Preface
System Administration Guide: Basic Administration is part of a set that includes a significant part of the Solaris™ system administration information. It contains information for both SPARC™ based and IA based systems.
This book assumes that you have already installed the SunOS™ 5.9 operating system, and you have set up all 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 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 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, removable media, managing software (packages and patches), disks and devices, file systems, and backing up and restoring data |
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: 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 release of the Solaris operating environment, the default path is /usr/share/src/freeware-name or /usr/sfw/share/src/freeware-name. If the Solaris operating environment 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.comSM 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.