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Hi fellow readers of HN, I am Josef, a full-stack developer, a formal Ruby Linux packager at Red Hat, and an author of Deployment from Scratch (which is this p

Hi fellow readers of HN, I am Josef, a full-stack developer, a formal Ruby Linux packager at Red Hat, and an author of Deployment from Scratch (which is this post about!). After working at Red Hat and technically leading a start-up (of which I was the primary production engineer), I decided to write down a resource I felt was missing on the market: A book that gives you the confidence to deploy your first application focused on fundamental, transferable, and long-lasting skills rather than tools of the day: * You'll learn about networking, Linux, systemd, deployment strategies, web servers, application servers, databases, and containers. * You'll be able to deploy Rails or Django applications (or anything really) together with production PostgreSQL and Redis databases. All automated with just a few lines of Bash. What's unique about this book: * It's a comprehensive book where things are designed to work together. I take readers from general networking knowledge to databases and containers. It's for beginners, but I am not skipping anything, not even SELinux. * There are no abstractions, just Bash. I believe in learning the actual thing rather than an abstraction. Abstractions are great once you know what they are abstracting. * Everything is done on Enterprise Linux with full SELinux support. While I have happy readers using Ubuntu, I thought the market doesn't have a good CentOS/Rocky/RHEL book. There are three scripted demonstrations, cheatsheets, and a security checklist, apart from the book content. The demonstrations include: * A git-push deployment of a database-backed Ruby on Rails application with Encrypted Credentials and Action Cable * A self-sufficient PostgreSQL cluster with automatic system upgrades, log rotation, and TLS With these demonstrations, you can be up and running quickly and also save a lot of money on Heroku :) Stats so far: * Took me more than 3 years to write (1+ year of fulltime billable time) * Built a mailing list of more than 600 interested people * Sold 366 copies * 22 readers gave the book 5-star rating The table of contents and the first small chapter: https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/intro.pdf https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/intro.pdf A special SHOW HN preview of the Web Servers chapter: https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/show_hn_preview.pdf https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/show_hn_preview.p... Buy on Gumroad: https://gum.co/deploymentfromscratch https://gum.co/deploymentfromscratch I am around to answer any questions. Josef p.s. You can use "showhn" discount code at checkout for 20% off as a thank you to this community that put my posts several times on the HN frontpage ;)

pezzana 5y ago
> Took me more than 3 years to write (1+ year of fulltime billable time) It shows - very polished. Have you described your process for writing the book anywhere? Given the quality of the landing page and samples, I'd also be interested in that.
anonymous532 5y ago
Not interested in this book, but maybe you find my opinion of any value: Your website comes off as hustle to get money without content: * The first section where you describe your product, you avoid all that the product is, making me think you don't actually have content which you want to show off(the book image is digital with no mention of it being an ebook, the description is about me and tehnologies, no preview, no list of concrete things I learn) * In the next section you continue marketing a dream instead of the actual content, then you sell reviews, a story and others' opinion. Again, I conclude that you don't want me to form my own opinion of potentially bad content. * "What I'll get" is meta content, things I should see after being sold the content. At that point I clicked off the website thinking it's a scam. Before commenting this I went one more time to make sure I didn't miss anything and discovered that you actually do have chapters content and preview, just past the point where I clicked off.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  I happened to have a quite different view. It was clear to me the content I was supposed to get. The only reason I didn't purchase is because the value proposition "save time managing your own side-project/startup deployment" is not smart, to me at least. I decided to pay and outsource most of these things away in order to focus on differentiating software, marketing/sales and peace of mind. Edit: I also think the "start a career in SRE" is quite a long stretch.
  - strzibny 5y ago
    Thanks for your feedback. > the value proposition "save time managing your own side-project/startup deployment" is not smart I would say it's not right for all. But it's 100% true (from my readers) that people learn self-hosting to cut costs. That part of the page targets these people. > I decided to pay and outsource most of these things away in order to focus on differentiating software, marketing/sales and peace of mind I want to say that the saving angle is only one of the reasons pointed out. If you want to know how things work and don't care about saving, it's still worth to learn it. I think you are not the target audience, though, since you want to focus on other aspects of the business which you probably enjoy more. :) > I also think the "start a career in SRE" is quite a long stretch The book shows you lot of Linux content you can find in RHCSA and RHCE exams. If you would really learn what's in it, you can be hired on spot for a junior role.

pezzana 5y ago

> Took me more than 3 years to write (1+ year of fulltime billable time) It shows - very polished. Have you described your process for writing the book anywhere? Given the quality of the landing page and samples, I'd also be interested in that.

anonymous532 5y ago

Not interested in this book, but maybe you find my opinion of any value: Your website comes off as hustle to get money without content: * The first section where you describe your product, you avoid all that the product is, making me think you don't actually have content which you want to show off(the book image is digital with no mention of it being an ebook, the description is about me and tehnologies, no preview, no list of concrete things I learn) * In the next section you continue marketing a dream instead of the actual content, then you sell reviews, a story and others' opinion. Again, I conclude that you don't want me to form my own opinion of potentially bad content. * "What I'll get" is meta content, things I should see after being sold the content. At that point I clicked off the website thinking it's a scam. Before commenting this I went one more time to make sure I didn't miss anything and discovered that you actually do have chapters content and preview, just past the point where I clicked off.

rmbyrro 5y ago
I happened to have a quite different view. It was clear to me the content I was supposed to get. The only reason I didn't purchase is because the value proposition "save time managing your own side-project/startup deployment" is not smart, to me at least. I decided to pay and outsource most of these things away in order to focus on differentiating software, marketing/sales and peace of mind. Edit: I also think the "start a career in SRE" is quite a long stretch.
- strzibny 5y ago
  Thanks for your feedback. > the value proposition "save time managing your own side-project/startup deployment" is not smart I would say it's not right for all. But it's 100% true (from my readers) that people learn self-hosting to cut costs. That part of the page targets these people. > I decided to pay and outsource most of these things away in order to focus on differentiating software, marketing/sales and peace of mind I want to say that the saving angle is only one of the reasons pointed out. If you want to know how things work and don't care about saving, it's still worth to learn it. I think you are not the target audience, though, since you want to focus on other aspects of the business which you probably enjoy more. :) > I also think the "start a career in SRE" is quite a long stretch The book shows you lot of Linux content you can find in RHCSA and RHCE exams. If you would really learn what's in it, you can be hired on spot for a junior role.