Preface

Common Administration Tasks describes some of the administration tasks that are performed on a regular basis, such as halting a system, displaying information about a system, and adding systems to a network.

Who Should Use This Book

This book is written for system administrators who have a working knowledge of the Solaris^(TM) software environment and the SunOS^(TM) system software, and who are familiar with windowing environments and mouse- and menu-driven applications.

Other Books You Need to Use

Several other books help you administer systems:

• For information on adding disks, see Peripherals Administration.
• For information on formatting disks, see Peripherals Administration.
• For information on setting up printers or mail, or administering users and groups, see User Accounts, Printers, and Mail Administration.
• For more information about using Administration Tool, see the Administration Application Reference Manual.

• For information on installing unbundled software packages, see Software and AnswerBook Packages Administration Guide.
• For information about platform-specific administration see the Administration Supplement for Solaris Platforms.

How This Book Is Organized

Common Administration Tasks contains the following chapters:

Chapter 1, "How to Find Information About Solaris Software," describes how to find information on system administration tasks. It also provides a list of books that are in the Solaris 2.4 System Administrator AnswerBook and lists the topics covered in each book.

Chapter 2, "Halting a System," describes init states and how to halt a system with the shutdown and init commands.

Chapter 3, "Boot Files," describes the files used at boot time including, /etc/system, /etc/inittab, and the run control files.

Chapter 4, "Adding Systems to a Network," provides a description of the different types of system configurations, such as servers and diskless clients, and describes how to use Host Manager to provide support for diskless and dataless clients.

Chapter 5, "Examining and Changing System Information," describes how to find information about a system, such as host name or processor type. It also discusses the format of the /etc/system file and how to change the file.

Chapter 6, "Using crontab," describes how to set up a crontab file to execute programs.

Chapter 7, "Accessing Remote Files and Systems," describes how to use rcp, rlogin, rsh, and ftp to access remote files.

Chapter 8, "Enabling and Using Crash Dumps," describes what a crash dump is, how to enable crash dumps, and what to do with the crash dump after you get one.

What Typographic Changes and Symbols Mean

The following table describes the type changes and symbols used in this book.

Table P-1

Typeface or Symbol	Meaning	Example
AaBbCc123	The names of commands, files, and directories; on-screen computer output	Edit your .login file. Use ls -a to list all files. system% You have mail.
AaBbCc123	What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output	system%su Password:
AaBbCc123	Command-line placeholder: replace with a real name or value	To delete a file, type rm filename.
AaBbCc123	Book titles, new words or terms, or words to be emphasized	Read Chapter 6 in User's Guide. These are called class options. You must be root to do this.
Code samples are included in boxes and may display the following:
%	C shell prompt	system%
#	Superuser prompt, C shell	system#
$	Bourne and Korn shell prompt	$
#	Superuser prompt, Bourne and Korn shells	#