Solaris Systems Programming: 0785342750393: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Solaris Systems Programming

Rich Teer

The first definitive guide to programming in the Solaris Operating Environment

In the tradition of W. Richard Stevens' Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, this book offers comprehensive, practical guidance for systems programmers. It covers all versions of the Solaris OS, from 2.5 through 9 and is relevant to both SPARC™ and x86 platforms. From I/O to IPC, pseudo terminals to localization, and processes to doors, Rich Teer illuminates the unique features and subtleties of this environment as never before.

As a former Sun Microsystems, Inc. consultant, long-time C programmer, and tech reviewer for Stevens' UNIX Network Programming, Teer is singularly well qualified to write this book. Using real-world case studies, code examples, and diagrams, he explains both the "how" and "why" of Solaris systems programming—helping any C programmer write efficient, reliable code. Coverage includes:

Terminology and features used in Solaris systems programming
Fundamentals: utility functions, file I/O, standard I/O library, date/time operations, users/groups, system information, resource limits, and secure C programming
I/O in depth: files, directories, file systems, terminal I/O, and advanced I/O
Processes and process control: UNIX process environments, relationships, signals, and daemon processes
Interprocess communications: Pipes, FIFOs, System V IPC facilities, doors, and more
Appendices on internationalization, localization, and BSD source compatibility
Portability guidance: flags all features that are specific to Solaris®

$59.99 U.S./$86.99 Canada
PRENTICE HALL PTR
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
www.phptr.com

About the Author

About the Author

RICH TEER is a UNIX consultant based in Kelowna, BC, Canada. A long-time respected member of the UNIX community, Rich is an acknowledged Solaris system administration and programming expert, holding SCSA, SCNA, and SCSA certifications. He has fourteen years' C programming experience, and more than nine years' experience working with Sun systems, including two years as a technical support consultant for Sun Microsystems, Inc. He was a technical reviewer for W. Richard Stevens' highly acclaimed UNIX Network Programming, 2nd Edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 1248 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (August 29, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0201750392
ISBN-13: 978-0201750393
Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 2.1 x 9.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,699,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #59 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Solaris

Would you like to update product info, give feedback on images, or tell us about a lower price?

Customer Reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars

5 star		10
4 star		0
3 star		0
2 star		2
1 star		3

See all 15 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 45 people found the following review helpful

Plagiarism is bad

By ERP DBA on May 29, 2005

Format: Hardcover

I would recommend Thomas E. Dickey's web page to anybody with open mind to decide on this issue.

[...]

I would certainly not pass my English Composition classes if I would be paraphrasing that much from somebody's work without proper references.

2 Comments Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

31 of 43 people found the following review helpful

Cannot recommend this book.

By Thomas E. Dickey on March 15, 2005

Format: Hardcover

At first sight, the book appeared to be typical/average.

However, when checking for specific details to post an

opinion of the book I noticed something strange -

paraphrasing of material from Stevens' "Advanced Programming

in the Unix Environment". Teer does not credit the material

which is borrowed. Read more details here -

[...]

2 Comments Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

29 of 41 people found the following review helpful

Not a substitute for Stevens' APUE

By Gunnar Ritter on October 14, 2004

Format: Hardcover

Despite the claim on the back cover, the book is far away from the tradition of Richard Stevens' "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment". In contrast to APUE, which truly enlightens the reader with all sorts of historical, portability, and background information, Teer's book is not much more than a Solaris API description.

Many of the examples in it will not work unmodified on Linux, BSD, or other platforms. It will thus not be of much help to a novice Unix programmer unless he actually wants to write Solaris-only programs - not a common scenario in the Unix/POSIX world. But a more experienced programmer can just use the Solaris manual pages to get most of the information contained in the book.

