Learn Linux debugging and optimization—at kernel and application levels—hands-on!

This is the definitive guide to Linux software debugging and performance optimization at both the kernel and application levels. Using extensive Linux code examples, Steve Best systematically introduces open source tools and best-practice techniques for delivering bug-free, well-tuned code.

Drawing on his exceptional experience optimizing Linux systems for IBM, Best covers issues ranging from memory management and I/O to system processes and kernel bug messages. You'll walk through real debugging sessions, discovering the strategies experts use to debug even the most complex application- and kernel-related problems. You'll master sophisticated profiling techniques for identifying and resolving bottlenecks more quickly and learn how to capture the right data in the event of trouble. Coverage includes

• Bottleneck identification

• Code coverage

• Debuggers: gdb, kgdb, and KDB

• Memory management

• /proc kernel data analysis

• System process monitoring

• Network performance

• Oops bug messages

• Syslog and event logging

• Execution traces

• Profiling kernel behavior

• Cache misses

• User-Mode Linux

• Dynamic probes

• Crash dump analysis

• And more...

Linux® Debugging and Performance Tuning will be indispensable for every developer who needs to supercharge the Linux kernel and applications, and for every administrator and support specialist who must resolve Linux reliability or performance issues.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

• Proven techniques for optimizing web, file, print, database, and application servers

• Practical introductions to open source performance management tools

• Easy-to-understand examples based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

An indispensable guide to maximizing Linux system and application performance

From Wall Street to Hollywood, Linux runs many of the world's most businesscritical systems. Linux performance now impacts the entire enterprise. In Performance Tuning for Linux Servers, a team of IBM's most-experienced Linux performance specialists shows you how to find bottlenecks, measure performance, and identify effective optimizations.

This book doesn't just cover kernel tuning: it shows how to maximize the end-to-end performance of real-world applications and databases running on Linux. Throughout, the authors present realistic examples based on today's most popular enterprise Linux platforms, Intel-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. These examples are designed for simplicity, clarity, and easy adaptation to any contemporary Linux environment. You'll discover how to

• Install and configure Linux for maximum performance from the outset

• Evaluate and choose the right hardware architecture for your Linux environment

• Understand Linux kernels 2.4 through 2.6: components, performance issues, and optimization opportunities

• Master core Linux performance tuning principles and strategies

• Utilize free, open source tools for measurement, monitoring, system tracing, and benchmarking

• Interpret performance data to analyze your Linux server's real-world behavior

• Optimize Linux system schedulers, memory, I/O, file systems, and networking

• Tune web, file, database, and application servers running commercial workloads

• Predict the impact of changes in tuning parameters or configurations

• Tune Linux code: optimize design, timing, sockets, threads, synchronization, and more

• Architect for maximum performance: SMP scaling, clustering, and topology

• Integrate kernel and application tuning in end-to-end system optimization projects

Whether you're an administrator, developer, integrator, or consultant, Performance Tuning for Linux Serverswill help you maximize the performance and value of every Linux system and application you run.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

"The unique thing about Fit for Developing Software is the way it addresses the interface between customers/testers/analysts and programmers. All will find something in the book about how others wish to be effectively communicated with. A Fit book for programmers wouldn't make sense because the goal is to create a language for business-oriented team members. A Fit book just for businesspeople wouldn't make sense because the programmers have to be involved in creating that language. The result is a book that should appeal to a wide range of people whose shared goal is improving team communications."

--Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute

"Even with the best approaches, there always seemed to be a gap between the software that was written and the software the user wanted. With Fit we can finally close the loop. This is an important piece in the agile development puzzle."

--Dave Thomas, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

"Ward and Rick do a great job in eschewing the typical, overly complicated technology trap by presenting a simple, user-oriented, and very usable technology that holds fast to the agile principles needed for success in this new millennium."

--Andy Hunt, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

"Florida Tech requires software engineering students to take a course in programmer testing, which I teach. Mugridge and Cunningham have written a useful and instructive book, which will become one of our course texts."

--Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology

"Rick and Ward continue to amaze me. Testing business rules is a fundamentally hard thing that has confounded many, and yet these two have devised a mechanism that cuts to the essence of the problem. In this work they offer a simple, thorough, approachable, and automatable means of specifying and testing such rules."

--Grady Booch, IBM Fellow

"By providing a simple, effective method for creating and automating tabular examples of requirements, Fit has dramatically improved how domain experts, analysts, testers, and programmers collaborate to produce quality software."

