5 ms·

Any good books on Linux networking? I have started spinning up “bare metal” k8s on a cloud VM and it’s not that hard to get going until you get to anything net

Any good books on Linux networking? I have started spinning up “bare metal” k8s on a cloud VM and it’s not that hard to get going until you get to anything networking related then I feel like I’ve just jumped off a cliff. I have no knowledge there and the online resources seem to be nonexistent because you’re expected to just use a prebaked solution from cloud providers. I ended up just installing k3s but I have yet to figure out where the Traefik packaged in k3s can listen directly on port 80 and 443, but the basic Traefik installed via Helm cannot

kazen44 6y ago
To be fair, starting with something like a BSD might be easier in terms of networking. Mainly because the tooling hasn't been all over the place in the last 2 decades. Also, a lot of network knowledge is not OS specific. Learning about IP, ethernet, routing protocols etc is valuable no matter which OS you use.
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  I have done some learning about more generalized network concepts (ip addresses, protocols, routing) but I want to make the jump to actually apply it in some VMs now I think my next stop is the network section of Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook
- tiew9Vii 6y ago
  I agree. I've had years of Linux experience and decided my home network + router was quite poor and I'd set up my own home network router and use OpenBSD to do it as an excuse to look at a BSD and fix my network issues. OpenBSD has been an absolute pleasure to work with. The man pages are well written and complete, the filesystem is well organized, having no issues that people have with Systemd the simplicity of OpenBSD's init system showed you don't need complex init systems. Then you have PF which is far easier to deal with than IP tables. It took me a few hours of playing to set OpenBSD up with multiple vlan's, dhcp server, firewall, cross vlan routing, mdns etc. The hardest part was figuring out the correct parameters for my ISP broadband connection as the ISP didn't publish some of the information so needed to sniff the network traffic to find that i needed to set a vlan for my isp. The simplicity of OpenBSD makes it very easy to learn networking and if you are familiar with Linux you will become familiar with BSD very quickly as BSD's are less fragmented than Linux by their nature.
  - __turbobrew__ 6y ago
    I was amazed when my OpenBSD network config worked on the first try using only the man pages as reference. On the other hand it took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to change the DNS server used by an Ubuntu install.
    - ohnemint 6y ago
      > On the other hand it took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to change the DNS server used by an Ubuntu install. Might I ask why/how exactly?
      - __turbobrew__ 6y ago
        Well, I first checked /etc/resolv.conf which told me to change the dns settings in systemd. So I read up on the systemd documentation and tried to change the dns setting using systemd-resolved but got a permissions error. So I did a bunch of reading online and found out that netplan is actually used to configure the dns so I spent some time reading the netplan documentation on how to change the dns server. This process took me about an hour.
yrro 6y ago
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/configuring_and_managing_networking https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp... though it's a bit task based http://policyrouting.org/PolicyRoutingBook/ONLINE/TOC.html http://policyrouting.org/PolicyRoutingBook/ONLINE/TOC.html but chapter 4 which introduces/explains how to use the ip command never got written!
- yrro 6y ago
  Correction: chapter 4 is in the printed book. On the web site, it's found at http://policyrouting.org/iproute2-toc.html http://policyrouting.org/iproute2-toc.html. The links from the other chapters of the web site don't work but browsing the ToC of the book, it looks like this link on the web site has all the info from the book plus a bit more...
psibi 6y ago
I was in the same boat and I found Michael Lucas book quite good for getting the practical working knowledge: https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Networking_for_Systems_Administrators.html?id=DFJdyQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Networking_for_System... It tries to address the concepts and the book covers for multiple operating system like Windows, Linux, BSD and even has Some Solaris tidbits. :-)
teleforce 6y ago
Strangely there is no current books for the state of the art Linux networking. Here are a few and far between books on Linux networking but they are seriously outdated [1][2]. I think it's about time someone write an authoritative book on Linux networking in the light of the recent changes on Netfilter, bpfilter, eBPF and LXC container. [1] Linux Kernel Networking: Implementation and Theory, 2013 [2] Linux Routers: A Primer for Network Administrators, 2nd Edition, 2002

kazen44 6y ago

To be fair, starting with something like a BSD might be easier in terms of networking. Mainly because the tooling hasn't been all over the place in the last 2 decades. Also, a lot of network knowledge is not OS specific. Learning about IP, ethernet, routing protocols etc is valuable no matter which OS you use.

skrtskrt 6y ago
I have done some learning about more generalized network concepts (ip addresses, protocols, routing) but I want to make the jump to actually apply it in some VMs now I think my next stop is the network section of Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook
tiew9Vii 6y ago
I agree. I've had years of Linux experience and decided my home network + router was quite poor and I'd set up my own home network router and use OpenBSD to do it as an excuse to look at a BSD and fix my network issues. OpenBSD has been an absolute pleasure to work with. The man pages are well written and complete, the filesystem is well organized, having no issues that people have with Systemd the simplicity of OpenBSD's init system showed you don't need complex init systems. Then you have PF which is far easier to deal with than IP tables. It took me a few hours of playing to set OpenBSD up with multiple vlan's, dhcp server, firewall, cross vlan routing, mdns etc. The hardest part was figuring out the correct parameters for my ISP broadband connection as the ISP didn't publish some of the information so needed to sniff the network traffic to find that i needed to set a vlan for my isp. The simplicity of OpenBSD makes it very easy to learn networking and if you are familiar with Linux you will become familiar with BSD very quickly as BSD's are less fragmented than Linux by their nature.
- __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  I was amazed when my OpenBSD network config worked on the first try using only the man pages as reference. On the other hand it took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to change the DNS server used by an Ubuntu install.
  - ohnemint 6y ago
    > On the other hand it took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to change the DNS server used by an Ubuntu install. Might I ask why/how exactly?
    - __turbobrew__ 6y ago
      Well, I first checked /etc/resolv.conf which told me to change the dns settings in systemd. So I read up on the systemd documentation and tried to change the dns setting using systemd-resolved but got a permissions error. So I did a bunch of reading online and found out that netplan is actually used to configure the dns so I spent some time reading the netplan documentation on how to change the dns server. This process took me about an hour.

yrro 6y ago

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/configuring_and_managing_networking https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp... though it's a bit task based http://policyrouting.org/PolicyRoutingBook/ONLINE/TOC.html http://policyrouting.org/PolicyRoutingBook/ONLINE/TOC.html but chapter 4 which introduces/explains how to use the ip command never got written!

yrro 6y ago
Correction: chapter 4 is in the printed book. On the web site, it's found at http://policyrouting.org/iproute2-toc.html http://policyrouting.org/iproute2-toc.html. The links from the other chapters of the web site don't work but browsing the ToC of the book, it looks like this link on the web site has all the info from the book plus a bit more...

psibi 6y ago

I was in the same boat and I found Michael Lucas book quite good for getting the practical working knowledge: https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Networking_for_Systems_Administrators.html?id=DFJdyQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Networking_for_System... It tries to address the concepts and the book covers for multiple operating system like Windows, Linux, BSD and even has Some Solaris tidbits. :-)

teleforce 6y ago

Strangely there is no current books for the state of the art Linux networking. Here are a few and far between books on Linux networking but they are seriously outdated [1][2]. I think it's about time someone write an authoritative book on Linux networking in the light of the recent changes on Netfilter, bpfilter, eBPF and LXC container. [1] Linux Kernel Networking: Implementation and Theory, 2013 [2] Linux Routers: A Primer for Network Administrators, 2nd Edition, 2002