'The Book of PF' -- absolutely the newest OpenBSD book available

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Never mind that what I really need is an up-to-date "Absolutely OpenBSD," but since I'm in an I'll-take-what-I-can-get mood, I just secured a copy of "The Book of PF: A No-Nonsense Guide to the OpenBSD Firewall," which for all practical purposes is the most up-to-date book out there that has at least some focus on OpenBSD.

In this book by Peter N.M. Hansteen, I hope to get somewhat up to speed on PF, the packet filter that originated in OpenBSD but which now is available in the other BSDs as well -- though not in Linux.

Among other things, the book will teach you how to:

  • Use PF to create a wireless access point and lock it down tight with authpf and special access restrictions
  • Create rule sets for all kinds of network traffic, whether it is crossing a simple home LAN, hiding behing NAT, traversing DMZs, or spanning bridges

OK, I barely understood half of that, but I really like the whole No Starch Press vibe. I have a copy of the now-out-of-print "Absolute OpenBSD" on its way to me now, and I'm also waiting for the out-of-date-but-still-in-print "The Debian System" to get here. I guess I have a thing for oldish books.

Back to "The Book of PF." Since I'm interested in all things OpenBSD, networking among them, I'm anxious to see this 2008 book, which has plenty of advocacy in its pages for OpenBSD as an operating system.

I'd like to commend No Starch for the choices it has made thus far, and while I'm happy that they're putting out a third edition of their Ubuntu book, and am way more happy that Michael Lucas has revised his FreeBSD book, again, I'd like to see Lucas take another crack at OpenBSD.

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Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.



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This page contains a single entry by Steven Rosenberg published on April 9, 2008 5:00 AM.

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