Sun Technical Reference Library Series

A System Administrator’s Guide to Sun Workstations

by George Becker and Kathy Slattery

Published 1 October 1991

This Guide to Sun Administration is areference manual written by Sun administrators for Sun administrators. The book is not in tended to be a complete guide to UNIX Systems Administration; instead it will concentrate on the special issues that are particular to the Sun environment. It will take you through the basic steps necessary to install and maintain a network of Sun computers. Along the way, helpful ideas will be given concerning NFS, YP, backup and restore procedures, as well as many useful installation tips that can make a system administrator's job less painful. Spe cifically, SunGS 4.0 through 4.0.3 will be studied; however, many ofthe ideas and concepts presented are generic enough to be used on any version of SunGS. This book is not intended to be basic introduction to SunGS. It is assumed thatthe reader will have at least a year ofexperience supporting UNIX. BookOverview The firstchaptergives adescription ofthe system types thatwill be discussed throughout the book. An understanding of all of the system types is needed to comprehend the rest ofthe book. Chapter 2 provides the information necessary to install a workstation. The format utility and the steps involved in the suninstall process are covered in detail. Ideas and concepts about partitioning are included in this chapter. YP is the topic of the third chapter. A specific description of each YPmap and each YPcommand ispresented, along with some tips about ways to best utilize this package in your environment.