Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal featured on the cover of Managing NFS and NIS is a tree porcupine, a name meaning "pig with spines." Like the guinea pig, the porcupine is not a pig at all, but a rodent. The tree porcupine is native to the eastern United States and northern Canada. In summer it feeds on green vegetation and the leaves and twigs of deciduous trees; in winter it eats the bark of evergreens. It will frequently chew away a complete ring of bark from around the tree, thereby killing it. As a result of such behavior, the porcupine does millions of dollars of damage annually to the timber industries.

The spines of the tree porcupine are about two inches long, barbed, and tend to be concealed by the animal's long, coarse fur. Contrary to popular belief, the porcupine does not shoot these spines. The spines are loosely attached to the skin, so when the barb on the spine catches on an attacker, the spine will pull loose from the porcupine. Once embedded, spines will tend to work their way further in and have been known to cause death when they puncture internal organs. UNIX and its attendant programs can be unruly beasts. Nutshell Handbooks(R) help you tame them.

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Edie Freedman designed this cover and the entire UNIX bestiary that appears on other Nutshell Handbooks. The beasts themselves are adapted from 19th-century engravings from the Dover Pictorial Archive.

The text of this book is set in Times Roman; headings are Helvetica; examples are Courier. Text was prepared using SortQuadUs sqtroff text formatter. Figures are produced with a Macintosh. Printing is done on a Tegra Varityper 5000.