Books on my desk that I actually use.

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Like many people I have a pretty full book shelf, but most of the time only have recourse to use but two or three most of the time, so here they are hope you find them useful.

Being a sys admin for 17 years, there's one book that I can honestly say I have had with me from the beginning and is well used, that is:

"UNIX Power Tools" by Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly, and Mike Loukides.

This is a UNIX book with no bias to any UNIX flavour, no. 1 on my UNIX book list.

Second, after getting to grips with shell scripting I moved onto Perl, in this instance I have two books both from the O'Reilly series:
"Learning Perl" and "Programming Perl"

Along with this there is plenty of info regards "modules" at:
http://perldoc.perl.org/index-modules-N.html, a good example on SMPT ;o)
Also: http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/use.html


Finally, not used as often but dusted down for this course!

"C for Programmers" A complete Tutorial, By Leendert Ammeraal.
I think this is still available in the second hand market, I like it because it is a good tutorial, worth tracking down.


Before purchasing any book please try and check it out at your local book store before purchasing, it just might not be to your taste.
A good place to find computing books is the onsite bookstore at your local University, also they should be able to tell you what the recommended texts are regards Computing courses, eg. programming or even UNIX, don't be afraid to ask.

This wasn't as concise it was supposed to be, but hope you find it useful.

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good advises.

I can add Python for linux/unix administrators (OReilly), this gives a good idea of Python from a system administration POV

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I use mostly 2 books during pentest: Gray hat Python and RTFM (Red Team Field Manual) )

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rtfm ftw *** lol
...that's a brilliant book and well useful, tbh, I totally agree.

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The same author who wrote the Gray Hat Python has a newer book about to come out (Dec 14, 2014) named "Black Hat Python".

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Just started the Black Hat Python (ebook not the hardcopy those haven't shipped yet...) and I think its a great so fa, along with the Gray Hat. The Gray Hat taught me more about python and fuzzing/RE than any programming guide I had read at the time. Sheer attempting to implement the examples and setup was the perfect learning tool for me.

Agreed - RTFM is a great manual to have period, for the PWK or other, it intimidates Red Team Members when they walk in your office and see RTFM sitting on your shelf. True story.

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Update -- Black Hat Python has shipped because I just received it today. Cheers!

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Agreed - RTFM is a great manual to have period, for the PWK or other, it intimidates Red Team Members when they walk in your office and see RTFM sitting on your shelf. True story.

Lol, I can only imagine. I love RTFM, for $10 you cannot go wrong it's like a guys 30 years experience put into cli format and indexed under the appropriate 'department'.

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I agree, Unix Power Tools is awesome. It was published the year I was born, but it is exhaustive and awesome, and the topics therein are things that have never changed in Unix, and stuff a lot of even the most experienced don't know. I am a newbie linux admin, but looking through that for little fun tips to put in my bag of tricks is good learning. I can even occasionally have the old dogs asking what some of these tricks are when they see me use them (pushd for example, or various history commands I've found to be really useful). Serendipitously it was at the desk I moved into (left there by some soul).