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Best Books about Solaris Administration

News Selected Computer Books Classic Computer Books Solaris  certification Overview of Solaris certifications Certification: general issues Solaris Certification Exams Strategy
Introductory Reference Selected Sysadmin Topics System Administration Network administration Shells Security
Programming DB Tips Internals Tools Performance  
 Webliography Best Old TCP/IP Books Best Books about Unix System Administration Softpanorama Exam Strategy History Reviews Etc ( Stanistlav Lem Solaris)

Solaris used to be  open source operating system that can be used for free on computers with up to four CPUs (see Softpanorama Solaris Links and Solaris Security for more information). After Oracle acquisition of Sun things changed and it became more like a a regular commercial OS.

Older versions Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 are pretty similar (Solaris 9 is more polished and has a better RBAC implementation among other improvements) and the books for Solaris 8 generally can be used for Solaris 9.  Solaris 10 is an important improvement featuring such innovative features as zones and Dtrace. Generally you need Solaris 10 specific books to study it.

Solaris 11 appeared after Oracle bought Sun and also spot some improvement, but Solaris 10 is probably still remains the most widely used version of Solaris. And probably the longest in production.  Due to reliability of Sun hardware as of 2015 there are still some Solaris 9 installations too.

If you are browsing this page to get some info on Solaris certification related book there is a better page for the topic: Solaris Certification

Solaris 10 has much better documentation that in any other open source OS, the Sun folks have a structured, disciplined approach about documenting everything in a very definite and clear format. Linux has a long way to go in this area. Actually some Linux man pages are just horrible taking into account a huge amount of venture capital financing that Linux startups got. 

In addition to a better shell (ksh93 is installed as dtksh on all Solaris versions (starting from 2.0), the latest edition of Solaris (Solaris 9) also contains a large amount of GNU software on the additional disk of the Sun's distribution as well as a copy of Star Office 6.0.  Compilation of GNU software for Solaris still is not that easy but Sun is working on this. Also it promised to have a Linux zone on Solaris for Opteron that supposedly can help to use native Linux executables if recompilation run into serious difficulties.

Of course Solaris is more stable server OS than Linux. In some aspects it is also cleaner Unix implementation It has more commercial software available than FreeBSD. While usable of Opteron even UltraSparc entry level hardware is not expensive and might be the cheapest 64-bit architecture available ($999 for a pretty usable desktop system). Older systems like Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 are dirt cheat on Ebay and perfect for students to learn the OS.  Buying an old Ultra 10 or even Ultra 5 might also a useful (I would say necessary for most but the most talented folks,  preparation to certification), unless you have access to UltraSparc hardware at work.

This is a very scalable OS (on high end Sun successfully competes with IBM mainframes). For an enterprise users the main attraction is the possibility of using the same OS from low to the highest level. IBM cannot do that and that's why they now promote VM/Linux on mainframes and PowerPC architecture.

Solaris is also one of the best, if not the best OS for running large databases, especially  Oracle.  With T1 CPU it now can successfully complete with HP-UX and AIX.  Actually while UltraSparc hardware was slower then competition for a long time (since 1996 I think) Solaris has the best engineered kernel of all (more or less) free Unixes. Moreover the sad truth is that Red Hat really lacks quality control.

Despite the high quality of Solaris the number of good books about this OS can be counted on one hand. That means that sometimes you might be better off using a generic Unix book  than a Solaris book.

On this page I tried to help a reader to navigate Solaris-related books. It might help to avoid missteps in buying Solaris-specific books in case you cannot browse them yourself. I recommend also to visit my generic Unix books page in addition to this one. Many generic Unix books are OK for Solaris as it is probably the most "normal" Unix. Also some authors specifically address Solaris issues in their books.

IMHO as an introductory book Sobel's A Practical Guide to Solaris is probably the best. Solaris 8 for Managers and Administrators is currently probably the best introductory system administration book and might be used as "the second volume of Sobel".

As a reference Sun documentation CD ROM is probably my first choice. I also have found the second part Sobel's "A Practical Guide to Solaris" to be a pretty decent reference. I am not impressed by O'Reilly Nutshell book on Solaris. IMHO it's weak and overpriced. I think that the second part of Sobel's book contains more examples than the O'Reilly Nutshell and comes at a fraction of price.

John Mulligun Solaris Essential Reference is another alternative. It's more Solaris specific, but as for the quality of examples it's not much better then O'Reilly Nutshell book.  Solaris: The Complete Reference books (two editions: one for Solaris 8 and Solaris 9) are something in between a pure reference and a tutorial. Both cover a lot of ground but beware that they are generally weak and not structured as a reference. See the reference section for more detailed recommendations.

The source code of Solaris 10 is available, therefore the internals are very interesting thing to study, although it is complex commercial operating system  and the volume is such that many things are difficult to understand. It should not be your first attempt to understand Unix OSes in any case. Simpler Unix style OSes exist including several specifically oriented for education like Minix. Very few books cover specifically Solaris internals; see  the Internals section of the page.

See also Solaris vs Linux,  Solaris vs Linux Security in Large Enterprise Environment,  Unix book page, Shells page,  Unix security page  and Os Design  that contain some additional relevant information.

See also

 

Solaris Certification

Solaris certifications are to Solaris learning as matches are to training. They are the final performance for which the participant must undergo a rigorous preparation. There are many long hours that you need to put into preparation even if you Solaris every day in you work (for example if you are Solaris administrator with, say, three years or more of experience).

It is impossible to compete for an athlete if he/she begin training only a week before the games. There is no "all-nighters" for athletic training and the same is true for Solaris certification exams preparation. Without proper long-term work you have only slim chances to pass.

Most Solaris certification books below are weak and are much below the level of general Solaris introductory books with the explicit exception of Solaris 9 System Administrator Exam Cram . That latter is a good book which contains condensed summaries and does not try to teach you topics covered in the Solaris System administrator Certification exam: it assume that you already know them to some degree.  It tries to point nuances important for the exam. 

The best for preparation are Sun student guides for corresponding Solaris courses. All other books are trying to imitate those guides with various degree of success.

If you do not have access to them you still will be better off using Sun's textbooks likeSystem Administration Guide: Advanced Administration for the preparation. But even they cannot replace a Solaris server and practice but they can help to check the level of your understanding of topics that are covered on the exam. If you are not working as a Solaris admin buying old Ultra 10 is an investment that will pay you many times.

Also Sun certification questions are often strangely worded so you need to put a real effort into deciphering the correct answer. That means that you ability to understand the question and your answer elimination skills are of primary importance.  In this sense general multiple question test taking skills and corresponding books might be of some value.

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[Oct 10, 2014] Oracle Solaris 11 Advanced Administration Cookbook by Alexandre Borges

W Boudville HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE VOICE on November 29, 2014

focuses on unique aspects of Solaris

Borges offers you a hefty and comprehensive explanation of Solaris 11 administration. He has considerable experience in the matter, having worked on Solaris 7 in 2001. He offers the reassurance that since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, it has put considerable financial support into maintaining and extending Solaris. The book is offered as evidence.

One important feature is ZFS - a 128 bit file system that supports transactions. What Oracle has done, and not surprisingly, is embed its flagship database (which is currently Oracle 11g) all the way down into the silicon. By owning both the operating system and the database, and optimising the combination. Thus what distinguishes 11g from its competitors is the fast transaction rate. So if your firm does many transactions, Solaris 11 and the relevant sections of this book may be the most compelling reads.

Another topic is Internet Protocol Multipathing, for fault tolerant network interfacing. It's a very mature product that the text explains in detail, for more robust server sites.

Indeed, a strength of the book is how it does not waste time explaining common and low level sysadmin commands, that are largely unchanged over 25 years from earlier Unixes. Those commands are a commodity amongst the remaining Unixes of today and linux.

The book focuses on the unique aspects of Solaris, where the operating system can offer distinctive value.

[July 20, 2006] Solaris Internals by Jim Mauro, Richard McDougall

**** great book !
The best source for learning about Solaris internals By calvinnme HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on July 29, 2006

Format: Hardcover

This book is actually just one of a two volume set - "Solaris Internals" for developers, and "Solaris Performance and Tools" for system administrators. I will speak of the second edition of "Solaris Internals", since I am not a system administrator by trade. "Solaris Internals" is the badly needed update for the only book that I know of that contains information on how Solaris implements functions behind the application programming interfaces. This information will be most helpful to application developers, device driver and kernel module developers, and advanced system administrators that are responsible for performance tuning and capacity planning. The book reads like a combination computer architecture and operating systems manual, and though it can be a bit dry at times, it was meant to be a reference book that professionals can go to for the details. In that sense, the first edition never failed me. In fact, if you are not familiar with the concepts of computer architecture and operating systems theory in general, this book will probably be over your head. From perusing the second edition, the format seems to be very much the same in the second edition, just with expanded material reflecting the additional features of Solaris 10. Also, if you are into Solaris systems programming as I am, another essential volume is "Solaris Systems Programming". That book is also very dry reading, but it has what you need to know in order to write code with system calls to the Solaris operating system. I show the table of contents below:

Part One: Introduction to Solaris Internals
Chapter 1 -- Introduction

Part Two: The Process Model
Chapter 2 -- The Solaris Process Model
Chapter 3 -- Scheduling Classes and the Dispatcher
Chapter 4 -- Interprocess Communication
Chapter 5 -- Process Rights Management

Part Three: Resource Management
Chapter 6 -- Zones
Chapter 7 -- Projects, Tasks, and Resource Controls

Part Four: Memory
Chapter 8 -- Introduction to Solaris Memory
Chapter 9 -- Virtual Memory
Chapter 10 -- Physical Memory
Chapter 11 -- Kernel Memory
Chapter 12 -- Hardware Address Translation
Chapter 13 -- Working with Multiple Page Sizes in Solaris

Part Five: File Systems
Chapter 14 -- File System Framework
Chapter 15 -- The UFS File System

Part Six: Platform Specifics
Chapter 16 -- Support for NUMA and CMT Hardware
Chapter 17 -- Locking and Synchronization

Part Seven: Networking
Chapter 18 -- The Solaris Network Stack

Part Eight: Kernel Services
Chapter 19 -- Clocks and Timers
Chapter 20 -- Task Queues
Chapter 21 -- kmdb Implementation

[Dec 23, 2005] Solaris 10 System Administration Exam Prep 2 by Bill Calkins

(Exam Prep 2 (Que Publishing)) Books Bill Calkins

[May 4, 2005] Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10 Study Guide

[Mar 14, 2005] Sun Certified Security Administrator for Solaris 10 Study Guide (Exam CX-XXX) by John Chirillo, Edgar Danielyan

??? Don't expect much. Edgar Danielyan already published pretty much trash...

