Customer Reviews

Solaris 8 Essential Reference

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I thought this was a reference book. It's just thirteen short chapters of basic stuff that can be found by typing man intro (or going to docs.sun.com).

Good for absolute beginners only. Just like Sobell.

This book is woeful - 300 pages or so is just a short guide, nothing like a reference book at all. Use the man pages instead. There is very little contribution from the author.

Sometimes I find something useful in this book, but most the time it just sits on my shelf while I look things up online. I bought this because I wanted to make the transition from Linux user to Solaris user. In penguin-speak, this author did a --help on a bunch of commands and put them together in hard copy.

If you think 1.5 pages on syslogd is something useful then buy this book. If you're a newbie then avoid this one completely.

I can not recommend this book.

It is mostly just a re-formatted version of the man pages, which give much more detail infact. There is an enormous number of typos and inaccuracies in the book, so that i wonder if there was done any proof-reading. The command lists are not grouped reasonable and each and every command is treated with the same depth, even if it is of no practical use.

One example: In chapter 10 (Network Administration), part "Anonymous FTP" there is a list which libraries have to be copied over to /export/ftp/usr/lib for a chroot'ed anonymous ftp setup. But as one can see from the ftpd man page, the list from the book is not sufficient to get a working setup. And there is no hint that one has to create the device nodes in /export/ftp/dev/(zero, tcp, udp, ticotsord) with mknod. The ftpd man page even has a shell script for setting up anon ftp, so a reference to the script would be by far better than this inaccurate description.

All in all i am really disappointed with this book. Some of my personal notes/references are more detailed and accurate than this book.

This compact guide contains a wide variety of information. It is to be used as a quick reference to find the options available for various commands. Whether it is for Text Utilities, Shell Scripting, Process Control or Network Clients and Utilities, it has it all.

It contains as well some very useful Developer and Administration and Maintenance Task references. All-in-all, a nice Solaris reference manual to own.

John Mulligan's Solaris 8 Essential Reference provides clear and concise instruction on how to perform important administration and management tasks using the latest edition of Solaris, as well as how to use some of the more powerful commands and more advanced topics found in Solaris version 2.6 through version 8. The scope of Solaris 8 Essential Reference includes the best way to implement the most frequently used commands, deal with shell scripting, administer your own system, and utilize effective security. Very highly recommended instructional reference and a "must" for new Solaris users. 400 pp.