--Joshua Kerievsky, founder, Industrial Logic, Inc., and author of Refactoring to Patterns

"Agile software development relies on collaborating teams, teams of customers, analysts, designers, developers, testers, and technical writers. But, how do they work together? Fit is one answer, an answer that has been thoroughly thought through, implemented, and tested in a number of situations. Primavera has significantly stabilized its product lineusing Fit, and I'm so impressed by the results that I'm suggesting it to everyone I know. Rick and Ward, in their everlasting low-key approach, have again put the keystone in the arch of software development. Congratulations and thanks from the software development community."

--Ken Schwaber, Scrum Alliance, Agile Alliance, and codeveloper of Scrum

"Fit is the most important new technique for understanding and communicating requirements. It's a revolutionary approach to bringing experts and programmers together. This book describes Fit comprehensively and authoritatively. If you want to produce great software, you need to read this book."

--James Shore, Principal, Titanium I.T. LLC

"There are both noisy and quiet aspects of the agile movement and it is often the quieter ones that have great strategic importance. This book by Ward and Rick describes one of these absolutely vital, but often quieter, practices--testing business requirements. A renewed focus on testing, from test-driven development for developers to story testing for customers, is one of the agile community's great contributions to our industry, and this book will become one of the cornerstones of that contribution. Stories are done-done (ready for release) when they have been tested by both developers (done) and customers (done-done). The concepts and practices involved in customer story testing are critical to project success and wonderfully portrayed in this book. Buy it. Read it. Keep it handy in your day-to-day work."

--Jim Highsmith, Director of Agile Software Development & Project Management Practice, Cutter Consortium

"I have been influenced by many books, but very few have fundamentally changed how I think and work. This is one of those books. The ideas in this book describe not just how to use a specific framework in order to test our software, but also how we should communicate about and document that software. This book is an excellent guide to a tool and approach that will fundamentally improve how you think about and build software--as it has done for me."

--Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software, author of User Stories Applied

"Fit is a tool to help whole teams grow a common language for describing and testing the behavior of software. This books fills a critical gap--helping both product owners and programmers learn what Fit is and how to use it well."

--Bill Wake, independent consultant

"Over the past several years, I've been using Fit and FitNesse with development teams. They are not only free and powerful testing tools, they transform development by making the behavior of applications concrete, verifiable, and easily observable. The only thing that has been missing is a good tutorial and reference. Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham's Fit For Developing Software fits the bill. Essentially, two books in one, it is a very readable guide that approaches Fit from technical and nontechnical perspectives. This book is a significant milestone and it will make higher software quality achievable for many teams."

--Michael C. Feathers, author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code, and consultant, Object Mentor, Inc.

"Wow! This is the book I wish I had on my desk when I did my first story test-driven development project. It explains the philosophy behind the Fit framework and a process for using it to interact with the customers to help define the requirements of the project. It makes Fit so easy and approachable that I wrote my first FitNesse tests before I even I finished the book.

"For the price of one book, you get two, written by the acknowledged thought leaders of Fit testing. The first is written for the nonprogramming customer. It lays out how you can define the functionality of the system you are building (or modifying) using tabular data. It introduces a range of different kinds of 'test fixtures' that interpret the data and exercise the system under test. While it is aimed at a nontechnical audience, even programmers will find it useful because it also describes the process for interacting with the customers, using the Fit tests as the focal point of the interaction.

"The second 'book' is targeted to programmers. It describes how to build each kind of fixture described in the first book. It also describes many other things that need to be considered to have robust automated tests--things like testing without a database to make tests run faster. A lot of the principles will be familiar to programmers who have used any member of the xUnit family of unit testing frameworks. Rick and Ward show you how to put it into practice in a very easy-to-read narrative style that uses a fictitious case study to lead you through all the practices and decisions you are likely to encounter."

--Gerard Meszaros, ClearStream Consulting

The Fit open source testing framework brings unprecedented agility to the entire development process. Fit for Developing Software shows you how to use Fit to clarify business rules, express them with concrete examples, and organize the examples into test tables that drive testing throughout the software lifecycle. Using a realistic case study, Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham--the creator of Fit--introduce each of Fit's underlying concepts and techniques, and explain how you can put Fit to work incrementally, with the lowest possible risk. Highlights include

• Integrating Fit into your development processes
• Using Fit to promote effective communication between businesspeople, testers, and developers
• Expressing business rules that define calculations, decisions, and business processes
• Connecting Fit tables to the system with "fixtures" that check whether tests are actually satisfied
• Constructing tests for code evolution, restructuring, and other changes to legacy systems
• Managing the quality and evolution of tests
• A companion Web site (http://fit.c2.com/) that offers additional resources and source code

• How "data everywhere" transforms business, technology, and the way you live

• A pioneering look at grand, new efficiencies forthcoming

As communications, computing, and data storage converge, data is becoming utterly ubiquitous...and that changes everything. In this book, two leading data management visionaries reveal how data transforms the way you do business, the technologies you use, the investments you make, the life you live, and the world you live in.

