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

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Summary: Awesome book!
Review: Hi, I'm Janice's nephew and she told me to tell you it was really grate and you should buy it!

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Summary: The book needs work
Review: 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.

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Summary: A don't learn Solaris book.
Review: 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?

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Summary: I'd give this zero stars, if I could.
Review: 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.

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Summary: Waste of paper...
Review: 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.

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Summary: Another Solaris Book
Review: 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.

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Summary: Almost useless reference
Review: 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.

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Summary: Spend Your Money Elsewhere
Review: Neither of these system administration books (System Administrator's Guide and Advanced) deal with substantive issues like mirroring, DNS, auditing and file system creation/design. The author writes without enthusiasm and appears to have little first hand knowledge of the subject.

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Summary: The Worst Book on System Administration Ever
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: What a waste of money.
Review: 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.