Customer Reviews

Solaris 10 The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

The author does not cover the new features of Solaris 10. He mentions zones in passing, never mentions DTrace, and his information on configuring services using inetd.conf is outdated (no mention anywhere of Service Manager and using it to enable/disable services).

This is a Solaris 9 book with a couple of paragraphs added. A complete disappointment.

Solaris 10 represents a significant upgrade over earlier releases of this operating system and yet this book, as mentioned by another reviewer, is basically just a rehash of earlier editions with only a cursory discussion of the new commands and features scattered throughout the text. Even the existing information seems dated. Why mention the "Netscape mail client" from www.netscape.com? Solaris 10 provides Sendmail 8.13, not simply "version 8". How about some discussion of Sun's Patch Manager? I find it odd that "Iomega Zip and Jaz" drives are discussed but there is no mention of USB sticks or other USB devices which work on Solaris. In fact, much of the storage device section is out-of-date (A1000 disk arrays and DAT tape drives). Why are tar/cpio described, but not the more versatile pax command? This "Complete Reference" also doesn't have any mention of the very useful "mount -o public" command.

All in all not a reference I'd want to rely upon although it has some use as a general Solaris guide if you don't have easy access to the Internet.

I fully agree with the other reviews. This book doesn't cover Solaris 10. I also noticed the lack of coverage of SMF along with a lot of other legacy coverage that has changed in Solaris 10. I even tried to email the author about some of my concerns, but the email address given in the book wouldn't accept emails. I then emailed McGraw-Hill and they emailed me back stating that I really needed to send a hand written letter to the author. So, instead, I will write this review warning any potential buyers of this book to go elsewhere. McGraw-Hill and the author should be sued over this book, as it is false advertisement and fails to address Solaris 10, which in my mind shows both the publisher and the author failed to put any effort whatsoever into this book and just wanted to make a quick buck. It is extremely obvious neither has touched Solaris 10!!

This book is by no means "The Complete Reference" for Solaris 10, it is barely a guide to administration. It looks like they threw in a few changes for 10 but didn't even review to find out what went away or changed. The clue was in the very beginning when it still used a 'df -k' instead of the 'df -h' that was part of Solaris 9. Then it reference old hardware. Skipping to the networking, it referenced inetd.conf which is no longer directly used to configure inetd. This book is terrible. I am glad I used a coupon that covered most of the cost of this book. I can not and will not recommend this book to anyone.

While this book was a good review of Solaris, it was NOT specific enough at all with regard to administering Solaris 10. I bought this book because it was the only one available to prepare for a Solaris 10 System Admin (beta exam). I found much more useful information from the SUN website. See for yourself. Use the "search in this book" feature on this webpage. Type in "zoneadm" or "zonecfg". These are two commands used to congfigure zones in Solaris 10. One of the trumpeted new features of this version, yet the book says NOTHING about this. Amazon also messed up my credit order, I was supposed to get $30.00 credit on the order and that never happened.

I read throught this book looking for coverage of the important new feature 'Service Management Facility (SMF)'. This feature is new to Solaris 10 and critical to the intended audience of this book. I found no coverage of this topic and other areas of the book described things that would not work in Solaris 10 because of the new SMF functionality.

I would warn anyone who wants to learn Solaris 10 to avoid this book until it is updated to cover the 'Service Management Facility'.

This book does not cover new Solaris 10 features. It may make a good Solaris 9 reference, but that is what it is -- A Solaris 9 references with a few paragraphs about Solaris 10. It does not even mention most of the new major features, much less tell you how to use them.

A sample of major missing topics:

Dtrace: There is no mention of Dtrace. This is one of the most significant features of Solaris 10. It will completely change the way that you solve problems on the system.

Zones: A major addition for dev/test environments, server consolidation, or simply protecting the base OS from intrusion into the application space. The book only mentions that they exist, but gives no help or guidance for planning or administration.

Service Management Framework (SMF): The way that services are handled has completely changed. Init scripts are nearly all collected into SMF. Inetd is handled within SMF now. This book mentions none of this.

The book doesn't just leave out SMF, the old methods it describes are now INCORRECT practice.

Fault Management Architecture (FMA): Nothing

Basic Audit Reporting Tool (BART): Nothing

This book might be a good overview of basic Solaris features for junior admins, but if you actually want to use the power of Solaris 10, either go to http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/solaris.10 or wait for a real Solaris 10 book. To see what you are missing, browse through the archived pdf presentations on http://mediacast.sun.com/browse

The old Solaris 9 related content may be good, but I'm giving it one star for omission and deception.

If gentle reader is looking for a generalised book on Unix with a slant towards Solaris 10, then this is okay. If however, you are looking for something more specific this would not be a good choice.

It reads as more of an overview with some technical points rather than a complete reference. That is an overview that does not cover any of the new features of Solaris 10 as previously stated by another.

If you're a UNIX newbie interested in learning the basics about Solaris & UNIX in general (not Solaris 10 specifically), then you might learn something from this book. But, there are tens of other books that are more informative and better written than this one.

If you're already familiar with Solaris and want to learn about the new features in Solaris 10, don't expect this book to tell you much about them. This book should have been called something like 'Solaris 8: Third Edition'. This book is obviously a rehashed update of a previous book.

In short, I'd wait for more Solaris 10 books to hit the shelves before breaking-down and buying this book as I did...I should have read the reviews!

Solaris 10 has new features like dtrace,svcadm,zones but none of this is covered in the book?? This looks like a reprint of solaris 8 with some end notes tacked on.

Avoid this book;