This book is written for UNIX users, who are often cast adrift in a confusing environment. It provides the background and practical solutions you need to solve problems you're likely to encounter -- problems with logging in, printing, sharing files, running programs, managing space resources, etc. It also describes the kind of info to gather when you're asking for a diagnosis from a busy sys admin. And, it gives you a list of site-specific information that you should know, as well as a place to write it down.

If you use UNIX, you know that it can be a technically challenging environment. And if you're like most users, you have a job to do aside from exploring your operating system -- like analyzing that hot new stock, running another experiment, or typesetting another report.

What happens when you have problems? What happens when the system slows to a crawl, when you can't get logged back in after a power failure, or when you've sent a file to the printer three times but have yet to find a printout?

Your first choice for handling a problem might be to have the problem never occur. Your second choice might be to have someone else fix it, immediately. However, in the real world, sometimes you will have to investigate the problem and report it, and sometimes you will have to find an answer yourself.

When You Can't Find Your UNIX System Administrator, part of our new What You Need to Know series, gives UNIX users tools for solving problems. It offers:

• Practical solutions for problems you're likely to encounter in logging in, running programs, sharing files, managing space resources, printing, and so on
• Just enough background on what's going on "behind the scenes" so that you can make sense of our suggestions, rather than simply memorizing keystrokes
• An explanation of how to present problems to your sys admin so that you're more likely to get quick, accurate support
• A list of the site-specific information to which you should have access, and a place to write it down
• A quick-ref card summarizing what to try first, second, third for commonly encountered problems

The goal of this book is not to make you a guru in your own right. The goal of this book is to get you back to the job you'd rather be doing.