About This Book

System Administration Guide, Volume 2 is part of a three-volume set that covers a significant part of the Solaris^TM system administration information. It includes information for both SPARC^TM based and IA based systems.

This book assumes that you have already installed the SunOS^TM 5.8 operating system, and you have set up any networking software that you plan to use. The SunOS 5.8 operating system is part of the Solaris 8 product family, which also includes many features, including the Solaris Common Desktop Environment (CDE). The SunOS 5.8 operating system is compliant with AT&T's System V, Release 4 operating system.

For the Solaris 8 release, new features interesting to system administrators are covered in sections called What's New in ... ? in the appropriate chapters.

Note -

The Solaris operating environment runs on two types of hardware, or platforms--SPARC and IA. The Solaris operating environment runs on both 64-bit and 32-bit address spaces. The information in this document pertains to both platforms and address spaces unless called out in a special chapter, section, note, bullet, figure, table, example, or code example.

Who Should Use This Book

This book is intended for anyone responsible for administering one or more systems running the Solaris 8 release. To use this book, you should have 1-2 years of UNIX® system administration experience. Attending UNIX system administration training courses might be helpful.

How the System Administration Volumes Are Organized

Here is a list of the topics covered by the three volumes of the System Administration Guides.

System Administration Guide, Volume 1

System Administration Guide, Volume 2

System Administration Guide, Volume 3

Ordering Sun Documents

Fatbrain.com, an Internet professional bookstore, stocks select product documentation from Sun Microsystems, Inc.

For a list of documents and how to order them, visit the Sun Documentation Center on Fatbrain.com at http://www1.fatbrain.com/documentation/sun.

Accessing Sun Documentation Online

The docs.sun.com^SM Web site enables you to access Sun technical documentation online. You can browse the docs.sun.com archive or search for a specific book title or subject. The URL is http://docs.sun.com.

What Typographic Conventions Mean

The following table describes the typographic conventions used in this book.

Table P-1 Typographic Conventions


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. `machine_name% you have mail.`
`AaBbCc123`	What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output	`machine_name%` `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. Do not save changes yet.

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default system prompt and superuser prompt for the C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell.

Table P-2 Shell Prompts


Shell	Prompt
C shell prompt	`machine_name%`
C shell superuser prompt	`machine_name#`
Bourne shell and Korn shell prompt	`$`
Bourne shell and Korn shell superuser prompt	`#`

General Conventions

Be aware of the following conventions used in this book.

When following steps or using examples, be sure to type double-quotes ("), left single-quotes (`), and right single-quotes (') exactly as shown.
The key referred to as Return is labeled Enter on some keyboards.
It is assumed that the root path includes the /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/bin, and /etc directories, so the steps in this book show the commands in these directories without absolute path names. Steps that use commands in other, less common, directories show the absolute path in the example.
The examples in this book are for a basic SunOS 5.8 software installation without the Binary Compatibility Package installed and without /usr/ucb in the path.

Caution -
If /usr/ucb is included in a search path, it should always be at the end of the search path. Commands like ps or df are duplicated in /usr/ucb with different formats and options from the SunOS 5.8 commands.