Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
Hi fellow readers of HN,<p>I am Josef, a full-stack developer, a formal Ruby Linux packager at Red Hat, and an author of Deployment from Scratch (which is this post about!).<p>After working at Red Hat and technically leading a start-up (of which I was the primary production engineer), I decided to write down a resource I felt was missing on the market:<p>A book that gives you the confidence to deploy your first application focused on fundamental, transferable, and long-lasting skills rather than tools of the day:<p>* You&#x27;ll learn about networking, Linux, systemd, deployment strategies, web servers, application servers, databases, and containers.<p>* You&#x27;ll be able to deploy Rails or Django applications (or anything really) together with production PostgreSQL and Redis databases.  All automated with just a few lines of Bash.<p>What&#x27;s unique about this book:<p>* It&#x27;s a comprehensive book where things are designed to work together. I take readers from general networking knowledge to databases and containers. It&#x27;s for beginners, but I am not skipping anything, not even SELinux.<p>* There are no abstractions, just Bash. I believe in learning the actual thing rather than an abstraction. Abstractions are great once you know what they are abstracting.<p>* Everything is done on Enterprise Linux with full SELinux support. While I have happy readers using Ubuntu, I thought the market doesn&#x27;t have a good CentOS&#x2F;Rocky&#x2F;RHEL book.<p>There are three scripted demonstrations, cheatsheets, and a security checklist, apart from the book content. The demonstrations include:<p>* A git-push deployment of a database-backed Ruby on Rails application with Encrypted Credentials and Action Cable<p>* A self-sufficient PostgreSQL cluster with automatic system upgrades, log rotation, and TLS<p>With these demonstrations, you can be up and running quickly and also save a lot of money on Heroku :)<p>Stats so far:<p>* Took me more than 3 years to write (1+ year of fulltime billable time)<p>* Built a mailing list of more than 600 interested people<p>* Sold 366 copies<p>* 22 readers gave the book 5-star rating<p>The table of contents and the first small chapter:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deploymentfromscratch.com&#x2F;previews&#x2F;intro.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deploymentfromscratch.com&#x2F;previews&#x2F;intro.pdf</a><p>A special SHOW HN preview of the Web Servers chapter:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deploymentfromscratch.com&#x2F;previews&#x2F;show_hn_preview.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deploymentfromscratch.com&#x2F;previews&#x2F;show_hn_preview.p...</a><p>Buy on Gumroad:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gum.co&#x2F;deploymentfromscratch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gum.co&#x2F;deploymentfromscratch</a><p>I am around to answer any questions.<p>Josef<p>p.s. You can use &quot;showhn&quot; discount code at checkout for 20% off as a thank you to this community that put my posts several times on the HN frontpage ;)