Customer Reviews

Solaris 8 Advanced System Administrator's Guide (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I can't see how a book like this gets published, but there is no other Solaris book so many people are stuck with it. Examples are lame and only touches the surface. Sun Educational Services has excellent books that you get with the course (about $1500/5 days) that's better. Why don't they publish that instead?

I could entertain the notion that the author really doesn't know much about the subject at hand. The omissions and lack of detail are stunning. Imagine the author dumping the man pages and other Solaris documentation into wordprocessor files and arranging them into imagined "Administrator Guides" and you have an idea of what might have happened.

I bought both Solaris books because I couldn't find anything else on Solaris. To my disappointment, I found countless typos and no in-depth info whatsoever. Sometimes I wonder if the author knows the subject herself... Now, if you're looking for a great book on system administration, check out UNIX Sys Admin handbook by Evi Nemeth and friends... It's slightly overpriced, but worth the money! I hope J. Winsor continues to improve on both Solaris guides, because both of them definitely need to be beefed up. I was hoping Sun would read the books before putting their logo on them.

I have both of Winsor's Admin guides. The first was suitable for junior admins but close to useless to anyone who new Unix Administration on System V R4 variants and a little about Solaris 2.x. But this book I bought in hopes that when I had problems getting specifics from Sun's spartan man pages I could get a more in depth answer in it. No such luck. VIRTUALLY every time I turned to it the information I already knew was there and the information I needed was stated to be beyond the scope of this book or just not there. If this is Sun's idea of advanced system administration then what was it I was looking for? I would not recomend it to anyone. Shell scripting in an advanced Admin book? Try Advanced user book. I teach Unix and Unix System Administration and the users I turn out must know more than what Winsor expects Administrators to know.

I've used a variety of unixes for over 10 years, but I hadn't used a sun since the pre-solaris days. After our company got a couple of ultrasparcs, I tried to use the two Janice Winsor books as references for setting them up, but I found them completely useless. The very first task I needed to do was set up the network interfaces, but, nearly impossible to believe, I could find nothing on the subject in the two books. Then, I needed to set up the suns to resolve addresses through our DNS ibstead of the default NIS. Again, there was no help I could find in the books. A number of other times I went looking for information in the books, I was unable to solve my problems. I ended up using Sun's online docs, which are much more comprehensive and told me exactly what I needed.

This is in response to the general, "This is all there is" feeling from most of the other comments. For those who are disappointed with this book and looking for another, check out Sobell's A Practical Guide to SOLARIS. It's comprehensive and very well written. I hope this helps people find a better resource for their Solaris needs. (No, I'm not the author or affiliated in any way. I just bought it and am very happy with it.)

The Administrator's guide is OK. But this one, the Advanced System Administrator's Guide is terrible. I finished the shell script part and the the first two parts. I find out the authors did not explain things clearly. I got confused from time to time. The written style is so boring that one will lost interests easily. Sometimes I had to force myself to read further chapters. I am not sure the author know the subject very well herself. It is totally a waste of money and time for me. I would give a 0 star is there is such option.

This book is a must have for Mid-level SunOS and Solaris administrators. Most of the commands work the same on opensolaris and SunOS x86.

Only reason I didn't give this book a 1 is because I'm too kind-hearted. The first edition of this book reeks just as bad as this one does. One can get a better read and more information from the man (Manual) pages. All in all, a total waste of money. I'd rather buy a barrel of manure! In a word: ugh!

This is a very good book. Printing section is excellent