[Aug 19, 2004] Solaris Systems Programming by Rich Teer

See also http://invisible-island.net/critique/APUE-SSP.html with the devastating critique of the book.

This book is divided into six parts:

There are also five appendices:

Not a substitute for Stevens' APUE, October 14, 2004
Reviewer: Gunnar Ritter "Open Source programmer" (Freiburg i. Br., Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

Despite the claim on the back cover, the book is far away from the tradition of Richard Stevens' "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment". In contrast to APUE, which truly enlightens the reader with all sorts of historical, portability, and background information, Teer's book is not much more than a Solaris API description.

Many of the examples in it will not work unmodified on Linux, BSD, or other platforms. It will thus not be of much help to a novice Unix programmer unless he actually wants to write Solaris-only programs - not a common scenario in the Unix/POSIX world. But a more experienced programmer can just use the Solaris manual pages to get most of the information contained in the book.

Also the book contains one of the most stupid code examples I have ever seen: an snprintf() emulation that works by calling vsprintf() first, then checking its return value to see if the buffer size was large enough, possibly exiting with an error message:

int snprintf (char *buf, size_t n, const char *fmt, ...) { [...]
len = vsprintf (buf, fmt, ap); [...]
if (len >= n)
err_quit ("snprintf: \"%s\" caused a buffer overflow", fmt);

But when such an overflow is actually exploited on the stack by an attacker, vsprintf() may not return at all, rendering the check useless. The code thus gives a false impression of security. This might be regarded even more dangerous than code that does not perform overflow checks at all, especially in the context of a book.

I have to admit that I did not look at too many examples, but I would recommend to be cautious with the book until somebody has verified that this is the only fundamental security error in its code.

UNIX CD Bookshelf, 3.0

The Unix CD Bookshelf packs six books: one excellent, two good and three semi-useless/obsolite. Version 3 provides convenient online access to seven books. It also includes the hard copy of Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition.

**** Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition;

??? Learning the Unix Operating System, 5th Edition;

??? Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition;

??? Mac OS X for Unix Geeks;

**** Learning the Korn Shell, 2nd Edition;

*** sed & awk, 2nd Edition;

*** Unix in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition.

Currently overpriced, but makes great sence at half price. The CD has a master index, a search engine, and all the HTML text is extensively hyperlinked, so you'll find what you're looking for quickly.

Solaris 9 Security by Ashish Daniel Wilfred

*** It's only 376 pages, so might be an brief introduction, not more... The author also co-wrote PHP Professional Projects.

Solaris 9 The Complete Reference by Paul A. Watters

Not a reference at all, this is more like certification level textbook. It might make sense at $10 on Amazon. Recently Paul Waters published one/two Solaris books a year (three in 2002, and already one in 2003, you get the idea ;-). I strongly doubt that one can write a decent quality book baking several books a year...

General level of quality of his writing can be accesses by reading the following paper How Secure is Solaris 8 and reading a sample chapter from his older book Solaris 8 Administrator's Guide/Chapter 4 Network Configuration provided by O'Reilly.

Actually his Solaris 8 Administrator's Guide published by O'Reilly got pretty low grades from readers and that extends to this book (O'Reilly books are often reviewed by professionals.)

Please note that quitspam review below: while it is valid it is identical to his previous review for Solaris 8 version of the book :-(.

5 out of 5 stars Vast improvement, June 27, 2002

Reviewer: Daniel O'Riordan from New York City, New York

I bought the Solaris 8 version of this book. It was OK but did not contain sufficient material on the new technologies. I ordered the Solaris 9 version of the book because it's the only Solaris 9 book around. I am happy to report that this book covers new technologies like RBAC, LDAP and the resource manager. These are so much more important for the enterprise than GNOME.

Strong emphasis on disks - format, partition, volume management, backups - is good and logically ordered.

The only thing I would like to see is more coverage on application servers, databases, message queues and other uses of Solaris in large firms.

But that's probably an architecture book with a different focus.

1 out of 5 stars No stars- Definitely not complete, December 6, 2002
Reviewer: quitspam (see more about me) from Dallas, TX United States

I bought this book to learn about Solaris 9, not Solaris 7. Another example of a book that was too quick to ship. How can a book be published in April 3 when the OS is released in late June? Here are the reasons I returned mine and suggest to the publisher (author) that they go back to the drawing board and do their homework:

  • Incomplete coverage of the Solaris Management Console- instead it covers the (soon to be) obsolete Admintool for setting up users, printers, loading software. Sun says to start migrating from Admintool in their Solaris 9 release notes.
  • Nothing on soft partioning, and worse yet, no covereage of how to use Solaris Volume Manager. Nothing on Projects when setting up user accounts.
  • Nothing on the SMC process tool.
  • Nothing on how to use SMC to manage disks and file systems.
  • Nothing on Print Manager.
  • One page on Jumpstart- should be a whole chapter.

I'm running out of space but, you get the point.

Please compare the review above with quitspam Solaris 8 review:

1 of 5 stars Incomplete Reference! Rating- (no stars) April 26, 2001

I was looking for a good Solaris 8 reference, this is not it. I had the book 10 minutes, here's what I found.

The first things I tried to look up in my new complete reference were the new Solaris 8 commands prstat, psinfo, and sdtprocess - nothing about them.

How about a few words on the Solaris Product registry which is also new in Solaris 8 for managing software pkgs- nothing.

Page 253 shows a script that can be used for unmounting a busy file system- hey, what about the new Solaris 8 umount -f option for unmounting busy file systems- nothing about it.

I could go on and on about stuff missing in this book, but I think you get the point. Did they even look at Solaris 8 before writing this book.

It appears the publisher was more concerned with getting a book out first than a "real" complete Solaris 8 guide. Oh, and BTW- mine's falling apart too. Mine's going back.

[Apr 17, 2002] Solaris Management Console Tools by Janice Winsor

Chapter 1, "SMC Introduction," introduces the Solaris Management Console packages, toolboxes, commands, components, and software developer's kit.

Part One, "SMC Overview," provides an overview of SMC in three chapters.

Chapter 2, "SMC Console," describes the elements of the graphical user interface, the SMC Console preferences, logging into a server, and opening a toolbox.

Chapter 3, "SMC Server," describes how to start and stop the SMC server.

Chapter 4, "SMC Toolbox Editor," describes how to start the SMC toolbox editor and how to use it to customize the SMC Console tools and create custom toolboxes.

Part Two, "System Status" contains two chapters describing the Processes and Log Viewer tools that are part of the System Status category.

Chapter 5, "Processes," describes how to use the Processes tool to search for a process, sort process information, suspend and resume a process, and delete a process.

Chapter 6, "Log Viewer," describes how to start the log viewer, view the details of a log entry, change log file settings, back up log files, open backed-up log files, and delete log files.

Part Three, "System Configuration," contains six chapters describing the tools that are part of the System Configuration category.

Chapter 7, "User Accounts," describes how to get started with user tools, set user policies, add single and multiple user accounts with either a wizard or with templates, assign rights to a user, copy a user account to a group or mailing list, edit user properties, and delete user accounts.

Chapter 8, "User Templates," describes how to create a new template, clone an existing template, change template properties, and set user policies.

Chapter 9, "Rights," describes how to add new rights, view and edit properties of existing rights, and delete rights.

Chapter 10, "Administrative Roles," describes how to create a role, assign an administrative role, assign rights to a role, edit the properties of a role, and edit a role.

Chapter 11, "Groups," provides information about groups and describes how to add new groups, how to paste user accounts into a group, how to modify groups, and how to delete a group.

Chapter 12, "Mailing Lists," provides information about mailing lists, e-mail recipient formats, and special mailing lists. It describes how to add a new mailing list and view or modify the contents of a mailing list.

Part Four, "Services," contains one chapter that describes the Scheduled Jobs tool.

Chapter 13, "Scheduled Jobs," describes how to start the Scheduled Jobs tool, add a scheduled job, set scheduled job policies, view and edit properties of a scheduled job, and delete a scheduled job.

Part Five, "Storage," contains two chapters that describe the Disks and Mounts and Shares tools.

Chapter 14, "Disks," provides information about disk formats and disk partitions and describes how to start the Disks tool, view disk partitions, view properties of disks, create Solaris disk partitions, copy disk layout, create fdisk partitions on an IA computer, and change active fdisk partitions on an IA computer.

Chapter 15, "Mounts and Shares," describes how to start the Mounts and Shares tool, how to make file systems available, display a list of mounted file systems, display or modify the properties of mounted file systems, add a new NFS mount, and unmount a mounted file system. It also describes how to share files from a server, display a list of shared directories, add a shared directory, display or modify the properties of shared directories, and unshare a directory

Part Six, "Devices and Hardware," contains one chapter that describes the Serial Ports tool.

Chapter 16, "Serial Ports," describes how to start the Serial Ports tool, view serial port properties, and set up modems and character terminals.

Appendix A, "SMC Commands," describes the commands available to supplement the SMC graphical user interface tools.