Chris Stakutis and John Webster draw on interviews with nearly 50 leading experts: technologists, sociologists, entrepreneurs, consultants, researchers, media leaders, and futurists alike. You'll discover how today's "primordial soup" of wired and wireless gadgetry is quickly coalescing into something immensely more powerful, driving applications you thought were pure science fiction. You'll also gain deep insight into the profound implications of ubiquitous data capture: implications that touch everything from your bedroom to the battlefield:

• The emerging "Connectivity Divide." Which side of the chasm are you on?

• Inescapable data's technical components: Async communications,

• pervasive computing devices, wireless, and XML

• Global calendars, momentary enterprises: Transforming your life and business

• Uncontrolled information availability: Its risks to your security and well-being

• The future of technical infrastructure, grids, smart storage, and beyond

• Radical, new modes of information delivery: Nonnumeric, nontextual, unobtrusive

• Future tech: From holographic displays to fertility "wall clocks"

• Your DNA on a chip: The heart of your personal health and wellness program

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

“Samba-3 by Example provides useful, thoroughly documented explanations for all aspects of a Samba deployment. They’re the same kind of patient answers I got when my dad taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels. Now, if only dad knew active Directory....”
—Will Enestvedt, UNIX System Administrator, Johnson & Wales University

“When my colleague and I were first reading John Terpstra’s Samba-3 by Example, we were impressed by how easy it was to find the chapter we wanted to implement, and the ease of following his step-by-step approach. We always felt Terpstra was there with us, for every configuration line. It was like having our own personal tutor. I always take his book to every client that uses Samba. Additionally, Terpstra does something most authors don’t, he keeps his documentation up to date. When we were doing our first implementation, he just released the update that morning; we downloaded it, printed it, and implemented it. Now, to me, that is cutting-edge technology at its best.”
—Steven C. Henry

“A cook learns to follow a recipe until he has mastered the art. This is your cookbook to successful Windows networks. I followed this recipe to migrate our NT4 domain to Samba-3, and the recipe just worked great. I could not have completed this project without the Samba-3 by Example book—it brings dry, lifeless man-pages down to the reality IT support people face.”
—Geoff Scott, IT Systems Administrator, Guests Furniture Hire Pty Ltd

“I used the book Samba-3 by Example to get started at 8:30 last night. I finished my complete PDC and it was up and running in six hours with Windows 2000 and XP Pro clients ready for work in the morning. That’s from someone who is brand new to Linux. This book is awesome!”
—Jesse Knudsen, Windows Systems Administrator

The definitive Samba-3 guidebook has been completely updated to reflect the latest Samba releases and migration techniques. This book’s complete configuration files, step-by-step implementation instructions, network diagrams, and automated scripts make deployment a breeze—even if you've never worked with Samba before. From small office networks to enterprise environments, here are proven configurations, backed by guidance from one of the world’s most respected Samba experts, Samba Team contibutor John H. Terpstra.

This edition has added comprehensive diagnostic techniques and validation steps, as well as solutions to common implementation mistakes: everything you need to assure reliability and performance regardless of your network environment. In response to reader requests, the author has also added detailed coverage of updating existing Samba networks, as well as a practical primer on how Samba stores essential network information. Samba-3 by Example, Second Edition, covers all these scenarios, and more.

• Deploying “no frills” servers for small, convenient networks
• Implementing small- to-mid-sized networks using basic security
• Implementing full-fledged enterprise network environments, with tips for enhancing availability and performance
• Building secure, scalable networks with domain logons and roaming profiles
• Deploying Samba in environments that utilize routers and firewalls
• Examples that minimize desktop management requirements, using policy controls and folder redirection
• Integrating Samba-3 with Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Active Directory domains
• Migrating seamlessly from Windows NT 4 to Samba-3
• Adding Samba servers as Windows domain members
• Configuring DHCP, DNS, and OpenLDAP servers to get the most out of your Samba network
• An example of Squid, using Windows authentication through Samba
• Estimating server hardware, using the practical guidelines included here

If you’re a Windows network administrator responsible for deploying or managing Samba, Samba-3 by Example, Second Edition, is your indispensable resource.

