Solaris Internals: Solaris 10 and Opensolaris Kernel Architecture

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.

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...

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.

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!

This book is actually just one of a two volume set - "Solaris Internals" for developers, and "Solaris Performance and Tools" for system administrators. I will speak of the second edition of "Solaris Internals", since I am not a system administrator by trade. "Solaris Internals" is the badly needed update for the only book that I know of that contains information on how Solaris implements functions behind the application programming interfaces. This information will be most helpful to application developers, device driver and kernel module developers, and advanced system administrators that are responsible for performance tuning and capacity planning. The book reads like a combination computer architecture and operating systems manual, and though it can be a bit dry at times, it was meant to be a reference book that professionals can go to for the details. In that sense, the first edition never failed me. In fact, if you are not familiar with the concepts of computer architecture and operating systems theory in general, this book will probably be over your head. From perusing the second edition, the format seems to be very much the same in the second edition, just with expanded material reflecting the additional features of Solaris 10. Also, if you are into Solaris systems programming as I am, another essential volume is "Solaris Systems Programming". That book is also very dry reading, but it has what you need to know in order to write code with system calls to the Solaris operating system. I show the table of contents below: Part One: Introduction to Solaris Internals Chapter 1 -- Introduction Part Two: The Process Model Chapter 2 -- The Solaris Process Model Chapter 3 -- Scheduling Classes and the Dispatcher Chapter 4 -- Interprocess Communication Chapter 5 -- Process Rights Management Part Three: Resource Management Chapter 6 -- Zones Chapter 7 -- Projects, Tasks, and Resource Controls Part Four: Memory Chapter 8 -- Introduction to Solaris Memory Chapter 9 -- Virtual Memory Chapter 10 -- Physical Memory Chapter 11 -- Kernel Memory Chapter 12 -- Hardware Address Translation Chapter 13 -- Working with Multiple Page Sizes in Solaris Part Five: File Systems Chapter 14 -- File System Framework Chapter 15 -- The UFS File System Part Six: Platform Specifics Chapter 16 -- Support for NUMA and CMT Hardware Chapter 17 -- Locking and Synchronization Part Seven: Networking Chapter 18 -- The Solaris Network Stack Part Eight: Kernel Services Chapter 19 -- Clocks and Timers Chapter 20 -- Task Queues Chapter 21 -- kmdb Implementation