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 Essential System Administration, 2nd Edition, is an armadillo. This insect-eating mammal is native to South America and has spread through the southern United States. Unlike most insectivores, the armadillo has teeth-rootless pegs set far back in its mouth. These teeth allow it to supplement its diet of termites, scorpions and other insects with snakes, poultry, fruit, and eggs.

The armadillo's name, "little armored thing," was given to it by the Spanish when they invaded the New World. This "armor" is an outer layer consisting of numerous bony plates with a horny covering. This shell is hinged at the middle of the back, allowing the front and hind sections freedom of movement. In some species, this covering extends over the face and tail as well as the torso and limbs.

Armadillos range in size from the great armadillo, at 5 feet in length, to the fairy armadillo at 5 inches. The most common of the armadillos, the 9-banded armadillo, is about the size of a house cat. Unix and its attendant programs can be unruly beasts. Nutshell Handbooks help you tame them.

Edie Freedman designed this cover and the entire Unix bestiary that appears on the other Nutshell books. The beasts themselves are adapted from the 19th-century engravings from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font.

The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and modified by Nancy Priest. Text was prepared in SGML using the DocBook 2.1 DTD. The print version of this book was created by translating the SGML source into a set of gtroff macros using a filter developed at ORA by Norman Walsh. Steve Talbott designed and wrote the underlying macro set on the basis of the GNU troff -gs macros; Lenny Muellner adapted them to SGML and implemented the book design. The GNU groff text formatter Version 1.09 was used to generate PostScript output. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 5.0 by Chris Reilley.