Secure Architectures with OpenBSD: With OpenBSD

I should have read the other reviews: "at first glance the title may lead you to believe it's about securing OpenBSD - it's not. It is about using an inherently secure operating system, OpenBSD, to its best advantage." Fair enough. As an introduction to OpenBSD for those with experience with other Unix systems, this is a great book. But I can read the man pages and other documentation. I wanted a book that discussed a way to build secure networks with OpenBSD as one component. The chapter on VPN setup is the best that I have seen on that subject. But otherwise, it's a walk-through of basic installation and configuration. I also purchased "Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF", and it is more what I was looking for: less about OpenBSD itself, and more about how to apply the system to protect your network.

This is a good book to understanding OpenBSD which is a code rewriting of FreeBSD. In the beginning OpenBSD was buggy, then the OpenBSD group programmers got to serious bug hunts. And since four years ago have made a return to a reliable UNIX like operating system. The contents should help the User with the daily routines of a server platform.

Very hard to read at times, but a wealth of information packed into this book. Can't say I enjoyed reading it, but I can say I loved the information contained inside.

Most of the information is available from other sources and if your run OpenBSD and want to keep 50 howtos and a couple general books on Unix handy you can do without this book. However, I am lazy and I like having the information I need at my fingertips with syntax that works the first time on the operating system I am using.The authors and Addison Wesley are to be congratulated for the fantastic layout, the "code" examples stand out, they are pithy and illustrate the point. The one exception to that is the IPsec VPN chapter. Also, it is really easy reading for such a bone breakingly technical book.I particularly enjoyed the PF chapter, it is a first rate treatment of firewalling, covers the bases nicely. The backup chapter is also well done, but I would argue more strongly on behalf of level 0 (full) backups. It is a an important enough concept to get more than a sentence. The introduction to systrace was wonderful. I am not sure covering snort in 7 pages is a good idea, but the fundamentals are there. I know covering apache in 9 pages is asking for trouble since it tends to be internet reachable.If you are looking for a platform with better networking capability than Linux, or if you are already running OpenBSD in anything other than a purely hobbyist fashion, you should strongly consider this book.

I bought this book based upon a positive review I read in Usenix's Login magazine. I've used OpenBSD for some minor things, but never really used it on any long term basis. I recently ordered the 3.8 release CDs and am interesting in delving further into it.With that backdrop, I bought this book. Overall, I think this book is pretty good.Along with some others who have read it, after having read it--I share some reservations about the title. I'm not so sure "Secure Architectures with OpenBSD" should be the title. It may be a bit misleading.I'd this is more of a OpenBSD manual or guidebook than a book on building a "Secure Architecture". It is the book you really want to have at your desk if you deal with OpenBSD regularly (and a lot of it is good for any Unix-based system).I like this book and it definately is a quality book, though I wonder if some people may have been mislead by the title.

Before buying this book you need to understand a few facts about it:- at first glance the title may lead you to believe it's about securing OpenBSD - it's not. It is about using an inherently secure operating system, OpenBSD, to its best advantage.- you will need to be an experienced UNIX or Linux (or ideally OpenBSD) system admin to get the most out of the content.- it is intended to be used in conjunction with OpenBSD man pages; as noted by another reviewer this book aggregates a lot of OpenBSD documentation, making it a convenient reference.Because OpenBSD is more than a little different from other *NIX variants, and because it is cantankerous with respect to installation and configuration, the material in this book will save a lot of time and reduce the learning curve for anyone migrating to the OpenBSD environment. Reasons for this migration include the enhanced security by default and the inherent stability of this operating system.Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are good places to start to get up-to-speed in OpenBSD because they thoroughly cover installation, basic use (especially with respect to the not-so-standard filesystem layout), and basic default services. All of Section II is essential reading for those new to OpenBSD. Among the topics covered are user admin (almost identical to other *NIX variants), pre-compiled third party software packages (unique to OpenBSD, especially with respect to ports tree), and other administrative tasks and operations. Section III, advanced features, is also essential and will greatly reduce the learning curve.Overall this is an exceptionally well-written book that covers everything you need to know about OpenBSD from installation, and administration maintenance perspectives.

This book is a raw front-to-back walkthrough of the OpenBSD operating system targeted a systems administrators. There are no diagrams or pictures anywhere in the book. It consists entirely of Courier type shell work with terse exposition to hold it together.I can recommend this book if you are a Systems Administrator for OpenBSD and you are looking for something to guide you through the morass of commands in a step by step manner. And even then, I think you should look at the book in person first to make sure that it covers the topic you are interested in adequately.

Although published ten years ago and referring to a long superseded version of OpenBSD this book contains a wealth of detail that could also be applied to other Unix type systems.

Open BSD is well known for high quality and the well mantained documentation.The book (in my opinion) had to be use as a collection of well documented possible implementationsThe examples and the suggestions have to be adapted (the boom it's outdated) but I found it extremely usefull