Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 8 Study Guide

Author: Peter H. Gregory, Sun Microsystems Inc List Price: $40.00 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0130409332 Publisher: Prentice Hall (12 October, 2001) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 98,165 Average Customer Rating: 3.31 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

"cpio performs three functions; they are:

1. Copy in. cpio creates an archive. ...

2. Copy out. cpio reads from an archive. ..."

As anyone familiar with this venerable Unix command knows, the copy out mode creates a cpio archive: the author has the meanings of copy in and copy out reversed. Later in the discussion he corrects his error, but the net effect is one of confusion to the reader. A second example is one could charitably be ascribed to a typo, except that it is repeated numerous times throughout the discussion: the book notes the role played by the vi configuration command "set showmodes". vi has no such command- the correct option is "showmode". A minor point perhaps, but indicative of the manner in which this book has been proofread and edited.

The discussion of shells is quite cursory- probably acceptable given the book's purpose as a study guide, given that Sun, in its infinite wisdom, considers the vi command to be much more important than an understanding of shells when bestowing the SCSA certification. But author discusses only three shells: the Bourne, Korn, and C-Shell. Solaris 8 also comes with the tcsh and zsh shells, which the book fails to mention. In the book's defense, it may be that these shells are not addressed in the certification objectives.

The author spends a considerable amount of ink- and risks drawing undue reader attention to- information lifted from man pages, particularly the more obscure options used on various commands. Now as one who prefers reading from a book than from a screen, I find it useful to have some of these options documented in printed text. But the author makes unsufficient effort to distinguish important options and those rarely used. Despite what one might hear to the contrary, my certification test, at least, did not cover the rarely used options. Much of this is material that a reader whose goal is to pass the certification test could dispense with, even though it could be useful a reference material.

A final gripe- one that could easily have been corrected- appeared repeatedly thoughout this book. The organization follows a well-trod path of describing a command, then giving examples of the command in action, followed by a discussion of the examples. The examples were generally well-chosen, while the discussion frequently follows the format: "the first example illustrates ... the seconds shows ... the third ...". Except by the times you have several examples, the reader may scratch his head wondering which examples pertains to the part of the discussion he is currently reading, particularly if he is reviewing the material. I suppose it would have been extra work to have made it easy for the reader to readily identify which example corresponded to a particular portion of the discussion.

This reviewer also used the Syngress/Osborne book in his test preparation. It had far fewer of the irritating flaws, with less filler than this book. Moveover, the Syngress book has much more in the way of visual aids that make reading a book easier on the eye, and does a better job of pointing out things that are likely to trip up someone taking the cert test. The Syngress book also covers both SCSA exams, making it a better value in this reviewer's opinion. That said, this book does cover the material needed to pass the first of the Sun SCSA certification tests. If you read and absorb what is in this book, you should have no difficulty passing the exam. But the Syngress book is a better choice.

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