[May 10, 2001] Solaris System Management by John Philcox

** Too short to be useful for such a complex topic.

Paperback - 320 pages 1 Ed edition (May 10, 2001)
New Riders Publishing; ISBN: 073571018X ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.70 x 9.02 x 6.98
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 469,315

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars Based on 2 reviews.

[Feb 15, 2001] Solaris Administration -- A Beginner's Guide by Paul A. Watters

Too short to be useful for such a complex topic.

Joseph T Allesi on August 3, 2001

Designed for Windows Admins Not Familiar w/Unix

The book is excellent for an introduction to Solaris for Windows Administrators. I am a Windows Systems Engineer, interested in learning Solaris...but I have been sitting around waiting for Solaris 8 certification books to be printed. This is an excellent introductory to the world of Sun and the "Solaris Way".

A lot of references comparing how things are done in the Windows world to help with orientation. The one bad thing is the Author is a bit Solaris pushy...suggesting that Solaris is the smartest idea for all environments and all situations. He also beats up on Linux a bit...which may be justified, but not in this book.

[Jan 15, 2001] Solaris and LDAP Naming Services Deploying LDAP in the Enterprise by Tom Bialaski, Michael Haines

Paperback - 380 pages 1st edition (January 15, 2001)
Prentice Hall PTR/Sun Microsystems Press; ISBN: 0130306789

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 2,749
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

Number of Reviews: 1
4 of 5 stars New to LDAP? Check this book out., January 29, 2001
Reviewer: vraptorz (see more about me) from Seattle, WA USA
This Solaris Blueprint will be of interest to anyone wishing to evaluate LDAP for use in their enterprise. The book focuses upon implementing the iPlanet Directory Services which come bundled with Solaris 8. If your main desire is to setup a working LDAP server using this software, this book is for you. Helpful chapters include setting up a secure server, integrating the Solaris native LDAP client with the iPlanet server, and some recommendations for server sizing and tuning. I was somewhat disappointed that the book did not go into greater depth about key issues, such as integrating with other LDAP-enabled products. Most of us have to deal with NT authentication, Exchange servers, and other heterogenous environments. This book only gives a single-product plug when discussing synchronization issues. If you're looking for non-product specific information, you'll need to keep looking elsewhere.

See also

Amazon

Softpanorama

Recommended Introductory Books

I used Sobell's book for teaching Solaris to students and have found it to be a pretty decent choice. But you do need to buy at least one additional book that covers tools well -- Sobell's is rather weak in this respect and does not even mention Perl. It also contains a large chapter on C-shell that is actually redundant for the introductory book -- it makes sense to concentrate of just one shell in such a book in order not to confuse students. That practically means teaching Born/Korn shell. See Shells books and Shells links for more information,

A Practical Guide to Solaris

Mark G. Sobell / Paperback / Published 1999
Amazon price: $26.95

Paperback - 1120 pages 1 edition (June 1999)
Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 020189548X ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.62 x 9.62 x 7.39
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 388
Avg. Customer Review: *****
Number of Reviews: 3

A very good book, probably not only the best introductory Solaris book available but the best overall introductory Unix book. I used this book for an introductory Unix class at the university and can attest that students grasp most material very easily. Exercises given after each chapter can serve a basis of useful homework assignments.

This edition is a result of polishing the material in three previous editions and that shows. For example in the Chapter 2 (p.23 the author mentions the problem of using Ctrl-Z by the beginners who attempt to undo some command line changes. But this is not a Windows environment and that actually postpone the program -- a very puzzling situation for beginners for which very few Unix beginner books authors provide a helpful advice. Another example of attention to details is that this is one of the few intro Unix books that recommends a reasonable .profile file that make Solaris/Unix more user friendly. All-in-all tremendous amount of useful tips can be found in almost any chapter and this attention to details really make this book an outstanding example of the introductory Unix textbook.

Another excellent feature of the book is that Solaris/Unix command line environment is studied along with X windows environment. such an approach is more modern that pure command line approach and it provides additional insights into how best use Solaris/Unix in a particular circumstances. For example I am convinced that the approach adopted in the book of using X-based editors first is an improvement over traditional methods of introducing students to vi from the beginning. In this case beginners can postpone struggling with vi until they get to speed with command line and that experience can simplify mastering vi features and permit to study vi in more depth. We should not forget than most people study Solaris/Unix after they learn Windows and Sobell's book in one of the few that make necessary adjustments for this situation.

What I really like about Mark Sobell's Unix books is that all of them contain two parts:

As for shortcomings there are very few of them and they generally does not diminish the high value of the book. For some reason nawk and sed are covered not in the main chapters, but only in the reference part. I would change this is a future edition. Grep and find probably also can be covered a small separate chapter after chapter 10 along with more material on regular expressions. Backup is also covered pretty superficially and this is another are were the book can be improved. I doubt about wisdom of covering two shells in an introductory book, but C shell is more user friendly and ksh is more widely used in commercial environment, so the author was definitely hard pressed to cover both. Perl is not mentioned at all but in proactive Perl killed shell scripting in all but simple and special purpose (startup) cases. And although the decision whether to include Perl chapter or not should probably be better left tot the author, I think that even if this is not the case it make sense to provide a supplement with Perl overview.

The author web site is www.sobell.com. You can read an Amazon interview with Mark G. Sobell.

Solaris Solutions for System Administrators : Time Saving Tips, Techniques, and Workarounds

**** This is a good, solid book with some good advice...

Sandra Henry Stocker, et al / Paperback / Published 2000
Amazon price: $31.99

Paperback - 0496 pages 1 edition (February 2, 2000)
John Wiley & Sons; ISBN: 0471348104 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.15 x 9.21 x 7.53
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 1,263
Avg. Customer Review:
Number of Reviews: 6

Table of contents

5 out of 5 stars First satisfying Solaris admin book May 14, 2000
Reviewer: rev1 (see more about me) from Zurich, Switzerland, Europe
Finally they made a proper Solaris admin book, but of course not from Sun. It deals with nearly every topic (even shortly with NIS+, which all other authors avoid,), has a practical approach and really talks about real life problems and there solutions. Lately I had some printer problems which the book helped me to solve, and this is unusual. I cannot properly explain why the book is good, but from admin to admin I'd just say, it's the best book so far about this topic.

Unix User's Handbook by Martin Poniatowski

Our Price: $47.99

Hardcover - 1402 pages Bk&Cd Rom edition (April 12, 2000)
Prentice Hall Computer Books; ISBN: 0130270199 ; Dimensions (in inches): 2.67 x 9.62 x 7.38
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 31,100
Avg. Customer Review: 5 out of 5 stars
Number of Reviews: 3

5 out of 5 stars Great For "Real World" Unix Admins, May 25, 2000
Reviewer: Jack P. Kern from Glastonbury, CT.
As a Sun Certified Solaris Instructor (Admin I, II, and TCP/IP) I think that this book fills a nice gap - for Admins who are in the "real world" with heterogeneous networks (AIX, HP UX, Solaris, Linux, etc.) Provides good advice on what tasks you should be doing and how to do them on a variety of platforms. Good intro to many topics - Unix commands, shells, the GUI (CDE),performance tuning and inter-operability with PC-based server's and desktops.


5 out of 5 stars Wish I had this book when I first learned UNIX!, May 9, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Tallahassee, Florida
This is a quality book! It provides a lot of great functional and fundamental information. I think both new and old UNIX users alike could benefit from this in-depth, easy to read book.

5 out of 5 stars Excellent book!, April 26, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from New York area
Excellent UNIX introduction of commands, file system, shells, and vi, and 200 page chapter on introduction to programming.

I especially like the man pages that appear at the end of many chapters and the vi Quick Reference card.

System Administration

For general books on system administration see Frish2002 (a good book to have, one of few O'Reilly books that were not spoiled completely in the second edition ;-). See also Performance and Security

?? Solaris 9 The Complete Reference

by Paul A. Watters

Price: $34.99

**** Solaris 8 for Managers and Administrators

by Curt Freeland, at all
Amazon Price: $41.27

Paperback - 8003 pages 3-d edition (July 14, 2000)
Delmar Publishers; ISBN: 0766821374 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.60 x 9.09 x 7.35

This is probably the best introductory Solaris administration book available. The book is much smaller that one would assume from 800 pages -- due to wide margins it's probably no more than 400 "normal" pages long. But it contains a lot of sound practical information.

[email protected] from Princeton, NJ, USA , May 24, 1999 ****
Good resource, especially for beginners
Most of the sections in the book were eminently readable, and the examples provided were to-the-point. I found that some of the sections lacked depth beyond what is available in the man pages or on docs.sun.com. (For example, the section on aset does not give a really adequate idea what setting security to "high" means in terms of functionality, nor does it point out that even the default "high" security setting leaves several critical directories and binaries group writable.) Still it is helpful to have a fairly comprehensive work in one place on your bookshelf.

Several valuable system administration tips are sprinkled throughout the book, such as the "tar-to-tar" method for copying directories to other filesystems. The section on device names was also a useful reference that is not usually included in system administration books.

The book had a couple of shortcomings that should have been resolved in the second edition. (eg, the section on the /.rhosts file (pp450-451) appears to confuse the roles of the /.rhosts and the ~/.rhosts files.) Overall, though, the exposition was clear, and there appear to be very few factual errors in this book.

In summary, this book is an excellent resource for Solaris administrators, especially those at a beginning/intermediate level of expertise.

A reader from California , February 10, 1999 *****
AWESOME BOOK!!!! (depends on what you need of course)
I teach Solaris Administration (both 2.x and System 7). I have also worked with System 8 - alpha. Let me tell you, I recommend this book to my students who are beginner admin. Of course this book does not go into too much detail if you want to learn how to set up NIS+, or DNS, but the basics are covered. It's a great intro book! I recommend it to all beginners, and new users of Solaris.

