Re: some basic Unix for an Oracle startup DBA

Well, UNIX'es differ greatly from vendor to vendor. While most have roots in either System V or BSD (or in the case of Solaris, its roots come from both) they have grown significantly apart over the years. For the most part, and for most of the tasks a DBA would be performing, there isn't much difference from a user level perspective. (except AIX, but it seems AIX's days are numbered anyway)

So, first decide which OS in particuliar you want to learn. If you want to learn the OS with the most industry usage at the current time, go with Solaris. If you wanna learn the future king of the Unix market, go with RHAS3 (soon RHAS4 with kernel 2.6) or SLES 9 (already ships with kernel 2.6)

As for books to recommend, I suggest going to the bookstore and browsing directly. There are so many crap books out there now you never know what your getting. A lot of books are just regurgitated man pages and short summaries that seldom get into nitty gritty details. I will recommend one, however, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of Solaris: Solaris Internals by Jim Mauro & Richard McDougall published my Prentice Hall. (I would stay away from publishers like Wiley and Wrox, it seems they will publish stuff from just about any yahoo that can use a word processor)

Most importantly though, no resource will ever be as good as empirical testsing and playing with stuff. Think of a task suited for your skill level and as you work towards it, you will learn stuff on the way. (and remember it longer as well)

The book by Alomar mentioned earlier is a good resource for Solaris 7 & 8 but the material in their is quickly becoming outdated and Alomar has no plans for a 3rd edition. While a lot of the core concepts might still apply, I would not use this as a starting point for someone just learning. (that book is more geared towards seasoned admins anyway, since it is mostly performance tuning)

Hope this help... Received on Fri Mar 04 2005 - 08:55:48 CST