The CD-ROM contains all example configuration files, scripts, and tools covered in the book.

The Definitive Guide to Protecting Enterprise Data

Your enterprise data is your most critical asset. If it's compromised, your business can be destroyed. Don't let that happen-leverage today's state-of-the-art strategies, best practices, and technologies and protect your critical information. In Data Protection and Information Lifecycle Management, leading industry consultant Tom Petrocelli presents a systematic, coherent approach to planning and implementing cost-effective data protection.

This book introduces Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), a powerful new strategy for managing enterprise information based on its value over time. The author explains emerging techniques for protecting storage systems and storage networks, and for integrating storage security into your overall security plan. He also presents new technical advances and opportunities to improve existing data-protection processes, including backup/restore, replication, and remote copy.

Coverage includes

• A complete, unique framework for considering and planning data protection

• Understanding storage technology from the standpoint of data protection

• Architecting more effective backup/restore solutions

• Using remote copy and replication to keep data synchronized and support immediate failover to hot sites

• Leveraging core computer security concepts and strategies to protect your most critical data

• Securing your entire storage infrastructure, not just servers

• Using policy-driven data protection and Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) to improve security and reduce cost

• Using ILM to identify your highest-value data and choose the right ways to protect it

Data Protection and Information Lifecycle Management is an indispensable resource for IT executives who must plan and implement strategies for data protection; administrators who must protect data on a day-to-day basis; and product managers, consultants, and marketers responsible for crafting superior data-security solutions.

Fully Updated to Reflect Major Improvements and Configuration Changes in Samba-3.0.11 through 3.0.20+!

You’ve deployed Samba: Now get the most out of it with today’s definitive guide to maximizing Samba performance, stability, reliability, and power in your production environment. Direct from members of the Samba Team, The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide, Second Edition, offers the most systematic and authoritative coverage of Samba’s advanced features and capabilities. It has been extensively updated to reflect major improvements in the Samba-3.0 series of releases and additional performance enhancements in Samba-3.0.20 and later.

Use this book to go far beyond basic deployment, leveraging all of Samba’s components, from directory services to remote administration. Use it to find practical optimization techniques for any environment, from the workgroup to the enterprise. Use it to find detailed guidance and best practices for troubleshooting and problem solving. And, if your background is in Windows networking, use this book to get up to speed rapidly with Samba network administration in Linux/UNIX environments.

• NEW! User Rights and Privileges features and their impact on default system behavior
• NEW! Expanded LDAP capabilities, the new Winbind subsystem, and Samba’s improved ACL handling
• NEW! Detailed coverage of the powerful Samba-3.x net local/remote administration utility
• NEW! Comprehensive documentation of IDMAP functionality
• NEW! Proven techniques for improving performance with large directories
• NEW! Samba integration with Windows Server 2003 and the latest versions of Active Directory
• Advanced techniques: interdomain trusts, loadable VFS file system drivers, distributed authentication, desktop profile management, CUPS printing, high availability, and more
• Contains a dramatically improved, more-detailed index

“Linux software is like gold on the moon. It’s wonderful, if you have a way to get it.”
—Kevin Carmony, President and CEO, Linspire Inc.

There’s a better alternative: Linux. It’s not just for “geeks” anymore. It’s for you—and it’s for real. With Peter van der Linden’s Guide to Linux^®, Linux isn’t just powerful, it’s easy and fun.

While writing this book, the author spent an entire year helping new Linux users get started and once again demonstrated that he is flat-out brilliant at simplifying technology. He knows all the tricks and the quickest ways to help make you productive. Before demonstrating how to do something faster, easier, and better with Linux, he reminds you how it works in Windows. Along the way, he anticipates potential missteps and questions, and fills in the gaps other books ignore.

• Get connected to the Internet, your email account, instant messaging, and your network
• Get productive with OpenOffice, the amazing Microsoft Office clone that’s absolutely free
• Get solutions with van der Linden’s easy, step-by-step troubleshooting help
• Get into digital media—music, movies, DVDs, CD burning, digital photography, and more
• Get secure and keep your data and email private with CIA-strength encryption
• Get beyond the basics and leave Windows behind, download the best free software, and even master the command line

The book includes a Linspire 5.0 CD-ROM, the world’s easiest desktop Linux! Boot into Linux from the included CD, without installing anything or changing any Windows files at all.