Apache

Apache: Inside the Cockpit of the World's Most Deadly Fighting Machine
$25.00
An excerpt from this book was printed in Air & Space Magazine, which is why I ordered it. I guess the rescue attempt for which these folks are well known in the UK was little covered elsewhere ; a shame, since it was such a gutsy move.

The book is well written and accessible to readers with a non-military,or even non military aviation background. There is enough technical information to satisfy the military folks in allied fields, and the jargon/acronyms used are not impenetrable, and whose absence in any case would subvert the accurate portrayal of the job.

The rescue attempt is by no means the total of the book, but is one of the outstanding missions in a job where few operational missions are 'routine', and effectively describes the capabilities of the crews and the the machines, with no histrionics, as is the habitual understated British manner. Credit to all involved, from the support folks to the aircrew themselves. And a timely reminder, without involvement of a political viewpoint, that the UK Military, as challenged as they are by historically (and continuing) botched procurement decisions, has folks who are at the top of their game, and make a significant contribution.

Apache 2 Pocket Reference: For Apache Programmers & Administrators (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))
$14.99
There's no question that Apache powers the World Wide Wide. It runs over half of the world's web sites. If you work in the web industry then there's every chance that you'll have to deal with Apache at some point. Like many people, I don't consider myself a webmaster, but I run several web sites using Apache so I need to know how to get the most out of it.

Over the years, I have bought several books about Apache. They tend to get read once and then left to gather dust on the bookshelf. I never really need an in-depth knowledge of Apache, but I often need to know all about the one feature that I need to solve my current problem. Usually this involves a lot of Googling, but now I think I'll have this book on my desk and it will safe me a lot of time.

This book does exactly what the title implies. It is a complete (but concise) reference to Apace. In particular, most of the book is taken up with descriptions of Apache's myriad configuration options. This material all uses a standard layout which makes it easy to find and understand exactly the information that you need. One particularly nice touch is a key at the top of each entry telling you which contexts a configuration option can be used in. Never again will I have an excuse for putting an option in a .htaccess file when it only works in a direcotry context.

There is a lot of information packed into this small book. No space is wasted cramming the data in. But it's not too dense to be unusable. The information is always clear and easy to follow.

If you're a part-time Apache webmaster like me, then I think you'll find this book very useful.

Apache Security
$34.95
I've had the book Apache Security for a while now, so I thought I'd give it a quick review.

Like most O'Reilly books, it's well thought out and fairly complete. Unsurprisingly, it focuses on the standard LAMP stack, giving advice on building and deploying Apache and hooking in PHP and SSL. Ruby seem to be missing, and Perl is just discussed within a chroot environment. It discusses performance tuning a bit, in the guise of protection against DOS, and then moves onto issues in a shared hosting environment.

Much of what is in this book is more general than just Apache, so it's best to consider this as a general security book for people running both Linux and Apache, and ideally using PHP and MySQL. It would be less useful to people running Apache on Windows and for people using less common languages. However, it is very good for the basics:

* Installing Apache
* Hardening Apache
* Setting up chroot
* Hardening PHP
* Configuring logging and access
* Understanding web attacks
Where it seems to lack a bit is:

* It presumes that the reader will install Apache from source, whereas most these days will install from a package. More advice on hardening Apache in the SuSE, Red Hat and Ubuntu/Debian environments would be useful.
* There is no mention of AppArmor or SELinux (which, to be fair, were pretty new when this book came out). A second edition will have to have these, as they are a key way to protect Apache against itself.
* A few pages on how to use Suhosin to protect PHP applications would be good.
* A section on protecting Ruby and one on Perl would be good. While it is certainly true that no book can cover everything, these three languages are the most common in the LAMP world and should probably be addressed, at least in passing.
* While we're at it, a section on hardening MySQL wouldn't be out place, as the book is more of a LAMP book than an Apache book anyway.

I recommend this book for the beginner to moderate admin, be they a web admin or in the security space. However, experienced people may not find much new in here. I would, however, love to see a second edition released.

Apache Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Apache Administrators
$35.00
The Apache Cookbook is a must have for anyone considering running their own Apache web server. It covers every major feature of Apache and does so without giving too information to the new user while giving more experienced users the guidance to go off on their own and become Apache power users in their own right.