Books

From NetBSD Wiki

Here are some books that come highly recommended:

Contents 1 Introductory 2 Advanced 3 Programming 4 Kernel 5 Security

Introductory

The "Unleashed" series from Sams publishing 

Quite in-depth books, they tend to "grow" with you as you take your first steps in the Unix world. There's a FreeBSD Unleashed and several distro-specific Linux Unleashed books.

Michael W. Lucas -- "Absolute OpenBSD" 

Very usefull, expecially if you are an experienced Linux user or system manager and you want to try the (Open|Net)BSD world.

Jacek Artymiak -- "Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF" 

Clean and well organized explain exactly what the title says. It has a good general introduction to firewalling and is a good choice is you want to implement (or learn) firewalls (packet filtering, NATting, traffic shaping etc.) with PF. Before buying check that your NetBSD release of chioce support well PF. NetBSD-4.0 should be ok.

Advanced

Eric S. Raymond -- The Art of Unix Programming Book homepage Complete text online 

Discusses design principles of Unix and its programs. Despite the name, it does not really discuss programming. You can read it easily if you're not a hacker. It's a little opiniated, so take some of it with a grain of salt.

The Unix Haters Handbook PDF (the book's out of print) 

Yes, we all agree that Unix rocks, but you still must read this. It provides you with some perspective (and ammo against real Unix-haters :) ) "Unix survives only because everyone else has done so badly." Thought-provoking indeed...

Programming

W. Richard Stevens -- Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment 

Best described as a printed set of annotated and elaborated manual pages. Describes the differences between the Unix standardization efforts nicely (even though today only POSIX/SUS really counts). Excellent if you want to learn to build portable Unix apps.

The UNIX Programming Environment 

This books describe all aspects for programming and documenting Unix programs.

Kernel

Marshall Kirk McKusick -- The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System 

Every developer should have this on his bookshelf, even though it's not strictly about NetBSD. (supercedes The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System)

Maurice J. Bach -- The Design of the Unix Operating System 

A little dated, but still very much worth the read. Very System V-centered, though. Useful if you'd like to know more about the "other" family branch :)

John Lions -- Commentary on the Sixth Edition UNIX Operating System Complete text and sources online 

An introductory level discussion of the original UNIX sources. That version of UNIX consisted of just 44 files, which means you can fully understand the entire kernel, especially after reading this book.

Security

The OpenBSD PF Packet Filter Book Book homepage 

This book covers the use of the PF packet filter and related tools on NetBSD, FreeBSD, DragonFly, and OpenBSD. ISBN-13: 978-0-9790342-0-6.