System. This is followed by a chapter on how to set up your machine as a UUCP node. Most of the remaining sections is dedicated to two major applications that run on top of TCP/IP and UUCP: electronic mail and news. A special chapter has been devoted to the IPX protocol and the NCP filesystem, because these are used in many corporate environments where Linux is finding a home.
The email part features an introduction to the more intimate parts of mail transport and routing, and the myriad of addressing schemes you may be confronted with. It describes the configuration and management of exim, a mail transport agent ideal for use in most situations not requiring UUCP, and sendmail, which is for people who have to do more complicated routing involving UUCP.
The news part gives you an overview of how Usenet news works. It covers INN and C News, the two most widely used news transport software packages at the moment, and the use of NNTP to provide newsreading access to a local network. The book closes with a chapter on the care and feeding of the most popular newsreaders on Linux.
Of course, a book can never exhaustively answer all questions you might have. So if you follow the instructions in this book and something still does not work, please be patient. Some of your problems may be due to mistakes on our part (see the section ", later in this Preface), but they also may be caused by changes in the networking software. Therefore, you should check the listed information resources first. There's a good chance that you are not alone with your problems, so a fix or at least a proposed workaround is likely to be known. If you have the opportunity, you should also try to get the latest kernel and network release from one of the Linux FTP sites or a BBS near you. Many problems are caused by software from different stages of development, which fail to work together properly. After all, Linux is a "work in progress."
The Official Printed Version
Why, then, would you want to pay money for something you can get for free? Is Tim O'Reilly out of his mind for publishing something everyone can print and even sell themselves? Is there any difference between these versions?
The answers are "it depends," "no, definitely not," and "yes and no." O'Reilly& Associates does take a risk in publishing the Networking Guide, and it seems to have paid off for them (they've asked us to do it again). We believe this project serves as a fine example of how the free software world and companies can cooperate to produce something both can benefit from. In our view, the great service O'Reilly is providing to the Linux community (apart from the book becoming readily available in your local bookstore) is that it has helped Linux become recognized as something to be taken seriously: a viable and useful alternative to other commercial operating systems. It's a sad technical bookstore that doesn't have at least one shelf stacked with O'Reilly Linux books.
Why are they publishing it? They see it as their kind of book. It's what they'd hope to produce if they contracted with an author to write about Linux. The pace, level of detail, and style fit in well with their other offerings.
The point of the LDP license is to make sure no one gets shut out. Other people can print out copies of this book, and no one will blame you if you get one of these copies. But if you haven't gotten a chance to see the O'Reilly version, try to get to a bookstore or look at a friend's copy. We think you'll like what you see, and will want to buy it for yourself.
So what about the differences between the printed and online versions? Andy Oram has made great efforts at transforming our ramblings into something actually worth printing. (He has also reviewed a few other books produced by the Linux Documentation Project, contributing whatever professional skills he can to the Linux community.)
Since Andy started reviewing
the Networking Guide and editing the copies sent to him, the book has improved vastly from its original form, and with every round of submission and feedback it improves again. The opportunity to take advantage of a professional editor's skill is one not to be wasted. In many ways, Andy's contribution has been as important as that of the authors. The same is also true of the copyeditors, who got the book into the shape you see now. All these edits have been fed back into the online version, so there is no difference in content.
Still, the O'Reilly version will be different. It will be professionally bound, and while you may go to the trouble to print the free version, it is unlikely that you will get the same quality result, and even then it is more unlikely that you'll do it for the price. Secondly, our amateurish attempts at illustration will have been replaced with nicely redone figures by O'Reilly's professional artists. Indexers have generated an improved index, which makes locating information in the book a much simpler process. If this book is something you intend to read from start to finish, you should consider reading the official printed version.