Customer Reviews

A Practical Guide to Solaris

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sobell has provided an invaluable Guide to Solaris.

It is well written, clearly organized and as its title suggests has a wealth of practical information.

For the newbie it covers things like logging in and out, changing your password, and commands like lst, rm, and and more.

It covers the Solaris (and UNIX) utilities: things like cp, sort, diff, compress, tar.

It discusses the Solaris Filesystem, mkdir and cd, etc.,

It tells how to use the shell and do shell programming.

It has information on using and configuring X Windows and CDE. I don't do this often and I find these sections indispensible.

It has tutorial information on networking commands such as ping, finger, automount.

It covers mail programs like pine, and editors including vi and emacs.

It covers three shells, Bourne, C shell, and Korn shell.

It has an invaluable chapter on programming tools: the C compiler and dbx as well as information about the arcane subject of building shared libraries.

It has information on system administration, disk capacity planning/partitioning, scheduling tasks, administering network services, and many other administrative tasks.

It has Appendices on Regular expressions, Help, Security, and the Posix Standards.

It is a comprehensive book, useful for both tutorial and reference.

This is a thick book (1.5 inches), and it covers a lot of ground, starting with very basic Unix commands (not Solaris specific) and progressing through shell programming and onto Solaris specific system administrative tasks. For example, I liked the section describing the 'mystery files' needed to configure Solaris networking. It is hard to find this information in one place.

Another example would be the description of /home and how the automounter manages it. This topic generates frequent questions on the Solaris newsgroups.

As you work your way into the book, Sobell explains things like the Solaris performance tools sar, mpstat, etc. as well as the boot process on both Sparc and Intel based systems.

The second half of the book is versions of the most common manual pages but Sobell includes *examples*.

All in all, this book is good for the beginner, and the advanced user will find it a useful reference, especially in the later chapters.

I've been a UNIX programmer and a sys-admin for many years now, so it is not often that I find a book covering such a wide range of issues and concepts very helpful. A Practical Guide to Solaris is, however, a notable exception. The language is clear, and the narration is straight and to the point. I keep one copy for myself ready at hand, and I have given a copy to each of my assistants and apprentices.

I have read a few books on Linux and this is my first book on Unix and Solaris, so I am really new to the Linux/UNIX/Solaris world.

This book is by far the best book in the category for Unix/Solaris beginners and even if you are using Linux, I would recommend using this book to learn the UNIX commands.

I can't say anything bad about the book. It is clear, concise, easy to read, easy to understand, and after reading this book, I feel I know UNIX very well.

I would buy any book from this author, and I highly recommend this book.

Real easy reading(12th grade max mostly 10th and below) for the beginner. Covers everything from how to use Netscape browser (duh...) to some fairly simple Korne, Bourne and C shell scripting guidance. I find it a little verbose (but then again I like decoding the man pages). Here's a sampling of the table of contents (something I wish Amazon would do...)

Chpt1 - Overview of Solaris; Chpt2 - Getting Started, Before you start Logging in ....Basic Utilities like ls cat pg rm ect; Chpt3 - Solaris Utilities;Part II Intermediate /Advanced Solaris;Chpt6 - What Is a GUI? (no I'm not joking apparently Sobell thinks this is int./adv. stuff).Using a GUI...and so on, I think you get the idea.

Do NOT consider this a user's guide. If you have more than a few weeks experience with any flavour of Unix then you are probably better off with a more sophisticated book (sorry no refs - I'm still looking myself) I would recommend this book for any high school computer course.

There you have it - good luck!

I was very disappointed with how simple and basic this book is. I am even more disappointed with all the high marks the other reviewers gave this book. It briefly describes many aspects and Unix services, but does little to teach the user on how to configure any of them. I would only recommend this book to those users who are very new to IP Networking and Operating Systems in general. Even if you are new to Unix/Linux, this book does not do much to advance your skills. I am by no means an Unix expert. I am pretty advanced with Windows NT Administration (2 Years), but have only been using Redhat Linux for the passed six months. This book does not offer me anything that I can't figure out on my own about the Solaris Enviornment, and definately nothing to offer about the Unix enviornment in general. You may want to buy another Solaris/Unix book.

I bought this book for work when I needed to know alot about Solaris in a hurry. It quickly got me up to speed and has since carried me through two undergraduate Unix programming courses. The text is written in plain language, and is supported by excellent examples. When I didn't know how to read the man pages, Mark Sobell's book came through for me. If I could only have one book on Unix, this would be the one.

I knew next to nothing about Solaris about 3 months ago. This book took me from that point to my current state which is preparing to become a Certified Solaris Administrator. You will find this book useful whether you are new to UNIX or are a knowlegeable Sys Admin who needs a reliable referrence.

This well-written book was instrumental in helping me become familiar with Solaris, and Unix in general. It is a nice blend of information organized nicely so that you aren't overwhelmed by reading it.

The majority of this book deals with topics that are applicable to many different flavors of Unix. In fact, I ran the majority of the examples using a Debian/x86 Linux distribution. This book talks about not just what a tool does, but how it performs different in other shells, etc.

This author is written by someone who is both a Solaris wizard and an excellent author. Much of the book can be read without being in front of a terminal at all, which I consider the mark of a very good book. When you are in front of a terminal and are stuck, the vast reference included in the back of the book comes to the rescue.

This book serves not just as a good introduction to Solaris, but Unix in general. I started this book with NO knowledge of Unix or Linux; and upon completion I have a lot of confidence when I sit down in front of a Unix machine. Whether you want to learn vi/emacs, write a shell script, or find out what the /etc/ directory is for; this is a great book and a great reference. I encourage you to look at the table of contents using the link above left to find out a bit more about the content of the book.

This is an excellent book for UNIX beginners who are entering a Solaris systems administration role. The first part of the book is a refresher for basic UNIX commands, and then it proceeds with an overview of the CDE desktop manager, network utilities, newsreaders, text editors, shell programming, and programming tools.

If you're comfortable with UNIX, you may still find the book useful as a quick reference or for closing knowledge gaps. The systems administration section is straightforward and the commands reference in the back is excellent. The reference, which takes up over 250 pages of the book, appears similar to man page format, but it has a lot more details--including how the output will appear for many commands.

You might also find this book useful as a "quick reference" if you're transitioning to Solaris from some other flavor of UNIX.