[email protected] from Las Vegas, NV. , January 8, 1999 *****
Forget the reader below... THIS BOOK IS AWESOME!
This book is GREAT for Solaris Sparc AND x86! The reader below must be on something to only rate it two stars. The book DOESN'T EXPLAIN what makes OpenWindows work (notice the title: Managers and Administrators), but the book uses the CDE environment from front to back!! IT'S AWESOME!! How can you NOT love this book?

I just bought Solaris 7 for $9.95 (comes with x86 and Sparc versions) from Sun's web site and needed something to teach me. I have absolutely no experience with Solaris (better now than never!). This book has been totally awesome in explaining everything I need to know to plan, install, and manage/administrate the Solaris environment. I just finished my MCSE and want to certify in Solaris. I was a die-hard Microsoft NT person for a looooooooong time, but I'm now realizing the world of Unix and Solaris and what (superior) strengths it has over NT. This book will sit on my desk for many years to come..

Although the book says Solaris 2.x, it was written at the time 2.6 was released. The new Solaris 7 (which is really 2.7) still works perfect with this book - unlike Microsoft who changes their OS so often and makes you buy tons of new books all the time!

Another reader below rated this book good, but also said the information is a little dated. If you are new to Solaris (like me) then you won't even know the difference. If you are coming from the world of NT (and used to spending tons of money on books every week) then you won't know the difference!

My final analysis, BUY THIS BOOK! IT IS A SURE WINNER!

**** Solaris Solutions for System Administrators : Time Saving Tips, Techniques, and Workarounds

Sandra Henry Stocker, et al / Paperback / Published 2000
Amazon price: $31.99 ~ You Save: $8.00 (20%)

Paperback - 0496 pages 1 edition (February 2, 2000)
John Wiley & Sons; ISBN: 0471348104 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.15 x 9.21 x 7.53
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 1,263
Avg. Customer Review:
Number of Reviews: 6

5 out of 5 stars First satisfying Solaris admin book May 14, 2000
Reviewer: rev1 (see more about me) from Zurich, Switzerland, Europe
Finally they made a proper Solaris admin book, but of course not from Sun. It deals with nearly every topic (even shortly with NIS+, which all other authors avoid,), has a practical approach and really talks about real life problems and there solutions. Lately I had some printer problems which the book helped me to solve, and this is unusual. I cannot properly explain why the book is good, but from admin to admin I'd just say, it's the best book so far about this topic.

UNIX System Administration Handbook, 3d edition

by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein, Scott Seebass
Paperback - 1200 pages 3 edition (August 14, 2000)
Prentice Hall PTR; ISBN: 0130206016
Other Editions: Textbook Binding

This is an overpriced generic sysadmin book. Some people like it. I don't (see my review in generic Unix books). I strongly prefer Essential System Administration, Third Edition

***+ Unix Bible No e-text

Yves Lepage, et al
Our Price: $31.99
Paperback - 900 pages 2nd Bk&cdr edition (July 2000)
IDG Books Worldwide; ISBN: 0764546872

I read the first edition of the book. It's impossible to cover everything about Unix in one book, so there can be no bible for Unix in this sense. And this book should not be you the first or the only Unix sysadmin book (I thing that book devoted to a particular flavor of Unix that one is using should be the first one). But this is a good general book it does contain information that other books often miss to cover. IMHO the book is slightly biased toward Solaris. And the authors really know this stuff. A couple of chapters would be interesting for a professional of any level and that IMHO more than justify the cost of the book. For example I especially like Ch.5 (TCP/IP networking), Ch.7 (Administration Roles and Strategies) and Ch 19 (Setting up DNS server). Your mileage may vary.

I think the biggest success of the book is Chapter 7: Administration Roles and Strategies. Other interesting part of the book is a very educating case study (a non-trivial POP client troubleshooting case) in the chapter 13. That chapter is a must for a novice sysadmin and is very useful for professionals too.

In no way I would call this book "Leisure Reading" as other Amazon reviewer did. I think he completely miss the value of the book. It's one of the best general book on Unix administration.

The table of contents also include:

Chapter 9: Managing Login Servers
Chapter 10: Database Engines
Part III: Getting and Managing Information
Chapter 11: Collecting Information
Chapter 12: Digesting and Summarizing Information
Chapter 13: Proactive Administration
Part IV: Systems Administration
Chapter 14: Managing Standard Services
Chapter 15: Forestalling Catastrophes
Chapter 16: Systems Integration
Chapter 17: UNIX Security
Part V: UNIX and the Internet
Chapter 18: Administering Internet Servers
Chapter 19: Setting Up and Maintaining a DNS Server (very good introduction is just 37 pages (430-467))
Chapter 20: E-mail Servers
Chapter 21: Transferring Files
Chapter 22: Web Servers
Chapter 23: News Servers

Solaris 7 System Administration Guide : System Management

Thomas Handschuch / Hardcover
Amazon price: $69.95 (Not Yet Published -- On Order)

*** Solaris 2.6 Administrator Certification Training Guide, Part 1 ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Bill Calkins / Paperback / Published 1999
Amazon price: $40.00
Pretty average and now outdated...


** Solaris Security ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Peter H. Gregory / Paperback / Published 1999
Amazon price: $39.99
A very weak book. See Security books section for review of this book. But it contains some information that can be useful for system novice administrators.

** Solaris : Advanced System Administrator's Guide

Janice Winsor / Paperback / Published 1998
Amazon price: $39.99
Paperback - 600 pages 2nd edition
Macmillan Technical Publishing; ISBN: 1578700396 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.47 x 9.10 x 7.38
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 15,022
Avg. Customer Review: **
Weak.

** Solaris System Administrator's Guide (MacMillan Technical Series)

Janice Winsor / Paperback / Published 1998
Amazon price: $34.99

Resource Management

Richard McDougall, et al / Paperback / Published 1999
Amazon price: $40.00 (Not Yet Published -- On Order)

Solaris Guide for Windows NT Administrators ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Tom Bialaski / Textbook Binding / Published 1999
Amazon price: $28.00


Solaris Implementation : A Guide for System Administrators ~ Usually ships in 2-3 days

George Becker, et al / Paperback / Published 1995
Amazon price: $45.00

Selected Topics in System Administration

Guide to High Availability: Configuring boot/root/swap ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Jeannie Johnstone Kobert / Textbook Binding / Published 1999
Amazon price: $24.00

Configuration and Capacity Planning for Solaris Servers

Brian L. Wong / Paperback / Published 1997
Amazon price: $44.99

Automating Solaris Installations : A Custom Jumpstart Guide/Book and Disk ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Paul Anthony Kasper, et al / Paperback / Published 1995
Amazon price: $49.00

Tips

**** Solaris Solutions for System Administrators : Time Saving Tips, Techniques, and Workarounds

Sandra Henry Stocker, et al

Amazon price: $31.99

Paperback - 0496 pages 1 edition (February 2, 2000)
John Wiley & Sons; ISBN: 0471348104 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.15 x 9.21 x 7.53
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 4,666
Avg. Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Number of Reviews: 10
Table of contents

5 out of 5 stars First sattisfying Solaris admin book, May 14, 2000
Reviewer: Per Kistler (see more about me) from Zurich, Switzerland, Europe
Finally they made a propper Solaris admin book, but of course not from Sun. It deals with nearly every topic (even shortly with NIS+, which all other authors avoid,), has a practical approach and realy talks about real life problems and there solutions. Lately I had some printer problems which the book helped me to solve, and this is unusal. I cannot propperly explain why the book is good, but from admin to admin I'd just say, it's the best book so far about this topic.

5 out of 5 stars Excellent book for rookies to the most experienced., May 8, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Florida
As a mid-level member (6 yrs. experience)of a team that combines over 45 yrs. experience we found this book to be unique in that it's informative for both the rookies on the team and the senior members. Chapters 6 and 11, on JumpStart and Automation were awesome. The Diagnostic, and Backup and restore stuff as well... This book is useful to push the boundries of what we're doing and also as a reference book, and a get-acquinted book. Very well rounded.

5 out of 5 stars Solaris Admin Answers in a clear and concise format!, May 4, 2000
Reviewer: Kari-Lyn Manning from Hartford, Connecticut
Having limited development and no unix administration background I was thrown into the fire at a major Health Care Company with another rookie and one mid-level Unix dev/admin type. We hustled to the store and bought four different books. 'Solaris Solution for System Administrators' won out and became the administrative Bible for our project. Covering and providing answers for virtually every scenario we encountered!

After returning the other three books and picking up a second copy of this one we're ( ) richer and at the endgame of a very successful project, with a solid foundation to administrate going forward!

***+ Unix Hints & Hacks
by Kirk Waingrow

Paperback - 479 pages 1 edition (April 19, 1999)
Que; ISBN: 0789719274 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.23 x 9.14 x 7.40
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3,298
Avg. Customer Review: *****
Number of Reviews: 7

Overpriced. Not very impressive

4 out of 5 stars Good overall book for new Sys Admins, August 1, 2000
Reviewer: azar92 (see more about me) from Utah
This is a great book. Its pages contain plenty of useful information for the aspiring Sys Admin. Experienced Unix administrators probably should look elsewhere, since a good majority of the material is stuff that they should already know. The book starts with hands-on "Hints and Hacks" and slowly gets more and more general (i.e. Handling Irate Users, Finding a job as a Unix System Administrator, Interviewing new Sys Admins, etc). Overall, I feel this book is well worth what you pay for it.

My only real complaint about the book is the sometimes annoying typos. Some of them can be easily overlooked and the authors desired meaning can be understood. But sometimes it gets a little ridiculous.

The author showing some hints on the VI editor:

"When you go into the command line mode, you can execute the command and write the results out to a file such as

:!date > /tmp/date.tmp

...Then position the cursor where you want the results of date command to go.

