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An Anonymous Coward writes:

[ed: if this is accepted, should it run on a weekend or a weekday?]

Wikibooks are open-content books published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and they cover a wide range of subjects from science to humanities. Over time, I've cobbled together a Wikibook On OpenSSH^* [wikibooks.org]. The initial draft was mostly assembled from notes from work and took its current form over a longer period with more use-cases and details filled in as they occured to me. However, drafting a book is only half the battle and it has been in need of a review for technical accuracy and flow. So I am asking Soylentnews readers for a review.

There are few here who do not use OpenSSH daily in at least some capacity. Collectively that is a lot of experience and knowledge, as well as a wide range of perspectives. So any input provided in validating and improving the book's content would be very valuable. Comments here or on a chapter's Discussion page would help. And since it is a Wiki, the content itself is available for modification.

For those able to take a more serious look, I've lifted the following questions [muthukadan.net] from someone else's request for a different, more traditional book.

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1. Has any essential topic been missed?
2. Has any essential point been overlooked when explaining a particular topic?
3. How easy to follow is the logical flow when introducing concepts?
4. Are the examples short and easy to understand?
5. Did you notice any sentence or paragraph that is difficult to understand?
6. Did you see an opportunity to add a side-note which will be helpful to the reader?
7. How can this book be made more useful? Any thoughts?
8. How is the organization of the chapters in the book?
9. How is the organization of sections within each chapter?
10. Is the book consistent throughout all the pages? (Consider consistency of organization, style of writing, terminology usage, etc.)

The Wikibook On OpenSSH [wikibooks.org] has the following sections and chapters. As to what the search engines have steered people to so far, there are some usage statistics [wmflabs.org] available. The Cookbook section may be the most interesting, but I would hope that the other sections would also receive some attention.

• Introduction
  • Overview [wikibooks.org]
  • Why Use Encryption [wikibooks.org]
  • SSH Protocols [wikibooks.org]
  • Other SSH Implementations [wikibooks.org]
• Client-Server
  • Client Applications [wikibooks.org]
  • Client Configuration Files [wikibooks.org]
  • OpenSSH Server [wikibooks.org]
  • Pattern Matching in OpenSSH Configuration [wikibooks.org]
• Utilities
  • Utilities [wikibooks.org]
  • Third Party Utilities [wikibooks.org]
• Logging, Troubleshooting, and Development
• • Logging and Troubleshooting [wikibooks.org]
  • Development [wikibooks.org]
• Cookbook
  • Remote Processes [wikibooks.org]
  • Tunnels [wikibooks.org]
  • Automated Backup [wikibooks.org]
  • File Transfer with SFTP [wikibooks.org]
  • Public Key Authentication [wikibooks.org]
  • Host-based Authentication [wikibooks.org]
  • Load Balancing [wikibooks.org]
  • Multiplexing [wikibooks.org]
  • Proxies and Jump Hosts [wikibooks.org]

Input is most welcome on this particular book, but if some other book in progress over at Wikibooks seems more interesting, go for that one instead.

^* Not affiliated with the OpenSSH project but nonetheless about using the software.

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Original Submission