Daniel J. Barrett is a writer, software engineer, and musician. He is best known for his technology books, his work with progressive rock band Gentle Giant

Gentle Giant

Gentle Giant were a British progressive rock band active between 1970 and 1980. The band was known for the complexity and sophistication of its music and for the varied musical skills of its members. All of the band members, except the first two drummers, were multi-instrumentalists...

, and the imaginary computer game BLAZEMONGER.

Writing

Barrett has written a number of technical books on computer topics. The most well-known are Linux Pocket Guide and SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide. His books have been translated into Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.

Corporate use of MediaWiki

Barrett, author of the book MediaWiki (ISBN 978-0-5965-1979-7), has received media coverage for his deployment of MediaWiki

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

 in corporate environments.

Gentle Giant

Barrett was active in the resurgence of 1970s progressive rock

Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...

 band Gentle Giant

Gentle Giant

Gentle Giant were a British progressive rock band active between 1970 and 1980. The band was known for the complexity and sophistication of its music and for the varied musical skills of its members. All of the band members, except the first two drummers, were multi-instrumentalists...

 in the 1990s. He created the official Gentle Giant Home Page in 1994, and though it began as a fan site, it was adopted by the band and is listed as the "Official Gentle Giant website" on the band's CD re-releases.

In 1996, Barrett compiled a 2-CD set of their songs for PolyGram

PolyGram

PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...

 entitled Edge of Twilight.

Humor

In the 1990s, Barrett created the concept of BLAZEMONGER, an imaginary computer game that spoofed the computing industry, and wrote approximately 100 articles about it.

In 1988, Barrett wrote and recorded the song "Find the Longest Path," a parody

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 incorporating an NP-complete problem in computer science

Longest path problem

In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the longest path problem is the problem of finding a simple path of maximum length in a given graph. A path is called simple if it does not have any repeated vertices...

 and the frustrations of graduate school

Graduate school

A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...

. It has been played at mathematics conferences and incorporated into several YouTube videos by other people.

Translations

Bandits on the Information Superhighway:

• Barrett, Daniel J., Gauner Und Ganoven Im Internet, 1998, ISBN 3-93067-344-4.

NetResearch: Finding Information Online:

• Barrett, Daniel J., 網路搜尋寶典, 1998, ISBN 957-8395-29-9.

SSH, the Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide:

• Barrett, Daniel J., and Silverman, Richard E., SSH: Secure Shell - Ein umfassendes Handbuch, December 2001, ISBN 3-89721-287-0.
• Barrett, Daniel J., and Silverman, Richard E., SSH, le shell sécurisé: La référence, January 2002, ISBN 2-84177-147-4.
• Barrett, Daniel J., and Silverman, Richard E., SSH, KompletnÍ průvodce, April 2003, ISBN 80-7226-852-X.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Silverman, Richard E., Byrnes, Robert A., 実用SSH 第2版—セキュアシェル徹底活用ガイド (大型本), November 2006, ISBN 4873112877.

Linux Security Cookbook:

• Barrett, Daniel J., Silverman, Richard E., Byrnes, Robert A., Linux-Sicherheits-Kochbuch, October 2003, ISBN 3-89721-364-8.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Silverman, Richard E., Byrnes, Robert A., Linuxセキュリティ クックブック――システム防御のためのレシピ集, November 2003, ISBN 4-87311-159-5.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Silverman, Richard E., Byrnes, Robert A., Linux Bezpieczenstwo Receptury 2003, ISBN 83-7361-249-1.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Silverman, Richard E., Byrnes, Robert A., Linux Biztonsági Eljárások, 2004, ISBN 963-09-4574-6.

Linux Pocket Guide:

• Barrett, Daniel J., Linux - kurz & gut, September 2004, ISBN 3-89721-501-2.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Linux Leksykon Kieszonkowy, 2004, ISBN 83-7361-586-5.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Linux: основнЫе командЫ, 2005, ISBN 5-9579-0050-8.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Linux: Guida pocket, May 2005, ISBN 8-8481-1793-7.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Linuxハンドブック――機能引きコマンドガイド, August 2005, ISBN 4-87311-237-0.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Linux: Kapresní přehled, 2006, ISBN 80-251-0838-4.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Linux - précis & concis, February 2006, ISBN 2-84177-392-2.
• Barrett, Daniel J., Linux - Guia de Bolso, 2006, ISBN 8-57608-104-0.

MediaWiki:

• Barrett, Daniel J., MediaWiki efficace: Installer, utiliser et administrer un wiki, March 2009, ISBN 2-212-12466-X.