:r /temp/foo

Execute the read (r) command on /tmp/dat.tmp and the data is read..."

Errors like this can be annoying and detract from an overall great book. A couple of other similar errors, plus general typos, is why this book lost a star. Otherwise, grab this book!

[email protected] from Overland Park, Kansas , July 22, 1999 *****
Great all-round book for System Admins.
I caught this book on sale at Amazon.com and I decided to check it out. If you're a Junior/Intermediate system administrator this book is an excellent value! Waingrow's book isn't platform specific and it doesn't re-hash simple unix commands like other books. He expects that you are mildly experienced in UNIX and gives system administration examples based on real-world experience. It would take me years of trial-and-error to learn what Waingrow packs into this book. However, good Senior administrators would probably find the book less useful.

One of the best chapters is "System Administration: The Occupation". It covers everything from creating your resume and preparing for an interview to finding other experienced administrators. I've never read another book that put as much thought into the "career" of system administration rather than the day-to-day tasks.

The only problem I have with this book is that I can't keep my co-workers from stealing it off my desk! Well worth the money.

[email protected] from Tx, Usa , June 25, 1999 ******
Great Book
This is a great book. It has many tricks that are geared toward real world experenice that are not covered in any other book I have seen. I especially liked the section gearded toward getting your first job as an system admin. It is one book worth buying. For all kinds of information for less than 15 dollars how could you go wrong.

[email protected] Peter Barbera from Southern California , June 17, 1999 ******
You luckily don't always get, what you pay for.
There is no excuse for trying to save the $20 this would cost in the store. Seems to me, the owner of www.ugu.com put his life expertise to paper. Wow. Finally I was able to obtain a copy, took only 2 months. It is delayed, still. What a bargain, beats 90% of the $50+ books out there. Mainly geared towards advanced admins, has a few tricks for newbies, too A section on how to deal with lusers and job related tips.

It is really not geared towards a single flavour, but touches BSD and SVR4 /and Linux styles. (Solaris,SunOS,Linux2.x,IRIX,HP)

Lots of undocumented tricks and hints, that would normally cost the reader a fortune in consultant's fees to obtain. Finally a book that beats all the mediocre other stuff out.

Networking

Building Intranets on Nt, Netware, Solaris : An Administrator's Guide

Morgan Stern, Tom Rasmussen

Reference

Solaris 9 The Complete Reference

by Paul A. Watters

Price: $34.99


Not a reference at all, this is more like certification level textbook. It might make sense at $10 on Amazon. Recently Paul Waters published one/two Solaris books a year (three in 2002, and already one in 2003, you get the idea ;-). I strongly doubt that one can write a decent quality book baking several books a year...

General level of quality of his writing can be accesses by reading the following paper How Secure is Solaris 8 and reading a sample chapter from his older book Solaris 8 Administrator's Guide/Chapter 4 Network Configuration provided by O'Reilly.

Actually his Solaris 8 Administrator's Guide published by O'Reilly got pretty low grades from readers and that extends to this book (O'Reilly books are often reviewed by professionals.)

Please note that quitspam review below: while it is valid it is identical to his previous review for Solaris 8 version of the book :-(.

5 out of 5 stars Vast improvement, June 27, 2002

Reviewer: Daniel O'Riordan from New York City, New York

I bought the Solaris 8 version of this book. It was OK but did not contain sufficient material on the new technologies. I ordered the Solaris 9 version of the book because it's the only Solaris 9 book around. I am happy to report that this book covers new technologies like RBAC, LDAP and the resource manager. These are so much more important for the enterprise than GNOME.

Strong emphasis on disks - format, partition, volume management, backups - is good and logically ordered.

The only thing I would like to see is more coverage on application servers, databases, message queues and other uses of Solaris in large firms.

But that's probably an architecture book with a different focus.

1 out of 5 stars No stars- Definitely not complete, December 6, 2002
Reviewer: quitspam (see more about me) from Dallas, TX United States

I bought this book to learn about Solaris 9, not Solaris 7. Another example of a book that was too quick to ship. How can a book be published in April 3 when the OS is released in late June? Here are the reasons I returned mine and suggest to the publisher (author) that they go back to the drawing board and do their homework:

  • Incomplete coverage of the Solaris Management Console- instead it covers the (soon to be) obsolete Admintool for setting up users, printers, loading software. Sun says to start migrating from Admintool in their Solaris 9 release notes.
  • Nothing on soft partioning, and worse yet, no covereage of how to use Solaris Volume Manager. Nothing on Projects when setting up user accounts.
  • Nothing on the SMC process tool.
  • Nothing on how to use SMC to manage disks and file systems.
  • Nothing on Print Manager.
  • One page on Jumpstart- should be a whole chapter.

I'm running out of space but, you get the point.

Please compare the review above with quitspam Solaris 8 review:

1 of 5 stars Incomplete Reference! Rating- (no stars) April 26, 2001

I was looking for a good Solaris 8 reference, this is not it. I had the book 10 minutes, here's what I found.

The first things I tried to look up in my new complete reference were the new Solaris 8 commands prstat, psinfo, and sdtprocess - nothing about them.

How about a few words on the Solaris Product registry which is also new in Solaris 8 for managing software pkgs- nothing.

Page 253 shows a script that can be used for unmounting a busy file system- hey, what about the new Solaris 8 umount -f option for unmounting busy file systems- nothing about it.

I could go on and on about stuff missing in this book, but I think you get the point. Did they even look at Solaris 8 before writing this book.

It appears the publisher was more concerned with getting a book out first than a "real" complete Solaris 8 guide. Oh, and BTW- mine's falling apart too. Mine's going back.

*** Solaris: The Complete Reference

Sriranga Veeraraghavan / Paperback / Published 2000

Our Price: $49.99
Paperback - 678 pages 1st edition (June 28, 2000)
McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing; ISBN: 0072121432
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 2,495
Avg. Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Number of Reviews: 5


Actually this is very incomplete reference: a strange mixture of tutorial with reference. It is not Solaris 8 oriented, the only important feature of Solaris 8 that is covered is IPv6. Average or weaker than average generic Solaris book. The index is particularly useless. References are outdated/useless. This book covers extras - like Samba - that Sun doesn't cover because they are third party tools. Web site: Solaris 8 The Complete Reference contains nothing useful. Here are reviews from Amazon that I consider helpful in determining the value of the book:

2 out of 5 stars The Profoundly Incomplete Reference, December 18, 2001
Reviewer: audioparagon from Nashua, NH, USA
This is a book may be OK for very, very basic use of Solaris, but otherwise it's almost absurdly incomplete. And the index is completely useless.

Too much history and concept (of UNIX, of Sun, of FTP, of DHCP) but not NEARLY enough detail about the real-world configuration and administration of the OS. I personally did not find any help with the issues/scenarios I regularly encounter...

The online AnswerBook is easier and better - plus it's free!

3 out of 5 stars Not a Complete Reference, but nice to have !, September 19, 2001
Reviewer: ED JOHNSON from Zuerich, Zuerich Switzerland
I bought this book because I wanted to supplement my preparation for the Solaris 8 certification exams. I already had sysadmin experience with versions 2.5, 2.6 and 7.

Solaris 8 - The Complete Reference is extremely readable and a good start for anyone who needs to look at the new Solaris version.

Pros
Good emphasis for PC based admins coming from an NT background, who need a grounding in Solaris and UNIX.
Very, very readable.

Cons
Not very much real information on the boot process

Not very much information on the security aspects of Solaris, just a few pages only.
Way too much detail on on subjects like FTP (16 pages), which everyone should know anyway.
Practically nothing on the use and setup of Jumpstart or diskless clients.
Not enough detail on the real Solaris features such as volume management, and set/getfacl and the Openboot process.

But overall.... I solidly recommend it to be on every small or big- time Solaris admins bookshelf.


3 out of 5 stars Ok, August 7, 2000
Reviewer: THOMAS A VINCENT (see more about me) from Pleasanton, CA United States
While the book provided a good overall reference of Solaris, dealing with alot of books that don't touch on subjects like IPV6, NIS+, and proc . This book did. The title is deceiving . It doesn't cover much of the new specific features of Solaris 8 other then IPv6. Even then it is under whelming.


Solaris 8 System Administrator's Reference

by Janice Windsor

Our Price: $49.99

Paperback - 1300 pages 1 edition (September 8, 2000)
Prentice Hall PTR; ISBN: 0130277010

This item will be published on September 8, 2000. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives.
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 74,535

*** Solaris Essential Reference ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

John Mulligan / Paperback / Published 1999
Amazon price: $19.96 ~ You Save: $4.99 (20%)

Paperback - 267 pages (May 1999)
New Riders Publishing; ISBN: 0735700230 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.36 x 8.86 x 5.87
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3,924
Avg. Customer Review: *****
Number of Reviews: 4

Average and not impressive. The book is more Solaris specific than O'Reilly Nutshell, but still leaves much to be desired. It's definitely overpriced. There are too few examples (Sobel's book contain much more and higher quality examples) and that make the value of the book questionable (but some Amazon readers disagree, see a positive review below ). But again, this is a Solaris book and it does contain Solaris specific commands. The author maintains the SolarisGuide.com . Here is his recent review of Solaris 8.

***** Great reference with great examples September 21, 1999
Reviewer: A reader from VT, USA

This book is packed with very useful Solaris information. But what I like best are the examples that are given with the topics. They are shown in an easy to follow format. I am the type of person that learns by seeing examples, and this book is exactly what I was looking for.

The other thing that I like about this book is that the all of the information applies to all versions of Solaris in the 2.x series. We also have some Solaris 7 machines where I work, and the information is just as relavent.

I highly recommend this book to others who use Solaris -- both new users and experienced professionals. It is far better than the other Solaris books that I have seen.

