We would like to express our deepest thanks to the many people who worked with us in getting out the third version of this book. In particular, Paco Hope answered questions about the Unix “jail” now present on some versions, Casey Schaufler answered questions about POSIX 1003.1e; Ed Finkler helped with testing and expansion of the random number script in Chapter 16; students associated with the MIT Student Information Processing Board answered questions on Kerberos, and Wietse Venema answered questions about TCP Wrappers.

Many individuals reviewed some or all of the chapters in this book and provided us with helpful feedback that made the book better than it otherwise would have been. In particular, we would like to express our thanks to Brian Carrier, Dorothy Curtis, Linda McCarthy, Clifford Neuman, Gregory D. Rosenberg (N9NNO), Danny Smith, Kevin Unrue, Wietse Venema, and Keith Watson. Special thanks to Gregg Rosenberg of Ricis, Inc., for the speed and thoroughness of his review of all chapters. Any errors that remain are ours alone.

Untold thanks go to Debby Russell, our editor at O’Reilly & Associates, without whom this book would not have happened.

We are grateful to everyone who helped us develop the second edition of this book. The book, and the amount of work required to complete it, ended up being much larger than we originally envisioned. We started the rewrite of this book in January 1995; we finished it in March 1996, many months later than we had intended.

Our thanks to the people at Purdue University in the Computer Sciences Department and the COAST Laboratory who read and reviewed early drafts of this book: Mark Crosbie, Bryn Dole, Adam Hammer, Ivan Krsul, Steve Lodin, Dan Trinkle, and Keith A. Watson; Sam Wagstaff also commented on individual chapters.

Thanks to our technical reviewers: Fred Blonder (NASA), Brent Chapman (Great Circle Associates), Michele Crabb (NASA), James Ellis (CERT/CC), Dan Farmer (Sun), Eric Halil (AUSCERT), Doug Hosking (Systems Solutions Group), Tom Longstaff (CERT/CC), Danny Smith (AUSCERT), Jan Wortelboer (University of Amsterdam), David Waitzman (BBN), and Kevin Ziese (USAF). We would also like to thank our product-specific reviewers, who carefully read the text to identify problems and add content applicable to particular Unix versions and products. They are C.S. Lin (HP), Carolyn Godfrey (HP), Casper Dik (Sun), Andreas Siegert (IBM/AIX), and Grant Taylor (Linux),

Several people reviewed particular chapters. Peter Salus reviewed the introductory chapter, Ed Ravin (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) reviewed the UUCP chapter, Adam Stein and Matthew Howard (Cisco) reviewed the networking chapters, Lincoln Stein (MIT Whitehead Institute) reviewed the World Wide Web chapter, and Wietse Venema reviewed the chapter on wrappers.

Æleen Frisch, author of Essential System Administration (O’Reilly & Associates, 1995) kindly allowed us to excerpt the section on access control lists from her book.

Thanks to the many people from O’Reilly & Associates who turned our manuscript into a finished product. Debby Russell did another command performance in editing this book and coordinating the review process. Mike Sierra and Norman Walsh provided invaluable assistance in moving Practical Unix Security ’s original troff files into FrameMaker format and in managing an increasingly large and complex set of Frame and SGML tools. Nicole Gipson Arigo did a wonderful job as production manager for this book. Clairemarie Fisher O’Leary assisted with the production process and managed the work of contractors. Kismet McDonough-Chan performed a quality assurance review, and Cory Willing proofread the manuscript. Nancy Priest created our interior design, Chris Reilley developed the new figures, Edie Freedman redesigned the cover, and Seth Maislin gave us a wonderfully usable index.

Thanks to Gene’s wife Kathy and daughter Elizabeth for tolerating continuing mentions of “The Book” and for many nights and weekends spent editing. Kathy also helped with the proofreading.

Between the first and second editions of this book, Simson was married to Elisabeth C. Rosenberg. Special thanks are due to her for understanding the amount of time that this project has taken.

The first edition of this book originally began as a suggestion by Victor Oppenheimer, Deborah Russell, and Tim O’Reilly at O’Reilly & Associates.

Our heartfelt thanks to those people who reviewed the manuscript of the first edition in depth: Matt Bishop (UC Davis); Bill Cheswick, Andrew Odlyzko, and Jim Reeds (AT&T Bell Labs) (thanks also to Andrew and to Brian LaMacchia for criticizing the section on network security in an earlier draft as well); Paul Clark (Trusted Information Systems); Tom Christiansen (Convex Computer Corporation); Brian Kantor (UC San Diego); Laurie Sefton (Apple); Daniel Trinkle (Purdue’s Department of Computer Sciences); Beverly Ulbrich (Sun Microsystems); and Tim O’Reilly and Jerry Peek (O’Reilly & Associates). Thanks also to Chuck McManis and Hal Stern (Sun Microsystems), who reviewed the chapters on NFS and NIS. We are grateful for the comments by Assistant U.S. Attorney William Cook and by Mike Godwin (Electronic Frontier Foundation) who both reviewed the chapter on the law. Fnz Jntfgnss (Purdue) provided very helpful feedback on the chapter on encryption—gunaxf! Steve Bellovin (AT&T), Cliff Stoll (Smithsonian), Bill Cook, and Dan Farmer (CERT) all provided moral support and helpful comments. Thanks to Jan Wortelboer, Mike Sullivan, John Kinyon, Nelson Fernandez, Mark Eichin, Belden Menkus, and Mark Hanson for finding so many typos! Thanks as well to Barry Z. Shein (Software Tool and Die) for being such an icon and Unix historian. Steven Wadlow provided the pointer to Lazlo Hollyfeld. The quotations from Dennis Ritchie are from an interview with Simson Garfinkel that occurred during the summer of 1990.

Many people at O’Reilly & Associates helped with the production of the first edition of the book. Debby Russell edited the book. Rosanne Wagger and Kismet McDonough did the copyediting and production. Chris Reilley developed the figures. Edie Freedman designed the cover and the interior design. Ellie Cutler produced the index.

Special thanks to Kathy Heaphy, Gene Spafford’s long-suffering and supportive wife, and to Georgia Conarroe, his secretary at Purdue University’s Department of Computer Science, for their support while we wrote the first edition.