About This Book

System Administration Guide: Basic Administration is part of a set that includes a significant part of the Solaris^TM system administration information. This guide contains information for both SPARC® based and x86 based systems.

This book assumes you have completed the following tasks:

Installed the SunOS 5.9 operating system
Set up all the networking software that you plan to use

The SunOS 5.9 operating system is part of the Solaris product family, which also includes many features, including the Solaris Common Desktop Environment (CDE). The SunOS 5.9 operating system is compliant with AT&T's System V, Release 4 operating system.

For the Solaris 9 release, new features interesting to system administrators are covered in sections called What's New in ... ? in the appropriate chapters.

Note –

The Solaris operating system runs on two types of hardware, or platforms, SPARC and x86. The Solaris operating system 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.

Note –

Sun is not responsible for the availability of third-party Web sites mentioned in this document. Sun does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products, or other materials that are available on or through such sites or resources. Sun will not be responsible or liable for any actual or alleged damage or loss caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods, or services that are available on or through such sites or resources.

Who Should Use This Book

This book is intended for anyone responsible for administering one or more systems running the Solaris 9 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 that are covered by the volumes of the System Administration Guides.

Book Title	Topics
System Administration Guide: Basic Administration	User accounts and groups, server and client support, shutting down and booting a system, and managing software (packages and patches)
System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration	Printing services, terminals and modems, system resources (disk quotas, accounting, and crontabs), system processes, and troubleshooting Solaris software problems
System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems	Removable media, disks and devices, file systems, and backing up and restoring data
System Administration Guide: IP Services	TCP/IP networks, IPv4 and IPv6, DHCP, IP Security, Mobile IP, and IP Network Multipathing
System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP)	DNS, NIS, and LDAP naming and directory services
System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (FNS and NIS+)	FNS and NIS+ naming and directory services
System Administration Guide: Resource Management and Network Services	Resource management, remote file systems, mail, SLP, and PPP
System Administration Guide: Security Services	Auditing, PAM, RBAC, and SEAM

To view license terms, attribution, and copyright statements for open source software included in this Solaris release, the default path is /usr/share/src/freeware-name or /usr/sfw/share/src/freeware-name. If the Solaris operating system has been installed anywhere other than the default location, modify the given path to access the file at the installed location.

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.
The root path usually 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 paths in the examples.
The examples in this book are for a basic SunOS 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 commands.