A reader from Redmond, WA , September 8, 1999 *****
Good Reference Book
A good reference book for both experienced users and beginners. Tons of information packed into a small, portable, book. I recommend this book to others.

*** Unix in a Nutshell : A Desktop Quick Reference for System V Release 4 and Solaris 7 (Nutshell Handbook) by Arnold Robbins(Preface) (Paperback - September 1999)

Our Price: $19.96
Paperback - 598 pages 3rd edition (September 1999)
O'Reilly & Associates; ISBN: 1565924274 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.16 x 8.99 x 6.03
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 1,566

Nothing special. Somewhat weak and overpriced but still usable. See Unix books for details

**+ Solaris 7 Reference Guide ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Janice Winsor / Paperback / Published 1999
Amazon price: $49.99

Sunsoft Solaris 2.* Quick Reference ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Onword Press Development Team, et al / Paperback / Published 1994
Amazon price: $17.56 ~ You Save: $4.39 (20%)

Unix System Command Summary for Solaris 2.5 ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Paperback / Published 1996
Amazon price: $10.00 + $0.85 special surcharge

The UNIX CD Bookshelf, 2nd Edition (w/ CD-ROM)

by Arnold Robbins, et al. Paperback (February 2000)

Our Price:$55.96

Average Customer Review: 5 out of 5 stars

Paperback - 624 pages 3rd Bk&cdr edition (February 2000)
O'Reilly & Associates; ISBN: 0596000006 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.33 x 9.19 x 6.27
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 8,929
Avg. Customer Review: 5 out of 5 stars
Number of Reviews: 1

This is a reasonable (but not great) deal. A usefule CD for any Unix sysadmin. Probably the most competitive deal on Unix books that you can find on Amazon. The UNIX CD Bookshelf contains six books from O'Reilly (plus the software from UNIX Power Tools) with a master index a search engine. HTML text is hyper-linked. A hardcopy of UNIX in a Nutshell: System V Edition, is also included, but I believe you should sell it to keep cost down.

The CD-ROM contains three good and tree average books:

The main advantage of buying this collection is that you can print some useful parts from each book and have your own "meta-book" at a reasonable cost. You also less depend on the quality of the index. I just wish that O'Reilly included Frish's book Essential System Administration, 2nd Edition on the CD too.

Solaris Programming

??? Solaris Systems Programming See also http://invisible-island.net/critique/APUE-SSP.html with the devastating critique of the book.

by Rich Teer

Not a substitute for Stevens' APUE, October 14, 2004

Reviewer: Gunnar Ritter "Open Source programmer" (Freiburg i. Br., Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

Despite the claim on the back cover, the book is far away from the tradition of Richard Stevens' "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment". In contrast to APUE, which truly enlightens the reader with all sorts of historical, portability, and background information, Teer's book is not much more than a Solaris API description.

Many of the examples in it will not work unmodified on Linux, BSD, or other platforms. It will thus not be of much help to a novice Unix programmer unless he actually wants to write Solaris-only programs - not a common scenario in the Unix/POSIX world. But a more experienced programmer can just use the Solaris manual pages to get most of the information contained in the book.

Also the book contains one of the most stupid code examples I have ever seen: an snprintf() emulation that works by calling vsprintf() first, then checking its return value to see if the buffer size was large enough, possibly exiting with an error message:

int snprintf (char *buf, size_t n, const char *fmt, ...) { [...]
len = vsprintf (buf, fmt, ap); [...]
if (len >= n)
err_quit ("snprintf: \"%s\" caused a buffer overflow", fmt);

But when such an overflow is actually exploited on the stack by an attacker, vsprintf() may not return at all, rendering the check useless. The code thus gives a false impression of security. This might be regarded even more dangerous than code that does not perform overflow checks at all, especially in the context of a book.

I have to admit that I did not look at too many examples, but I would recommend to be cautious with the book until somebody has verified that this is the only fundamental security error in its code.

Solaris and LDAP Naming Services Deploying LDAP in the Enterprise

by Tom Bialaski, Michael Haines
Our Price: $39.00
Paperback - 380 pages 1st edition (January 15, 2001)
Prentice Hall PTR/Sun Microsystems Press; ISBN: 0130306789 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.10 x 9.27 x 7.04

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 2,749
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

Number of Reviews: 1
4 of 5 stars New to LDAP? Check this book out., January 29, 2001
Reviewer: vraptorz (see more about me) from Seattle, WA USA
This Solaris Blueprint will be of interest to anyone wishing to evaluate LDAP for use in their enterprise. The book focuses upon implementing the iPlanet Directory Services which come bundled with Solaris 8. If your main desire is to setup a working LDAP server using this software, this book is for you. Helpful chapters include setting up a secure server, integrating the Solaris native LDAP client with the iPlanet server, and some recommendations for server sizing and tuning. I was somewhat disappointed that the book did not go into greater depth about key issues, such as integrating with other LDAP-enabled products. Most of us have to deal with NT authentication, Exchange servers, and other heterogenous environments. This book only gives a single-product plug when discussing synchronization issues. If you're looking for non-product specific information, you'll need to keep looking elsewhere.

Sparc Architecture, Assembly Language Programming, and C

by Richard P. Paul

Amazon Price: $71.00

Textbook Binding - 528 pages 2 edition (July 29, 1999)
Prentice Hall; ISBN: 0130255963 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.76 x 9.25 x 7.00

Other Editions: Paperback

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 44,393
Popular in: Informix Software, Inc. (#3)
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

1 of 5 stars Waste of money, January 16, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from Boston, MA
I am sure previous reviewer have some kind of relations with the author. If this book was $15, I would say buy & keep it for reference. But, this is one of the worst books I have ever read and/or studied. If you have no idea about SPARC, it is almost impossible for you to understand or learn anything from this book. If you know fairly, you don't need this book, you can study it by examples by yourself. Do not waste your money.

***+ Writing Applications for the Solaris : Environment : A Guide for Windows Programmers ~ Usually ships in 2-3 days

Sunsoft / Paperback / Published 1992
Amazon price: $24.95

Solaris Developer's Tool Kit/Book and Cd-Rom (J. Ranade Workstation Series) ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Kevin E. Leininger / Paperback / Published 1995
Amazon price: $39.96 ~ You Save: $9.99 (20%)

Solaris Porting Guide ~ Usually ships in 2-3 days

Paperback / Published 1995
Amazon price: $49.00

Threads Primer : A Guide to Solaris Multithreaded Programming ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Bil Lewis, Daniel J. Berg (Contributor) / Paperback / Published 1995
Amazon price: $42.00

Solaris Multithreaded Programming Guide

Paperback / Published 1995
Amazon price: $44.00 (Special Order)

Creating Worldwide Software : Solaris International Developer's Guide ~ Usually ships in 2-3 days

Bill Tuthill, David Smallberg / Paperback / Published 1997
Amazon price: $59.00

DB

Configuring and Tuning Databases on the Solaris Platform
by Sun Microsystems Press (Editor), Allan N. Packer

Paperback - 450 pages 1st edition (December 3, 2001)
Prentice Hall; ISBN: 0130834173

DB2 Universal Database in the Solaris Operating Environment

by Tetsuya Shirai, Rodolphe Michel, Mark Wilding, Scott Logan,

Textbook Binding - 400 pages Bk&Cd Rom edition (December 15, 1999)
Prentice Hall; ISBN: 0130869864 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.35 x 9.17 x 6.97
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 98,620

Internals

Solaris Internals Core Kernel Components

by Jim Mauro, Richard McDougall
Our Price: $59.99
Hardcover - 800 pages 1 edition (October 15, 2000)
Prentice Hall PTR; ISBN: 0130224960 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.26 x 9.60 x 7.26
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 4,120
Popular in: Sun Microsystems, Inc. (#7)

Solaris 2.X : Internals and Architecture/Book and Disk (J. Ranade Workstation) ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

John R. Graham / Paperback / Published 1995
Amazon price: $44.00

Tools

Gnu Tools++ for Solaris

CD-ROM / Published 1998
Amazon price: $59.95 (Special Order)

Sunsoft Solaris 2.0 for Managers and Administrators/Disk

Onword Press Development Team / Hardcover / Published 1995
Amazon price: $34.95 (Back Ordered)

Solaris Developer's Tool Kit/Book and Cd-Rom (J. Ranade Workstation)

Kevin E Leininger

Toolkit for Solaris

Hardcover / Published 1999
Amazon price: $59.95 (Special Order)

Performance

Solaris 7 Performance Administration Tools

by Frank H. Cervone. Paperback

Amazon price:$31.99

Solaris Performance Administration : Performance Measurement, Fine Tuning, and Capacity Planning for Releases 2.5.1 and 2.6 ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

H. Frank Cervone / Paperback / Published 1998
Amazon price: $35.96 ~ You Save: $8.99 (20%)

Out of print

Practical Solaris Administration : System Configuration and File Systems by Brian Dimambro.

** Sun Certified Network Administrator for the Solaris 10 Operating System Certification Exam Preparation Course in a Book for Passing the Solaris ... on Your First Try Certification Study Guide

Ray Licon:

I was willing to take a chance on this book because there is precious little out there to help prepare for the SCNA exam. This book is OK, but you need to already have a background in Networking in order to get much from it. The descriptions and topics are brief and review oriented. I've taken the SCSA Solaris 10 exam(s) and they are by far more difficult than most of these certifications. You'll need all the help you can get. Use this book in conjunction with other study guides.

