat, but without the price tag and with the virtuous license. When belts have to be tightened, we want to read about an OS with all the features of a commercial Linux variety, but without the pain. The Definitive Guide to CentOS is the first definitive reference for CentOS and focuses on CentOS alone, the workhorse Linux distro, that does the heavy lifting in small and medium-size enterprises without drawing too much attention to itself.

• Provides tutorial and hands-on learning but is also designed to be used as a reference
• Bases all examples on real-world tasks that readers are likely to perform
• Serves up hard-won examples and hints and tips from the author's experiences of CentOS in production

What youll learn

• See why CentOS is an ideal platform for deploying services on the same level as Redhat Enterprise Linux without the cost.
• Prepare and install a CentOS server from scratch.
• Install and configure core services.
• Follow best practices for managing and administering the server and its services.
• Integrate enterprise features in CentOS/Red Hat networks.
• And finally, move away from Fedora, which has great features, but is not meant to be a server OS!

Who this book is for


Both beginning and experienced system administrators who want to have an industrial–strength Linux server distribution at their fingertips

Table of Contents

1. Introducing CentOS
2. Installing CentOS
3. Getting Started with CentOS
4. Using Yum
5. Using Apache
6. Setting Up Mail
7. Understanding DNS
8. Setting Up DHCP
9. Sharing Files with Samba
10. Setting Up Virtual Private Networks
11. Using Core Builds
12. Using High Availability
13. Monitoring Your Network Using Nagios

Customer Reviews & Comments
I bought this book because I am an advanced Linux user considering switching to CentOS. I expected this book to explain to me the philosophy behind Yum, RPM, upstart, configuring services, and everything else that's specific to RedHat and CentOS. Instead, the book explained to me in detail how to install CentOS using the GUI (as if it's rocket science), then spent the remainder explaining how to set up common services that are configured the same way between all distributions. For me, who is already familiar with other distributions, there was nothing CentOS-specific or even insightful. The only informative and CentOS-specific information in this book can be boiled down to two pages: where the authors discuss the five or six repositories available to CentOS users, and where the authors list a few 'yum' commands. Everything else is either trivial or unrelated to CentOS. Basically, the use of CentOS in this book is a means, not an end. If you want to learn about how CentOS differs from other distros, look elsewhere. A better name for this book might be "An introduction to running a Linux server".

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