The OpenBSD book

updated May 22, 2003

You probably really want http://www.AbsoluteOpenBSD.com/, which is the actual book Web site. This page is a personal page about writing the book.

I'm putting up this Web page in an effort to answer the many questions I get about this book. If I sent you a brief email containing only a "hi, look here", it's not that I'm a rude bastard, it's that I don't have time to write this out Yet Again and actually write the book. So, in short:

Yes, I have written an OpenBSD book.

It has a publisher, No Starch Press

The full title is "Absolute OpenBSD: UNIX for the Practical Paranoid."

Expected publication date is June 2003.

The book is proofread and copyedited, and is currently undergoing page layout. Once I review and correct the page layouts, the book will be printed.

Yes, the book will contain some overlap with my earlier Absolute BSD. The basics of how to use a hard disk don't change from BSD to BSD, after all, yet I cannot insist you buy the first book to use this one. (I suppose I could insist, but I would prefer to think that if you buy one you will be so impressed that you will rush to the store and demand that they provide you with the other.)

This book will contain information on OpenBSD-specific features such as systrace, pf, ports flavors, and complete installation walkthroughs for dedicated and multiple-boot machines.

You can get a peek at the cover design here. Subject to change at a whim, for any reason, blah blah blah.

It will not contain a CDROM. Official OpenBSD ISO (CDROM) images are copyrighted by Theo de Raadt. We discussed licensing the images for the book, and after much thought he turned me down. OpenBSD CDROM sales directly support the OpenBSD Project, and hence are very important in a financial sense. Instead, I encourage you to buy OpenBSD CDROMs from OpenBSD themselves, or use a local channel. OpenBSD is simple enough to install over a network that I'm not particularly concerned about it.

Yes, I could roll my own CDROM image. OpenBSD gives you the tools to do this. I could even roll a nice i386-only ISO that contained gobs of packages, the ports and source tree, and include it in the book, and nobody from OpenBSD would complain. This has two problems. First, this would take me out of the writing business and into the support business. If I wanted a helpdesk job, I would get one. Second, it's rude. My ability to publish books is dependent upon the good will of the developer community, and being rude is not a good way to keep that goodwill.

Yes, I'm a FreeBSD committer. Writing an OpenBSD book is not treason, nor is it a statement that I am abandoning FreeBSD. I like to write. Writing technical books allows me to start heading towards a career that I enjoy, the OpenBSD community needs books, and many of you have indicated that you're willing and eager to buy them. We all win. And to those people who insist that we all huddle inside our clan fort with the drawbridges raised and the oil kept at a low boil ready to repel foreign ideas, I say "Bite me. And the horse I rode in on."

Thank you for your interest in this book. You can look for further updates here, as they become available. In the meantime, why not check out my earlier BSD book?

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