Also the book contains one of the most stupid code examples I have ever seen: an snprintf() emulation that works by calling vsprintf() first, then checking its return value to see if the buffer size was large enough, possibly exiting with an error message:

int snprintf (char *buf, size_t n, const char *fmt, ...) { [...]

len = vsprintf (buf, fmt, ap); [...]

if (len >= n)

err_quit ("snprintf: \"%s\" caused a buffer overflow", fmt);

But when such an overflow is actually exploited on the stack by an attacker, vsprintf() may not return at all, rendering the check useless. The code thus gives a false impression of security. This might be regarded even more dangerous than code that does not perform overflow checks at all, especially in the context of a book.

I have to admit that I did not look at too many examples, but I would recommend to be cautious with the book until somebody has verified that this is the only fundamental security error in its code.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

16 of 24 people found the following review helpful

Excellent

By Randy Given on September 22, 2004

Format: Hardcover

This is an excellent book for writing in C on the Solaris UNIX platform. If you are familiar with "UNIX Network Programming" (Stevens, Fenner, and Rudoff) and "Advance Programming in the UNIX Environment" (Stevens), then you will be comfortable with this volume. All of them contain excellent documentation and good examples, as well as a nice clean format. Although catering to Solaris, much of it is applicable to other UNIX environments as well. If you use Solaris, you will want this book.

The text is clear and easy to read, making things easy to find and use, thereby making you more productive. There are 1200+ pages, but you wouldn't think so. The paper is thin, but durable (a sign of quality publishing) and fits in with other professional publications.

This book really has a ton of stuff in it. From specific 64-bit programming topics to library function documentation to secure programming. The sections on I/O are extensive and detailed -- there could be more information on network programming (the author also refers the reader to the same "UNIX Network Programming" that I mentioned, so that is a good sign). However interprocess communications is covered very well (e.g., pipes, FIFOs, message queues, semaphores, and shared memory).

The appendices have some useful information. In addition to a function summary, the section on internationalization is good and surprisingly forward-looking. The exercises make it useful as a classroom text / reference as well.

This book already can replace several books on my shelf. Just an amazing book for your reference.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

21 of 32 people found the following review helpful

Do yourself a favour and get APUE2

By Victor Tavares on January 11, 2006

Format: Hardcover

I was very disappointed that a book that claims to be "in the tradition of W. Richard Stevens" adds little to no value beyond what the original APUE (and now APUE2!) has taught generations of Unix programmers for many years. I already had a beat up copy of APUE on my shelf for years and recently purchased APUE2 (the *real* second edition of APUE). Considering SSP is very, very, very similar to APUE, I don't see the value of buying another book that doesn't add a lot of value beyond what I could figure out on my own by using APUE and Solaris manuals.

If Rich Teer was sincere in his claims of admiration for Stevens, he would have properly credited him for the majority of the "borrowed" content - not doing so is not only questionable ethics for an author but truly disrespectful to a legend that is no longer here to defend himself.

If you really want to do Solaris system programming, do yourself a favour - get a copy of APUE2 (ISBN: 0201433079), read the Solaris man pages and go hang out on developers.sun.com

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful

Very Good Book for Crusty Sysadmins

By Johnny M. on October 11, 2004

Format: Hardcover

This book has been very helpful to me and will enhance my understanding of Unix and more specifically, Solaris.

Before this book, I held the book, "Unix Internals: A Systems Operations Handbook" by Shaw and Shaw as the bible of figuring out the innards of Unix. Rich Teer's new book, "Solaris Systems Programming," has taken that title and will now be my favorite Unix internals book.

The book is well-written, thorough and has many examples. I wish Teer would have put in more details on threads programming, but I guess you can only go so far.

I have recommended this book to almost all of my colleagues and will recommend it to anybody with any kind of programming background as a good reference for not only learning Unix systems programming, but learning Unix and how it works from a more detailed stand-point than the "Intro" books.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Solaris Systems Programming Hardcover – August 29, 2004

Turn on 1-Click ordering

Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Product Details

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Most Recent Customer Reviews