Hi!

> Recommendations, please for books on running / using / managing NetBSD, that
> won't confuse me with details of other versions of Unix, and that will avoid
> me putting too many silly newbie questions on this list. ;-)

You're probably lost with respect to the confusion. There are only a few books
on NetBSD's parent 4.4BSD and none on the recent BSDs (ie NetBSD and FreeBSD)
AFAIK, so there will always be something which doesn't apply to your version of
Unix.
This is even true for Linux with its huge selection of Linux specific books as
they often don't deal with distribution specific issues, especially
configuration differs from distribution to distribution.

OK there is a suite of books from O'Reilly covering 4.4BSD. These are available
as a 5 Volume Set with the ISBN 1-56592-082-1 and consist of
-System Manager's Manual (SMM), ISBN 1-56592-080-5
 Covers system management issues like installation, sendmail- and printer-
 configuration, description of the file system and so on. Especially the
 installation chapter doesn't fit NetBSD too well.
-User's Reference Manual (URM), ISBN 1-56592-075-9
 This contains the manual pages in printed form so it's not really worth the
 money, especially as some of were updated for NetBSD.
-User's Supplementary Documents (USD), ISBN 1-56592-076-7
 Provides in-depth documentation of complex programs such as shells, editors,
 text processing utils like nroff/troff and the like.
-Programmer's Reference Manual (PRM), ISBN 1-56592-078-3
 This contains the manual pages in printed form covering programming issues
 like system calls, libraries and file formats.
-Programmer's Supplementary Documents (PSD), ISBN 1-56592-079-1
 Describes some of the implementational details of 4.4BSD and especially the
 programming environment.
Each of these costs 60 DM, that would be about UKP 26.
Some chapters of these books are also available in postscript form on the
Internet (I can look up the URL but don't have it here), especially from the
SMM and the USD (and also from the PSD AFAIR).

There's also a book on the design of 4.4BSD:
Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD operating system
ISBN 0-201-54979-4, costs about 90 DM (UKP 40), published by Addison-Wesley,
written by McKusick, Bostic, Karels and Quarterman.

So if you're interested in system administration and using BSD the best
investment would be in the SMM and USD in my humble opinion.
I don't know how good general books about Unix fit BSD Unix - they might offer
a better value for money because of the larger circulation.

As for other documentation I can mention
-The BSD FAQ, there's a link to it on the NetBSD web pages (http://www.netbsd.
 org) and it is also posted to comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.announce regularly.
-The FreeBSD handbook in HTML form, browsable on the FreeBSD web pages (the
 UK mirror should be at http://www.uk.freebsd.org).
And, first of all, there are the man pages. Honest, if you know the command or
file you're interested in, it's best to stick to the manual pages.

If people know other good documentation which is useful for RiscBSD could they
please
-post it to the new documentation mailing list (see Neil's message yesterday)
-email it to me
-post it to this mailing list
(in order of preference) so that this can be included in the RiscBSD
documentation.
I only own the SMM and the URM so I can't comment on other Unix books too much.

> Sorry if this is in a FAQ - couldn't find it. Cheers.

It isn't in the FAQ but there should be something.

MB