Category: Nonfiction Books

Yesterday I finished a raw draft of the new Networking for System Administrators. It’s not ready for technical review yet; the engine has all the pieces, but there are loose bolts everywhere and a couple of the belts are repurposed nylons. I’ll get it out for tech review this weekend.

On 1 June 2025, I close sponsorships. If you want to sponsor it, this week is your last chance. I promised to do a challenge coin for print sponsors and Patronizers so I will, but the next one probably won’t. I’ll happily absorb $10 per sponsor to do something daft, but not the $25 the US’ Wheel of Tariffs threatens. (Regardless of your politics, unpredictability is death to business.)

The tentative schedule for N4SA2e is:

• June: Technical Review
• July-August: Copyedit
• September: Kickstarter
• October: ship sponsor and Patronizer copies, both print and ebook exclusive to tiltedwindmillpress.com
• November: standard retail release

The print version will come in a special backer-exclusive edition available only to print sponsors, Patronizers, and Kickstarter backers. (Kickstarter backers can’t get the challenge coin; that’s exclusive to early backers.) I can’t say it’ll be as daft as Ruin Your Mail By Running It Yourself or the Networknomicon, but it will exist.

Then again, I always think my special editions are lame. You can make your own opinion.

“The book is underway.” What does that mean? The first half is largely done. The Windows stuff is PowerShell. The Debian stuff uses ip. FreeBSD is the reference Unix. I wrote a chapter on what folks need to know about TLS, to go in the middle. I sadly sent that to Bob Beck for his comments. I understand where TLS has been, but Bob has good insight into where it will be.

Bob’s a good guy, but he also has cause for a lawful quarrel with me. Whenever I start to feel depressed, I listen to that recording of the BSDCan 2019 closing ceremony. That man screaming “LUCAS” in tones of rage and despair? That’s Bob.

He can now declare himself avenged.

If I’m talking modern TLS and modern networks, I really need to address QUIC. Not long ago, QUIC was largely theoretical for sysadmins. None of our common applications supported it. Yes, half of the traffic to Google went over QUIC, but I couldn’t deploy it. It merited a paragraph or two, no more.

Turns out that nginx main release now supports quic. I can reasonably deploy it. Except I’m using Apache. I’ve been running web servers since well before nginx, and never saw a reason to change. Yes, yes, Apache has issues, but I’m accustomed to its odd little habits and even the thing with the whirling razor blades followed by vinegar mist.

Could I skate by with three or four paragraphs on QUIC? Many tech authors do. I have this career because I don’t skate through, however. So I get to migrate my systems to nginx. Or perhaps stick an Envoy proxy in front of the web server. Haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably talk through the decision on the fediverse.

But it’s all Bob’s fault.

On the plus side, I have a sketch of the n4sa2e challenge coin. It’s not final, but it’s the way I’m leaning now.

For the two people who care: this coin’s featured rodent is Willoughby. Lara Jean did a great job of capturing his character.

The only way you’ll get one of these coins is by becoming a print sponsor. Your backing will sustain me as I struggle with envoy. Or nginx. Probably both, then one.

I think the rest of the book will go quickly. You still shouldn’t nmap addresses you don’t control. DNS hasn’t changed, nor traceroute, nor netcat. I have to weave some TLS throughout, of course, which makes the netcat part a pain. (Standardize Netcat Flags and Give It TLS Challenge 2025!)

But at least Bob will have the pleasure of hearing me scream “BECK!” in blended rage and despair.

The inimitable Eddie Sharam has finished the cover painting for the new edition of Networking for Systems Administrators. It’s a parody of Giuseppe Zocchi’s Pietre Dure of Architettura. It’s a wraparound, but you can see a mockup of the front cover at the sponsorship page.

Eddie painted this. Like, on paper. With paint. The current plan is to include the painting as a Kickstarter reward level, much as we did with the cover for Run Your Own Mail Server.

At this moment, N4SA2e has 98 print sponsors. Two more sponsors and I have to do a challenge coin. If I have to do a coin, it’ll have the usual rat and bear the words NEVER MY FAULT/ALWAYS MY PROBLEM.

Mind you, my plan is that I will get exactly one more print sponsor and then y’all’ll stop backing it, so I don’t have to do any extra work.

Confession time: I don’t love Kickstarter. I don’t love money either, but it does seem to be a dependency when living in capitalism.

When I release a book on my site, I sell a few copies. When I launch it on Kickstarter, sales go up tenfold.

So: Dear Abyss is live on Kickstarter. The book exists, and the moment I get paid it goes to everyone.

Backers immediately get a copy of Letters to ed(1), the out-of-print three-year compilation.

TLDR: “Networking for Systems Administrators, 2nd Edition” is open for sponsorships at https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/product/n4sa2e-sponsor/ and I would appreciate your support.

Longer version:

Every large company I’d ever worked in since 1995 suffered from a continuous feud between the sysadmins and the network team. One team would demand an inch, the other would insist on 25.4 millimeters, and battle was declared. As someone with an ankle shackled in each world, I quickly reached two conclusions.

One, the job is hard enough without us arguing past each other.

Two, everybody involved needed a short sharp visit from the Slap Fairy.

About ten years ago I achieved my lifelong goal of becoming a full-time writer, and promptly lost my mind. I could keep being a writer so long as I kept bringing in money. If I didn’t bring in money, I’d get stuffed back in a cubicle. I had to write books, and quickly. I had made a list of titles I could spew fast. One of them was “Networking for Systems Administrators,” meant to end that feud or at least bring about a ceasefire.

Because my other goal was “pay the mortgage before I get stuffed back into a cubicle,” I slammed out that manuscript in about a month.

To my surprise, it was well-received. Managers bought the book in bulk to distribute to their staff. Network administrators bought it to give to select colleagues. Sysadmins bought so they could successfully argue with their network administrators.

It’s been ten years, and that book needs updating. Some of the commands have been changed. 100Mb Ethernet is rare, while 10G and 100G are almost common. There’s all those tidbits I could have done better, if I hadn’t been driving myself too hard. Let’s Encrypt made TLS omnipresent, so I need to add that. And of course it must have a proper Eddie Sharam cover.

If I get ~100 print sponsors I’ll do another challenge coin, like the one I did for Run Your Own Mail Server (https://mwl.io/archives/23836).

So, yeah. https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/product/n4sa2e-sponsor/ is my effort to bring a tiny peace to IT departments around the world. I would be grateful for your sponsorship, and your support with the mortgage part.

Thank you for your consideration.

PS: I should also mention that my collected FreeBSD Journal advice columns, Dear Abyss, is going to kickstarter soon. “Dear Abby for Sysadmins” isn’t going to sponsorship, but if you’re interested you might check it out. (https://mwl.io/ks)