A Practical Guide To Solaris

Written by best-selling author Mark G. Sobell, A Practical Guide to Solarisenables both novice and experienced users to quickly learn Sun Microsystems' popular Solaris operating system. Designed to maximize accessibility, the book is divided into three parts. Part I is a tutorial that brings novice users--those with no UNIX/Solaris background, or no programming experience at all--quickly up to speed. Part II is geared toward intermediate and advanced users. Part III is a comprehensive reference guide covering more than ninety Solaris utilities with a clarity of explanation and range of examples not available from any other source.

A Practical Guide to Solaris provides invaluable information on the following:

• Solaris 7 (a.k.a. Solaris 2.7), as well as Solaris 2.6 and earlier versions for Intel and SPARC hardware. For beginning and experienced end users and C and shell programmers using either a command line or GUI interface.
• Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). Learning and using the X Window System and the CDE and OpenLook desktop managers. Offers extensive discussions of CDE and X customization.
• Networking, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. Explains what a network is, how it works, and how you can use it. Discusses types of networks, network implementations, distributed computing, how to use the network for communicating with other users, and using various networking utilities (such as rcp, telnet, ftp, nslookup, and more).
• Shells. Describes how to use the Bourne (sh), C (csh), and Korn (ksh) Shells as interactive command interpreters and as programming languages so you can write shell scripts. Extensive coverage of builtin commands, shell variables, options, customization, functions, and programming techniques.
• System Administration. Covers system operation from SPARC PROM mode/booting an Intel x86 through multiuser mode; types of files, including
• symbolic links and special files; adding and removing users, printers, devices and drivers; installing software, sharing and backing up filesystems, network services, system reports (sar, iostat, and more) and admintool; installing patches and system software; and problem solving.
• Programming Tools and Concepts. Covers both the Solaris (cc) and GNU (gcc) C compilers, debugging (lint and gcc warnings), shared libraries, make, SCCS, and more.

• Examples. Both interactive and shell script examples are used throughout Parts I and II to provide added insight into Solaris features. Part III includes examples of more than ninety Solaris utilities.
• Tutorials. Step-by-step tutorials cover the vi, dtpad (CDE), and textedit (OpenLook) text editors; the dtmail (CDE), mailtool (OpenLook), and pine mail programs; the pine and Netscape newsreaders; the Netscape browser; and how to use a search engine. All tutorials are illustrated with real-world examples so you can practice as you read.
• Appendixes and Glossary. These cover regular expressions, POSIX standards, and security. The Help! appendix provides assistance on using your hardware and for locating, downloading, and installing Sun, public, and GNU software (including gzip and gcc).
• A Web site (www.sobell.com). Maintained by the author, this site provides help in locating Solaris documentation, software, patches, and free items, as well as corrections to, and downloadable examples from, this book.