Solaris Internals: Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris Kernel Architecture (2nd Edition) [Hardcover]

Richard McDougall (Author), Jim Mauro (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131482092 | ISBN-13: 978-0131482098 | Publication Date: July 20, 2006 | Edition: 2

"The Solaris™Internals volumes are simply the best and most comprehensive treatment of the Solaris (and OpenSolaris) Operating Environment. Any person using Solaris--in any capacity--would be remiss not to include these two new volumes in their personal library. With advanced observability tools in Solaris (likeDTrace), you will more often find yourself in what was previously unchartable territory. Solaris™ Internals, Second Edition, provides us a fantastic means to be able to quickly understand these systems and further explore the Solaris architecture--especially when coupled with OpenSolaris source availability."

--Jarod Jenson, chief systems architect, Aeysis

"The Solaris™ Internals volumes by Jim Mauro and Richard McDougall must be on your bookshelf if you are interested in in-depth knowledge of Solaris operating system internals and architecture. As a senior Unix engineer for many years, I found the first edition of Solaris™ Internals the only fully comprehensive source for kernel developers, systems programmers, and systems administrators. The new second edition, with the companion performance and debugging book, is an indispensable reference set, containing many useful and practical explanations of Solaris and its underlying subsystems, including tools and methods for observing and analyzing any system running Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris."

--Marc Strahl, senior UNIX engineer

Solaris™ Internals, Second Edition, describes the algorithms and data structures of all the major subsystems in the Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris kernels. The text has been extensively revised since the first edition, with more than 600 pages of new material. Integrated Solaris tools and utilities, including DTrace, MDB, kstat, and the process tools, are used throughout to illustrate how the reader can observe the Solaris kernel in action. The companion volume, Solaris™ Performance and Tools, extends the examples contained here, and expands the scope to performance and behavior analysis. Coverage includes:

• Virtual and physical memory
• Processes, threads, and scheduling
• File system framework and UFS implementation
• Networking: TCP/IP implementation
• Resource management facilities and zones

The Solaris™ Internals volumes make a superb reference for anyone using Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In total, the two books Solaris Performance and Tools & Solaris Internals reviewed here present a new level of knowledge about the internals of Solaris, what they do, how they behave, and how to analyze that behavior. The books are a must for developers, system programmers, and systems administrators who work with Solaris 8, 9, or 10. They are especially useful for users of Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris because of their exploration of the new tools in those releases. These books receive my highest recommendation. "–Peter Baer Galvin, Contributing Editor, Sys Admin Magazine

About the Author

Richard McDougall is a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, specializing in operating systems technology and systems performance.

Jim Mauro is a Senior Staff Engineer in the Performance, Architecture, and Applications Engineering group at Sun Microsystems, where his most recent efforts have focused on Solaris performance on Opteron platforms.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1072 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (July 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131482092
• ISBN-13: 978-0131482098
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,083 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Solaris

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best source for learning about Solaris internals, July 29, 2006

By 

calvinnme - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Solaris Internals: Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris Kernel Architecture (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

This book is actually just one of a two volume set - "Solaris Internals" for developers, and "Solaris Performance and Tools" for system administrators. I will speak of the second edition of "Solaris Internals", since I am not a system administrator by trade. "Solaris Internals" is the badly needed update for the only book that I know of that contains information on how Solaris implements functions behind the application programming interfaces. This information will be most helpful to application developers, device driver and kernel module developers, and advanced system administrators that are responsible for performance tuning and capacity planning. The book reads like a combination computer architecture and operating systems manual, and though it can be a bit dry at times, it was meant to be a reference book that professionals can go to for the details. In that sense, the first edition never failed me. In fact, if you are not familiar with the concepts of computer architecture and operating systems theory in general, this book will probably be over your head. From perusing the second edition, the format seems to be very much the same in the second edition, just with expanded material reflecting the additional features of Solaris 10. Also, if you are into Solaris systems programming as I am, another essential volume is "Solaris Systems Programming". That book is also very dry reading, but it has what you need to know in order to write code with system calls to the Solaris operating system. I show the table of contents below:

Part One: Introduction to Solaris Internals
Chapter 1 -- Introduction

Part Two: The Process Model
Chapter 2 -- The Solaris Process Model
Chapter 3 -- Scheduling Classes and the Dispatcher
Chapter 4 -- Interprocess Communication
Chapter 5 -- Process Rights Management

Part Three: Resource Management
Chapter 6 -- Zones
Chapter 7 -- Projects, Tasks, and Resource Controls

Part Four: Memory
Chapter 8 -- Introduction to Solaris Memory
Chapter 9 -- Virtual Memory
Chapter 10 -- Physical Memory
Chapter 11 -- Kernel Memory
Chapter 12 -- Hardware Address Translation
Chapter 13 -- Working with Multiple Page Sizes in Solaris

Part Five: File Systems
Chapter 14 -- File System Framework
Chapter 15 -- The UFS File System

Part Six: Platform Specifics
Chapter 16 -- Support for NUMA and CMT Hardware
Chapter 17 -- Locking and Synchronization

Part Seven: Networking
Chapter 18 -- The Solaris Network Stack

Part Eight: Kernel Services
Chapter 19 -- Clocks and Timers
Chapter 20 -- Task Queues
Chapter 21 -- kmdb Implementation

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is THE BOOK for Solaris internals, January 11, 2007

By 

Wesley Busdiecker (Woodville, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Solaris Internals: Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris Kernel Architecture (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

Well written and detailed. If you wish or need to know about the internals of Solaris this book is the source. This is a second edition and covers 10 and updates information on 8 and 9. The first edition covered 2.5.1, 2.6, and 7. I liked the first edition and waited for this edition based on the books/authors web site and have not be disappointed. Highly recommended, a reasonable background in OS theory is helpful with the type of material covered here - but not required - it will aid in understanding however. Recommended more general OS books would include "Operating System Concepts" by A. Silberschutz, J. Peterson, P. Galvin, "Operating Sytstems" by A. Tanenbaum, A. Woodhull, and "Unix Internals" by Uresh Vahalia among others.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars UNIX engineers rejoice!, September 11, 2006

By 

Greg Price - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Solaris Internals: Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris Kernel Architecture (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

Do you want to know how the Solaris kernel works? This is the book for you!

If you've read any of the other titles by these authors you'll know how clear and succinctly written this book is. The book is not your normal 2nd edition "nip and tuck", it's a rewrite!

One of the things I really like about this book is that it describes the internal theory and implementation of many kernel subsystems, but is not a code walk through or reiteration of other books / manuals.

The book covers many of the new and recent features of Solaris, so it's also valuable for long time Solaris engineers that need to keep updated. People that are new to UNIX internals will also like this book as it starts with the assumption of some UNIX principles (but not too much), and takes you a *lot* further.

There are pointers to other material for the truely adventurous, and small examples with sample output that keep the subject material relevent and enable to reader to make the connection between the theory and their system.

Very highly recommended!