"The Solaris™Internals volumes are simply the best and most comprehensive treatment of the Solaris (and OpenSolaris) Operating Environment. Any person using Solaris--in any capacity--would be remiss not to include these two new volumes in their personal library. With advanced observability tools in Solaris (likeDTrace), you will more often find yourself in what was previously unchartable territory. Solaris™ Internals, Second Edition, provides us a fantastic means to be able to quickly understand these systems and further explore the Solaris architecture--especially when coupled with OpenSolaris source availability."

--Jarod Jenson, chief systems architect, Aeysis

"The Solaris™ Internals volumes by Jim Mauro and Richard McDougall must be on your bookshelf if you are interested in in-depth knowledge of Solaris operating system internals and architecture. As a senior Unix engineer for many years, I found the first edition of Solaris™ Internals the only fully comprehensive source for kernel developers, systems programmers, and systems administrators. The new second edition, with the companion performance and debugging book, is an indispensable reference set, containing many useful and practical explanations of Solaris and its underlying subsystems, including tools and methods for observing and analyzing any system running Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris."

--Marc Strahl, senior UNIX engineer

Solaris™ Internals, Second Edition, describes the algorithms and data structures of all the major subsystems in the Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris kernels. The text has been extensively revised since the first edition, with more than 600 pages of new material. Integrated Solaris tools and utilities, including DTrace, MDB, kstat, and the process tools, are used throughout to illustrate how the reader can observe the Solaris kernel in action. The companion volume, Solaris™ Performance and Tools, extends the examples contained here, and expands the scope to performance and behavior analysis. Coverage includes:

• Virtual and physical memory

• Processes, threads, and scheduling

• File system framework and UFS implementation

• Networking: TCP/IP implementation

• Resource management facilities and zones

The Solaris™ Internals volumes make a superb reference for anyone using Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 9 Ratings

This is THE BOOK for Solaris internals - 2007-01-12
Reviewer Rating:
Well written and detailed. If you wish or need to know about the internals of Solaris this book is the source. This is a second edition and covers 10 and updates information on 8 and 9. The first edition covered 2.5.1, 2.6, and 7. I liked the first edition and waited for this edition based on the books/authors web site and have not be disappointed. Highly recommended, a reasonable background in OS theory is helpful with the type of material covered here - but not required - it will aid in understanding however. Recommended more general OS books would include "Operating System Concepts" by A. Silberschutz, J. Peterson, P. Galvin, "Operating Sytstems" by A. Tanenbaum, A. Woodhull, and "Unix Internals" by Uresh Vahalia among others.

UNIX engineers rejoice! - 2006-09-12
Reviewer Rating:
Do you want to know how the Solaris kernel works? This is the book for you!

If you've read any of the other titles by these authors you'll know how clear and succinctly written this book is. The book is not your normal 2nd edition "nip and tuck", it's a rewrite!

One of the things I really like about this book is that it describes the internal theory and implementation of many kernel subsystems, but is not a code walk through or reiteration of other books / manuals.

The book covers many of the new and recent features of Solaris, so it's also valuable for long time Solaris engineers that need to keep updated. People that are new to UNIX internals will also like this book as it starts with the assumption of some UNIX principles (but not too much), and takes you a *lot* further.

There are pointers to other material for the truely adventurous, and small examples with sample output that keep the subject material relevent and enable to reader to make the connection between the theory and their system.

Very highly recommended!

Simply a wonderful book - 2007-10-02
Reviewer Rating:
The book is really well written, covering even more topics (i.e. Networking) than the first edition. Considering the advanced nature of the book, it's surprisingly easy to understand.

However, i would recommend reading Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (3rd edition) by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Albert S. Woodhull before this one if you're not familiar with Operating Systems, as this book covers advanced topics which are not for begginers.

Great Book - 2007-03-22
Reviewer Rating:
Reading this book, I think it helps to know UNIX and some C already, but is ok if you don't... This book gives great details and examples. Must have for anyone working on/with solaris 10.
Yes.. it explains how zones and things like that work...

Indispensable Resource to have on hand - 2009-01-29
Reviewer Rating:
First, let me say that I have two copies of the first edition, one that stays in my home library and one that is falling apart literally. So I have used the internals book (s)many times in my career. I am a man of many hats, systems administration, system architect, system engineer, system analyst, and too many more to say in this forum. In my career I have had many reasons to use these fine products. Mainly because when I am working a job or consutling for whatever reason, I need to know that I have the resources to get the job done.

Next, my first real performance tuning challenge was a Sun Enterprise E10K, with multiple domains, running SAP. It was a huge deployment and there were already problems in the developmental deployment phase. The machine was running Solaris 8 and there was some great discussion between the clients and the vendor about the possible solutions. The vendor had people on the phone that were discussing the performance issue and I overheard them say a name or two, Richard McDougall and Jim Mauro. I asked them who they were and they looked at me kind of funny, but one of them said he is one of our top performance people. They had a book lying open on the conference table and it was the first edition of this book. I looked at a few pages of it and bought one that night. I got to be part of a great moment in my career. I used that book and its secrets for many other problems in the following years. Then Solaris 10 comes along and is an whole different animal for an Operating System. DTrace is a great utility built into the system for finding out all sorts of neat things. Well, the story I heard was that the second edition of this book was too big to fit into one book and there was a real need to expand it out into a second edition that specialized in Dtrace and other Performance Tuning Tools. That is a second book that I will talk about on its review page. This book, the internals book, second edition, is so invaluable to me that I have two copies of it as well. One that goes with me everywhere and one that is home in my reference library. I have been working with Solaris and Sun OS about Sun OS 4.1.4 and Solaris 2.4. Solaris 10 is so much different and better than any I have used before it. Solving performance issues is different too. Understanding how Solaris 10 works on a computer is very crucial to solving performance issues. You must have the tools available to do that with or the outcome could be very bad.

Finally, I rate this book as High as I can since I have used and still use both editions weekly to refer to something in Solaris that pertains to an issue I am having or someone in one of the environments I support is having. Kudos to Rich and Jim. I hope that all follow on books will keep going in the same direction, that of giving one the knowledge about Solaris internals to help solve those performance issue.

Sincerely

Bill Branson

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