> I still have my doubts when it comes to desktops > (mostly because I'm too demanding), but Solaris is > sounding more appealing for servers and routers.
These things take time; Solaris has made some great strides in this area, most notably JDS. It can only get better as time passes, because people are working on it at a furious pace. I've never seen anything like it before. > Now the barrier for me is documentation. Sun has > thousands of pages of documentation available on > their website, but what I haven't found is > task-oriented documentation. In the Linux and BSD > world, common tasks are documented in simple guides, > and if you want to deviate from the guides, the man > pages or other references offer more details. Is > there a Solaris equivalent that's up to date? I would > like references concerning, for example, setting up > NAT, configuring an IPv6 router, prioritizing NULL > ACK packets, configuring an ADSL PPPoE connection, > securing a router, and securing an NFS server. The > whole reason I started using OpenBSD was because the > documentation was detailed without being overwhelming > (Sun documentation seems to fail this criterion), and > available for the current version from an > authoritative source (a considerable amount of Linux > documentation fails this criterion). You mean, like this? http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-4554/6maoq023m?q=NAT&a=view Sun documentation is targeted at system administrators and engineers; however, if you're structured enough, you could: a) read the intro material before every task oriented chapter, to understand the concepts involved b) follow the step-by-step instructions to complete the tasks. Actually, Sun has one of the best documentation libraries, if not the best. Although, SGI and HP aren't too far away either. > Regarding binary logging, I think it fits well with > UNIX principles since the native format of the data > is binary. Converting to ASCII is another layer of > complexity. Binary logs allow searching with tcpdump, > or the pflog pseudo interface can be monitored in > real-time. It's exactly the opposite: the power of UNIX consists on most of the tools producing and working on ASCII files. That's what makes chaining of commands and applications with the "I" (pipe) possible and what makes UNIX so powerful. UNIX has always had a tradition of ASCII text input and output. For reference, I would encourage you to read the following: "Chapter 5. Textuality [I]Good Protocols Make Good Practice[/I]" http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/textualitychapter.html and in particular: "The Importance of Being Textual" http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch05s01.html This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
