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Books for Solaris Users
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Books on UNIX - NT Integration
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The following is my selection of the best books I've found on Solaris for each topic. The "Sol" symbol, , next to a book indicates it's especially well-written and highly recommended by me. If you have any suggestions or see a subject missing, please send a message to Dan Anderson.

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Books for Solaris Users

See also the section on CDE and Gnome.

A Practical Guide to Solaris (2003) by David Taylor

This is the best book for people new to Solaris. It covers command line basics, CDE and GNOME X Windows GUIs, Star Office, and some basic GUI-based system administration and security. Each topic is well-explained with clear examples, such as setting up secure shell (ssh). There's several tips and solutions for various problems, such as configuring name services (DNS). This book is not for those already experineced in Solaris (or UNIX or Linux) and is not for in-depth Solaris system administration.

A Practical Guide to Solaris (1999) by Mark Sobell

This book is a gives a good user-level introduction to Solaris. This book is geared for people who want to learn how to use Solaris. It covers a lot of material without getting too heavily until system administration details. Topics covered include Unix commands, CDE and X windows, Internet utilities, editors, shells, programming tools, and basic system administration.

Special Edition Using StarOffice (1999)

This is a comprehensive guide to all the applications in the StarOffice suite, including graphics, word processing, presentations, and spread sheets. If you use StarOffice, get it and save some time. [cover]

Beginning / Intermediate Sys Admin Books

Solaris for Managers and Administrators , 3d ed. (2000) by Freeland, McKay, & Parkinson.

This book is our bestseller. It is an excellent Solaris-specific book on System Administration, it's gives a lot of practical information without being too technical. Detailed explanations on about everything a sys admin needs (well, as reasonably possible :-) Covers users, filesystems, modems, backup, NFS/NIS/DNS networking.

Unix System Administration Handbook, 3d ed. (2000) by Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass, & Hein

This book by far is the best book for Unix system administration in general. I would prefer it over Solaris-specific books just because it is chock-full of real-life sys admin solutions and written by an excellent team of top-notch system administrators.

Solaris 8 Network Administrator Certification (2002) by Rafeeq Rehman

This book has a narrow focus—passing the Network Admin. exam. If that's what you need, I recommend this book. Covered are TCP/IP protocol concepts, client-server ports and sockets, routing, DHCP, SNMP, DNS, and IPv6. The book has lots of examples and output, which are well-explained. At the end of the book are summary and prep tips, a sample exam, and answers.

The following books from Sun cover Solaris for Sparc and x86. I find they cover the subject matter too lightly, so I don't recommend them. Only the uninformed seem to buy them. They seem to be popular though, perhaps because they're published by SunSoft. They are best for beginners, although I recommend Sobell's book for the beginner user or Freeland, McKay & Parkinson's book for the intermediate user (or beginning sysadmin) over these.

Solaris Operating Environment Administrator's Guide, 4rd ed. (2003), by Winsor. Covers filesystems, shutdown, users, commands for Solaris 9.
Solaris 9 Operating Environment System Administrator's Reference, (2002) by Winsor.

Advanced Sys Admin Books

Sun Performance and Tuning: Java and the Internet (1998) by Cockcroft & Pettit, Sun Microsystems

No Intel-specific information, but this is the best Solaris or UNIX book on performance measurement and tuning I've seen. The book is well illustrated and has specific examples on several monitoring utilities. Also covers TCP/IP networking.

Configuration and Capacity Planning for Solaris Servers (1997) by Wong

Excellent book for sizing Solaris Servers. Has detailed examples and tips for NFS, DBMS, & Internet servers, Timeshare systems; chapgers on storage, system architecture, and benchmarks. Book is becomming dated for latest Sun hardware, but concepts still apply. May be a little too technical for beginners.

Solaris Implementation: A Guide for System Administrators (1995) by Becker, Morris, & Slattery

Covers installing, networking, patches. Good, concise book for Solaris systems administration, written by sysadmins at Sun with real-world experience. [cover]

Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Components (2000) by Mauro & McDougall

Detailed, yet very readable book on Solaris. Useful for all who want to understand Solaris better, and who want to exploit its features. Chapters on processes, threads, scheduling, memory management, files, I/O, kernel services, interrupts, scheduling, IPC, and kernel tunables.

Gnome, CDE, and X Windows Books

Sams Teach Yourself GNOME in 24 Hours (2000)

Gnome is Solaris' new, upcoming graphical desktop environment that will CDE and OpenLook. Give yourself a head-start and learn this new powerful, flexible, modern desktop and tools.

Configuring CDE: Common Desktop Environment (1996)

CDE is UNIX's graphical desktop environment, which, though graphical, is not always easy to customize. This book goes into much-needed detail on how to set up CDE to work for you. It goes into more detail than the official CDE User's Guide ("orange" book) or Administrator's Guide ("green" book) books

Books on UNIX - Windows NT Integration

Solaris Guide for Windows NT Administrators (1999) by Tom Bialaski

This book is geared for Windows NT or 2000 Administrators who want to learn Solaris. It shows for various NT tasks, the equivalent steps for Solaris, and tips on integrating file, print, email, and web services.

Windows NT & Unix Integration Guide (1997) by Gunter & Burnett

A good book on meshing Unix and Windows NT--a non-trivial task given Windows' proprietary environment. Focuses on getting communication protocols (SNMP, Samba, e-mail), Database, and applications working in a mixed environment. My only problem with this book is it the authors worked too hard on quantity (bulk) over quality by covering additional topics seemingly to increase the page count, but the gems in the book are still worth it. [cover]

Best Sellers Inside Sun Microsystems

Unique to Sun Microsystems employees Books that are uniquely popular with Sun Microsystems employees. They are not all necessarily technical in nature.
High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems (1999) Interesting story on the founding of Sun, a spinoff of Stanford University Network (SUN), and it's CEO. [cover]

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