**** Solaris 10 System Administration Exam Prep- CX-310-200, Part I (2nd Edition) (Pt. 1)

Nurd:

If you are planning to take the 200 exam this book will help you pass the test. Unlike the book by Sanghera this goes into the depth needed to pass the test. Test requires more than just the knowledge of what commands to use but what switches are required to get the proper outcome. This book is roughly the same size as SCSA Solaris 10 book from McGraw Hill which covers the 200 and 202 exam while this book only cover the 200 exam. The wealth of knowledge that is achieved by reading this book not only allowed me to pass the exam but to increase my skills on areas that I do not normally use as a sysadmin. Now I am waiting for part II to be published.

liworth "liworth":

I took a Solaris 10 Advanced System Admin class several years ago while working primarily on IBM's AIX platform.
Currently I am a contractor who has to work on Solaris, Linux and AIX. I was unable to find the books from my Solaris 10 class and purchased this book. So far it has helped me with my current position and I highly recommend the book as a useful tutorial and reference.

Sun Certified Security Administrator for Solaris 9 & 10 Study Guide (Certification Press)

[Jan 9, 2005] Solaris 9 System Administrator Exam Cram Review was updated.

[Jan 9, 2005] Solaris 10 System Administration Exam Prep 2 (Exam Prep 2 (Que Publishing)) Books Bill Calkins

Amazon Price: $37.79

by Bill Calkins>

Certified Solaris System Administrator Certification

**** Solaris 9 System Administrator Exam Cram 2 (Exam Cram 310-014, Exam Cram 310-015)

by Darrell Ambro (Author), Ed Tittel (Editor)

See Solaris 9 System Administrator Exam Cram for Softpanorama Review

Awsome, January 21, 2003
Reviewer: Robert Wayne Smith (Westfield, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews

This book was great. It hit all the points of the test. Another good Exam Cram book. A hint for the test, study printing and have a good knowleage of command line switches.

Do not use this book for 310-016 SA 9 Upgrade Exam, April 9, 2003
Reviewer: IanQ (Toronto Ontario) - See all my reviews

This book was awful for preparing for the Solaris 9 Systems Admin Upgrade exam. The book has no info on debugging Jumpstart install issues; doesn't go into Flash Install in enough detail; missed the 1 question on LDAP client(I got it right by remembering the answer from my Solaris 8 books); has little useful info on SVM and RAID, I absolutely either had to guess or remember from years ago the answers to the SVM/RAID questions. What else? The book doesn't cover UFS snapshot enough to answer the questions asked on the exam.

I managed to pass purely on luck.

I cannot for a moment believe this book is ideal for the 014 and 015 tests either.

1 out of 5 stars General unix overview - USELESS for the exam!, August 13, 2003
Reviewer: William B Ragsdill from Dallas

It's a general overview of Solaris. If you want an intro to unix, great. If you want to pass the test, forget it. Not one of the practice questions was even remotely close to any of the exam questions. If you want the overview just buy a used copy of the v6, v7, or v8 version at your local used book store.

If you know anything about solaris just goto [the website] and get their study guide. It's a little more expensive, but it at least has SOME of the real questions and it will give you a chance to pass.


Works for the Solaris 9 upgrade exam CX-310-016 too!, April 24, 2003
Reviewer: Ruslan Moskalenko "Ruslan Moskalenko" (Pleasanton, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

I used this book to prepare for the recertification Solaris 9 exam (CX-310-016) and it worked out pretty well. I'm just back from the testing center with 92% score.

The book is great, it has all material you need, plus it's relatively short for two exams.

It's a sort of a reference+exam cram book, doesn't teach you much about Solaris basics and surprisingly some areas are haven't touched at all (like CDE) and some areas doesn't reflect the modern state of Solaris administration (extensive use of r-commands proved to be unsecure etc), but it's just because Sun makes up tests this way. The book is very well focused for the test preparation. Once again, don't expect it to be a Solaris tutorial.

I'd skip some long reference tables in RBAC sections, they take many pages but I haven't seen them in the questions. Not a big deal at all.

The practice tests are also good.

The bottom line - you'll hardle get dissapointed.

5 out of 5 stars All you need to pass the exam (and some advice for 310-014), June 28, 2003
Reviewer: Timothy J Mapley (see more about me) from Beavercreek, OH United States

A great all-in-one resource for passing the Sun Certified System Administrator exams. This book was recommended to me by a friend after he used it to pass, and I have just passed. The information is condensed, which makes learning the basics and top-level concepts easier. The book does not bog you down with examples of every switch for each command. Very few printing errors. I would suggest that you do the following before taking the tests:

  • Try the commands. Since the book lists many command switches in tables and does not bog you down with examples of each switch, you should try the commands and combinations of switches on a real machine.
  • View the actual configuration files and scripts. The book makes reference to the important parts of configuration files and scripts. To supplement the book, you should view the whole files and be remotely familiar with them before taking the exam.
  • Buy 'Essential System Administration'. Although Exam Cram is all you need to pass the test, 'Essential System Administration' filled in some areas that were not as detailed in Exam Cram. Read 'Essential System Administration' for the format command and for a directory structure diagram (pg 69) (which would have been a great addition to the Exam Cram book). If you do not buy 'Essential System Administration', play around with the format command and create your own directory structure diagram.

Read ahead on the installation methods. The test (310-014) contained questions which made reference to installation methods not included in the first half of the Exam Cram book.

Suggest reading this book several times.


5 out of 5 stars Works for the Solaris 9 upgrade exam CX-310-016 too!, April 24, 2003
Reviewer: Ruslan Moskalenko (see more about me) from Pleasanton, CA United States

I used this book to prepare for the recertification Solaris 9 exam (CX-310-016) and it worked out pretty well. I'm just back from the testing center with 92% score.

The book is great, it has all material you need, plus it's relatively short for two exams.

It's a sort of a reference+exam cram book, doesn't teach you much about Solaris basics and surprisingly some areas are haven't touched at all (like CDE) and some areas doesn't reflect the modern state of Solaris administration (extensive use of r-commands proved to be unsecure etc), but it's just because Sun makes up tests this way. The book is very well focused for the test preparation. Once again, don't expect it to be a Solaris tutorial.

I'd skip some long reference tables in RBAC sections, they take many pages but I haven't seen them in the questions. Not a big deal at all.

The practice tests are also good.

The bottom line - you'll hardly get dissapointed.


5 out of 5 stars Awsome, January 21, 2003
Reviewer: Robert Wayne Smith (see more about me) from Westfield, Indiana United States

This book was great. It hit all the points of the test. Another good Exam Cram book. A hint for the test, study printing and have a good knowleadge of command line switches.

5 out of 5 stars From the Author, December 31, 2002
Reviewer: Darrell Ambro (see more about me) from Greensboro, NC USA

The Solaris 9 System Administration Exam Cram is intended as a study guide for Solaris system administrators and power users who wish to obtain the System Administrator certification. The material should be considered intermediate to advanced and assumes the reader has basic Unix knowledge and a general understanding of computer concepts.

This book describes ALL the topics of Solaris 9 system administration that are identified as the certification exam objectives. The other study guides do not cover printing which is a major exam topic for Part I.

Although the material concentrates on these objectives, it also includes some other related and useful information. Both Part I and Part II exam objectives are covered.

I hope this study guide helps you prepare for and pass the two exams required for certification. As with any certification preparation, nothing beats hands-on experience. If you don't have system administrator access to a system, get yourself a copy of Solaris system (from Sun's web site) and try out the commands and operations as you study them. Also I reference other resources that provide different explanations or additional details. Make use of these printed and on-line resources as needed.

The book begins with an Introduction that provides guidance and references relating to the certification process and preparation. Related exam topics are grouped into chapters. Each chapter begins with a listing of the material covered and ends with a 8-10 question sample test followed by a list of additional resources. Both parts end with a full length practice exam. Both the publisher and I have worked hard to make this book as complete and accurate as possible.

Whether you purchase my book or not, good luck with obtaining the Solaris 9 System administrator certification!

**** Inside Solaris 9

This is essentially a certification preparation book with summaries of topic that cannot be used independently of Sun documentation. All-in-all not bad.

***+ Special Edition Using Solaris 9

by by NIIT NIIT, Tanuj Jain, Radhika Girisan, Ganesh Govindaswamy

Table of Contents

Sample chapter: The Solaris Interactive Installation. Related chapters:

This book looks like a diligent attempt of NIIT staff to rewrite Sun's SA-239 course textbook as a university textbook for NIIT audience :-). Although far from being original, this is not a bad book in general if you are preparing to the certification exam SA14A, and, partially, SA15A. It can serve as a compliment to Darell Ambro book althouth Calkin's Inside Solaris is similar and cheaper (used).

This is not a good introductory book, and here Sobell's A Practical Guide to Solaris is a better deal. Used copies of Sobell's book are also cheaper.

The general style is of a rather boring, faceless compilation written by several authors: lacking any real insights into enterprise Solaris environment. Still the contents of book covers most of SA14A certification exam fairly well. Due to several authors involved and the level of approximation of SA-239 textbook contents is very uneven. There are some good chapters like Ch 8 "Understanding Solaris file system". There are several very bad chapters as Ch 14. Managing Printing (that demonstrates the author lack of understanding of this subsystem and its actual use in enterprise environment, this is just a poor digest of a corresponding SA-239 textbook chapter).

Most are in grey area. As I mentioned above from the text of most chapters (for example Ch. 11. "Managing Users and Groups") it is clear that this is a compilation and the author(s) never administered Solaris servers in a real enterprise environment, which is so typical for many university textbooks (again, the authors are from NIIT).

*** Solaris 9 System Administration Training Guide (Exam CX-310-014 and CX-310-015)

by Bill Calkins


  • Paperback: 1008 pages
  • Publisher: Que; Bk&CD-Rom edition (April 2, 2003)
  • ISBN: 0789729229
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.9 x 2.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4.0 pounds.
  • Average Customer Review: based on 13 reviews.

Average book. Darrell Ambro book is better. The author also run unixed.com It has a forum that might contain useful postings from members.

Errata: http://unixed.com/certification/Solaris_9_Training_Guide/sol9_errata/sol9_errata.htm

Good for learning Solaris 9 but not for CERT. Test!!!, February 22, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
If you think this book will prepare you for the test you are wrong. The first exam: CX-310-014 yes, it helps. But the Exam Cram is better.

