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Rating: 
Summary: Look elsewhere....
Review: I'm not sure who this book is targeting. This criticism applies to not just to this book but many OS-specific system administration books. I don't believe this book should waste the reader's time with tutorial instructions to shell programming and explaining the use of basic unix commands for which the man pages are more than sufficient.If you are new to system administration in general I recommend that you pick of a copy of Frisch's Essential System Administration. This is the best introduction to unix system administration. If you are experienced with unix adminstration and wish to learn more about administering Solaris, read the online Solaris adminstration collection publish by Sun: the documentation there is better than you'll find in any Solaris administration book.
Rating:
Summary: Look elsewhere....
Review: I'm not sure who this book is targeting. This criticism applies to not just to this book but many OS-specific system administration books. I don't believe this book should waste the reader's time with tutorial instructions to shell programming and explaining the use of basic unix commands for which the man pages are more than sufficient. If you are new to system administration in general I recommend that you pick of a copy of Frisch's Essential System Administration. This is the best introduction to unix system administration. If you are experienced with unix adminstration and wish to learn more about administering Solaris, read the online Solaris adminstration collection publish by Sun: the documentation there is better than you'll find in any Solaris administration book.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible. There are much better Solaris books out there.
Review: I've been a UNIX admin for over seven years and I've even taught Solaris to the IT staff of major U.S. corporations. If I designed my training manuals the way that this book was written and with its contents, I'd be a laughing stock. This book says clearly in its Preface that it is "for beginning system administrators, system administrators new to the Solaris Operating Environment, or any user who wants a task-oriented quick-reference guide to basic administrative commands." That's utter rubbish. This book is so unbelievably difficult to follow and discusses topics that NO new user should ever know at their level that I was insulted that this book is trying to be passed off as a guide for Solaris newbies. You would think that a book that is dedicated to newbies would attempt to build a strong foundation by explaining principles and fundamentals that are necessary to Solaris -- things like understanding the file systems and how to navigate, execute programs, display file contents, list contents of directories, and so forth. Instead, the first ten pages deal with sending broadcast messages to users and creating a message of the day. I particularly enjoy the instruction on page 8 that says to create a text file; however, the command to create text files (the vi command) isn't even covered until page 92! Continue on and the book discusses the various run levels and system files that I as a very experienced system administrator have NEVER needed to modify. The user can't even list a directories contents or display a file at this point, yet they're being taught startup scripts, run levels, crash dumps, and hardware commands that are not even a part of Solaris! Basic Solaris commands aren't even covered until around page 60! Do you want to learn how to install Solaris from CD? Don't look here. But the book DOES explain how to make disk images and how to upgrade the operating system without having to shut the system down. Forget that such information is practically useless if you don't even know how to build an operating system from scratch. The book also assumes that all new users will have access to a graphical environment. As such, administrative tasks are explained graphically. In the real world, most Sun systems are managed remotely through a TELNET or SSH session and NOT with a monitor attached to the system. Some Sun systems are even INCAPABLE of having a video card, and not everyone knows what an X server is. (A utility to display images from the Sun system on a PC or another Sun system.) I made sure to read this book from the premise that I am new user since the preface clearly states that this book can be used by those who are new to Solaris. I could not help but become infuriated with the layout and content of this book, and that was within the first 30 pages. Some of the topics that were covered didn't belong anywhere near the beginning of this book as they had absolutely nothing to do with building a proper foundation for new Solaris users, yet the most common and basic commands that a new user would need don't even show up until page 67. That being said, when the book finally gets to being consistent with basic Solaris commands, they're normally done rather well with lots of examples and various command-line arguments that admins will use. I can't complain too much about that; however, there is absolutely NO excuse for teaching a Solaris newbie how to reboot a system, perform crash dumps, understand startup scripts, and send messages to users before even explaining how to change to another directory!! Shame on you, Ms. Winsor! Shame indeed! If you want a reference manual, I cannot recommend strongly enough O'Reilly's UNIX In A Nutshell, and if you're new to Solaris I recommend Teach Yourself UNIX in 24 Hours from Sams Publishing. I hope that this fourth edition is that last edition.
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