Customer Reviews

Sun Certified Solaris 8 System Administrator All-In-One Exam Guide

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I bought this book because I liked the author's beginner's book. Now I'm going to sit for my exam in two weeks, so I'm concerned about the nagtive "anonymous" reviewer from RI. I was worried that maybe Chapter 5 (about packages) contained lots of "unexplained terms". I checked my copy and found tons of "fully explained terms". For example, "pkgchk" is explained as "a command to examine the package properties of a file that's already been installed". That sounds pretty true to me. "pkgino" is used to check all of the packages which have been installed, and so on. I just can't find the unexplained terms, or the "copy/paste job from hell". And how would a Windows 2000 help me pass the Solaris exam anyway Mr. Reviewer from RI???

I am an experienced administrator of UNIX systems and I picked this book up out of interest. It seems to cover most of the material not just for exam but "after exam". Truly, if readers think that reading a book will allow them to pass the exam, they are ignorant. You will need experience not books my friends! This book is a good place to start though.

This book seems to cover all of the material required for the exams (I and II any way). It could be longer - maybe more examples would help. Overall, though, a nicely presented volume with some very helpful exam software.

I am learning Solaris after years in the Windows world and I am also learning that Solaris Certification is a heck of a lot tougher than my MSCE. But breaking into the world is hard - every book I pick up is just visual spaghetti. This book is focused, to the point and is worth it. Maybe some of the reviewers here know more than me, but I am learning a lot from this book.
The thing I really want is to get a UNIX simulator or something to practise on.

I'm a Solaris 7 certified admin, and I'm thinking of taking the new exam soon. I've picked up this book now and it appears to have one chapter for each of the units in the Sun syllabus, rather than just throwing everything together. Lots of good examples too. There's excellent coverage of tough topics like NIS+, and obscure topics like modems (I mean, don't we all use ethernet these days?). The exam CD-ROM was useful. My only concern is that I can't find any coverage of LDAP (is that in the exam?).

Use this book and some of online test sites and feel good to sit exam. The CD-ROM was useful but I wish more questions (only 400 on the CD). 1,000 would be better. Now worry that Solaris 9 certificate will be soon and must sit exam again.

I bought this book 4 weeks ago and I have steadily worked through all the exercises. I have 3 years experience with SunOS. I found that I could easily answer most of the questions which makes me confident that I'll pass the first exam next week. I'd like more practice exams to be included in a future edition - there are only 400 questions on the CD-ROM. Also, I might be blind, but I couldn't see any Microsoft jokes in this book lanman94...

I recently received and started reading this reference book. I have only gotten to page 27 including the quiz and found several errors. On page 18 the author states the Sun E-10K server has 128 processors while on page 3 and elsewhere in the book the correct amount of 64 processors is stated. On page 22 common shells are listed but the Korn shell is not even mentioned while the BASH GNU shell is. The most glaring error so far is the description and example of assigning an IP address to a NIC. On page 25 the author describes the /etc/hostname.hmeN file. He states "...the primary interface of a machine called server would be defined by the file /etc/server.hme0 which might contain the IP address 203.17.64.28." WHAT?? Although the IP address can be the contents of the hostname.interface file it is not the general practice. And where did he come up with the 'server.hme0' configuration? The correct description should be the file /etc/hostname.hme0 would contain the name 'server'. The IP for 'server' would be determined by the naming service being used on the system ( eg. /etc/inet/hosts, NIS, etc.). The Sun documentataion states

"/etc/hostname.interface File

This file defines the network interfaces on the local host for IPv4. At least one /etc/hostname.interface file should exist on
the local machine. The Solaris installation program creates this file for you. In the file name, interface is replaced by the device name of the primary network interface"..."The file contains only one entry: the host name or IPv4 address associated with the network interface. For example, suppose smc0 is the primary network interface for a machine called tenere. Its /etc/hostname.interface file would have the name /etc/hostname.smc0; the file would contain the entry tenere."

The author then goes on to add insult to injury by making the same error in question 8 on page 27. He states the /etc/hostname.hme0 file contains the IP address of interface hme0.

Remember, I am only on page 27. My recommendation is to wait until the author verifies and proofreads his work before investing in this book.

A Slapdash.
It seems like Author doesn't care about reader at all.
Non-systematic, not full, fragmentary.
Questions in a book MUCH simpler then in real exam.
Questions on CD are the same as in a book. "Exam" on disk contains no explanations, no commentaries, even no references to book pages (just "Refer to the book for additional explainations", "No hint available", etc.).
The only "Appendix A" (80 pages out of 570) contains absolutely useless for exam prep staff: executables names, rights mask, file sizes and cheksums.

I wish author would redeem my copy of his book.

Since amazon.com keeps reminding me to rate this (because I bot it), here goes, although I haven't finsihed reading the whole book yet. It does have a lot of extra info (than other cert books), which may be a negative if you just want to pass the exam. It also omits basic practical things that an experienced SysAdmin would include. e.g. after stop-A, type "sync" at the ok prompt, to try to do the important sync of the filesystems (also called "panic zero"). I tried to use the chapter on format/partitioning for a student, but as we tried to read thru about the 3rd paragraph, it was so strangely worded that even I (Sr. SA) couldn't figure out what Paul was alluding to. (I began cursing the book at that point!) Many of the disk examples were done on Intel/X86 IDE disks (not Sparc SCSI).
I place most of the blame on the PUBLISHER: the McGraw-Hill editor or whoever was in charge should be FIRED for total incompentence and lack of any dillience. Yes, I can tell them how to do their job;-) : send review copies to qualified people who will actually read a chapter or two, AND follow up to verify that the reviewer did actually do this. One last thing: the back cover belongs to a DIFFERENT book (the net admin, future book).