But the CX-310-015 does not cover enough areas to aid for the test. For example,the author does not explain setfacl, RBAC enough. There's not enough guides here. This part is really poorly written.

He must get paid for filling up pages. However, if you want to be a Solaris admin, this book is a good reference. THIS book is not for test studying.

Try look for the Exam Cram for Solaris 9. That book has a lot better info section for RBAC and others. My co-worker and I have read both and this is clear.

Not Enough, May 6, 2004
Reviewer: "karunesh1975" (Bridgewater , NJ USA) - See all my reviews

I must advice to the potential Sys Admins lookin to sit for the certification exams , that this book is certainly not Enough. Coz certain chapters Like "Backup and restore" are not extensively covered considering the scope of the exam. By all means you need another source of information.

5 out of 5 stars This is a Great Training Guide!, September 17, 2003
Reviewer: Steven Stark (see more about me) from St Paul, Minn.

I'm a Solaris instructor and must comment on the Dalia Aziz comments who wrote that the Calkins book is full of filler. Aziz is flat out wrong-it's a great, in depth training guide.

Our firm reviewed the Gibbs book because it was the first one out and we needed a Solaris 9 training guide for our students; I returned it.

In short, here's our review: and here's why Gibb's book (Pub. Osborne) is several hundred pages less than the Calkins book: Gibbs has 3 sentences on managing disks with SMC, nothing on managing core dumps, nothing on Flash archives, nothing on fssnap, nothing on printers, 1 sentence on smpatch (Calkins has 7 pgs on smpatch). Gibbs devotes an entire chapter to vi and another entire chapter on basic command syntax- both are not on the exam (talk about fluff).

Gibbs also includes sections on Admintool and Adminsuite when both products have been discontinued in Solaris 9.

Gibbs still refers to SVM as DiskSuite and contains numerous typos. Gibbs tells the reader to use rlogin, rcp, rsh and does not even speak of the secure shell. I could go on and on about what that book missed. I gotta give Calkins credit for waiting to get it right vs. being first to market with a sub standard book. Great job Calkins- we use this book in our Solaris Admin 1 and 2 courses and our students are getting certified!! Hey Aziz, better check your reference: there's a total of 12 exam objectives not 6.

** Books Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 9.0 Study Guide (Exams 310-014 & 310-015)

by Tim Gibbs

This book Covers the Wrong exam, March 19, 2004
Reviewer: naval d singh (laurel, maryland United States) - See all my reviews

This book is for Solaris 8 and not for Solaris 9..... The exam number has been misspelled throughout the book.. Its a good book for Solaris 8 though. I studied the whole book to find out this at the end and I have to take the 8 exam ultimately.
Boo!, May 5, 2004
Reviewer: P. Y. "whitelabrat" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This book is more appropriate for the Solaris beginner who is just getting started. I would avoid this book if you are looking to become certified as it skipped some important information, particularly printers.

I failed my certification test thanks to this book and the omitted section on printers.

Poor, Inaccurate Solaris 9 Study Guide, September 17, 2003
Reviewer: Steven Stark (St Paul, Minn.) - See all my reviews

I'm a Solaris instructor and our firm reviewed this book because it was the first one out and we needed a Solaris 9 training guide for our students; I returned it. In short, here's our review:

Gibbs has 3 sentences on managing disks with SMC, nothing on managing core dumps, nothing on Flash archives, nothing on fssnap, nothing on printers, one sentence on smpatch.

Gibbs devotes an entire chapter to vi and another entire chapter on basic command syntax- both are not on the exam.

Gibbs also includes sections on Admintool and Adminsuite when both products have been discontinued in Solaris 9.

Gibbs still refers to SVM as DiskSuite and the book contains numerous typos (ie. syslogc). Gibbs tells the reader to use rlogin, rcp, rsh and does not even speak of the secure shell. I could go on and on about what this book has missed.

In short, we started using the Calkins Solaris 9 Training Guide (pub. Que) and our students are getting certified and getting jobs.

Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 8 Study Guide (Exam 310-011 & 310-012)

2 out of 5 stars Occasionally useful, often embarrassingly bad, January 22, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from San Ramon, CA USA

This book should never have gone to press in its current state, and perhaps not at all. It is full of factual errors, editing oversights, and evidence of just plain laziness on the part of the writers and editors. Examples:
1. Unmodified boilerplate: Though focused entirely on Solaris 8, the help files note that "Microsoft may modify these exam characteristics at any time."
2. Self-contradictions: A multiple-choice exam question that asks "Which of the following best describes the client-server model?" gives as its answer "A, B, C: Don't get too bogged down in determining if one system is a "server" or a "workstation," but then goes on to explain that the most complete answer is C.
3. Inconsistencies: The answer to the question "Which script is used by the system to re-add a swap file into swap space each time the system boots?" is B, /sbin/swapadd, but the explanation below the question says that the answer is C. The result is a correct answer may be counted as a wrong answer.
4. Throw-away answers in the multiple choice questions: In a question about the advantages of a virtual disk management system like DiskSuite, the first choice is "Free cappuccino from Starbucks with every purchase of a virtual disk management application." In another, a possible choice is "Solstice Too Sweet." Choices like these reflect poorly indeed on the writers, editors, and publisher.
5. Factual errors: The supposed correct answer to the question "Which of the following best describes the term network booting?" is "Using a remote server from a console or dumb terminal." Not true, since not all uses of a remote server from either of these devices are instances of network booting, and a far more precise answer could easily have been stated.
6. Poorly worded questions: The possible answers to "Which of the following lines is the correct definition of loghost?" are "loghost," "@loghost," "loghost@domainname," and ".loghost". The problem is that none of these are "definitions" of loghost. The question seems to be asking "In /etc/syslog.conf, what is the correct way of indicating that a particular type of syslog message should be sent to the loghost?", but readers have to figure that out for themselves.
7. Overreaching claims, as in this from the blurb on amazon.com: "the book contains hundreds of practice exam questions and hands-on exercises." I expected to see plenty of new questions each time I took the practice exams, but the same questions come up over and over. The exercises are perfunctory and do little to test the reader's knowledge of the subject matter.
In short, this book is of poor quality, especially given its high price. I would not recommend it except as a supplement to other higher quality books on the Solaris 8 exams.

Network Certification

Solaris 9 Network Administration Exam Cram 2 (Exam Cram CX-310-044)

by John Philcox


*** Solaris(tm) 9 System and Network Administrator All-in-One Exam Guide
by Paul Watters

Price: $48.99

A book of a very prolific "Solaris junk books" writer. Better than nothing...

??? Sun Solaris 8 Certified Network Administration Study Guide

This study guide will help you to prepare for Sun exam 311-043, Solaris 8 Network Administration. Exam topics include LANs, Ethernet interface, ARP & RARP, Internet layer, routing, client-server, DHCP, NTP, IPv6 and troubleshooting.

CramSession Study Guides identify, capture and summarize essential topics IT professionals must know to pass their certification exams. With over 3 million downloaded, CramSession Study Guides are the industry standard in certification study material. PDF Download $9.50

** Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 8 Study Guide

by Peter H. Gregory


Our Price: $27.99

Paperback - 448 pages Study Gd edition (October 12, 2001)
Prentice Hall PTR; ISBN: 0130409332

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 1,282

This is from the same author who published a real junk: Solaris Security . Be careful !


Sun Solaris 8 Certified Network Administration Study Guide

This study guide will help you to prepare for Sun exam 311-043, Solaris 8 Network Administration. Exam topics include LANs, Ethernet interface, ARP & RARP, Internet layer, routing, client-server, DHCP, NTP, IPv6 and troubleshooting.

CramSession Study Guides identify, capture and summarize essential topics IT professionals must know to pass their certification exams. With over 3 million downloaded, CramSession Study Guides are the industry standard in certification study material.

PDF Download $9.50

Solaris 8 Network Administrator Certification Training Guide (310-043)

Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 8 Study Guide by Peter H. Gregory

** Junk. This is from the same author who published a real junk: Solaris Security . Be careful !

Paperback - 448 pages Study Gd edition (October 12, 2001)
Prentice Hall PTR; ISBN: 0130409332

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 1,282

Solaris 8 Network Administrator Certification Training Guide (310-043)

Hack Proofing Sun Solaris 8

by Randy Cook (Editor), et al (Paperback - August 2001)

[Jul 14, 2000] Solaris 8 for Managers and Administrators by Curt Freeland, et al.

**** Prev edition (1997) was really good.

by Curt Freeland, Dwight McKay, Kent Parkinson

Our Price: $49.95

Paperback - 773 pages 3nd edition (July 14, 2000)

Delmar Publishers; ISBN: 0766821374


Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

Number of Reviews: 1
4 of 5 stars Great help to any Admin, August 2, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Minneapolis, MN
This book was a great help to me. I had not used Solaris for around 2 years, and this book helped me to get a feel for where I was, and also helped me land a great job. I recommend that everyone currently in or thinking about entering into Solaris work get this book!

[July 14, 2000] Solaris 8 for Managers and Administrators by Curt Freeland, et al.

**** Old but very good

Paperback (2001).

by Curt Freeland, Dwight McKay, Kent Parkinson

Paperback - 773 pages 3nd edition (July 14, 2000)

Delmar Publishers; ISBN: 0766821374

Prev edition (1997) was really good.


Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

Number of Reviews: 1
4 of 5 stars Great help to any Admin, August 2, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Minneapolis, MN
This book was a great help to me. I had not used Solaris for around 2 years, and this book helped me to get a feel for where I was, and also helped me land a great job. I recommend that everyone currently in or thinking about entering into Solaris work get this book!

Solaris 8 System Administrator's Reference by Janice Winsor.

Should be average or better.

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