FREE Solaris OS Training Courses

Sun Training offers some interesting free web-based courses for the Solaris OS.

• Solaris 10: Ten Moves Ahead of the Competition (WS-245)

  The Solaris 10: Ten Moves Ahead of the Competition course provides students with an overview of distinguishing features of the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS). This course combines high-level value proposition and introductory technical information to illustrate the advantages of using the Solaris 10 OS.

• OpenSolaris Technical Essentials Guide (WS-1000-OS)

  This web-based guide introduces the basic technical skills around the OpenSolaris operating system and guides you through various resources required to successfully install, use, administer, and distribute the OpenSolaris software.

If you are a student, take advantage of Sun Student Courses. You need an enrollment key from your teacher.

• Introduction to Solaris and opensolaris.org, a free Sun Developer Network course

  An introduction to the Solaris Operating Environment and the OpenSolaris open source project. You will learn about some key technologies that make the Solaris OS a leading Operating Environment: ZFS - a new generation of file systems, Solaris Containers - OS level Virtualization, and DTrace - a revolution in tracing frameworks.

Posted at 05:06PM Jul 14, 2008 by alta in Documentation  |  Comments[1]

More Examples!

Recently my documentation group received a presentation of Voice Of the Customer data. The most resounding request by far is for more examples. Interestingly, we also received high marks for the examples in our documentation, so I guess we do a good job of providing examples but users always want more.

I would love to provide you with more examples. It would be my greatest joy next to hiking Mission Peak at night with Dog. I work with Solaris developer docs (Writing Device Drivers, Device Driver Tutorial) but I am not a kernel programmer myself. I cannot just pull examples out of my hat. Engineering is busy. To get engineering assistance, I need to make specific requests.

To help me help you, please tell me what kinds of examples you would like to see. If you are a Solaris developer, perhaps you can even provide an example. Don't be shy.

OpenSolaris is a humongous example in a way, but locating exactly what you need to know by combing through the code can be challenging. Save yourself the blisters. Tell me exactly what you want, and I will do my best (which is not too bad) to get that information and publish it.

One of our OpenSolaris developers recently requested particular kstats examples, and now one of our engineers (thank you, Alan) is working with me to provide that.

If I get some responses, I will provide a wiki site for anyone to add to the Solaris developer examples wish list.

Posted at 11:55PM Jun 13, 2006 by alta in Documentation  |  Comments[1]

Help Improve Solaris Documentation

I can think of four ways that you can comment on Solaris Developer Documentation. If you can think of others, please let me know.

We strive to provide you with all the information you need, and we very much appreciate your input and feedback.

• Use the Send comments button at the bottom of any document on docs.sun.com. Notice that the dot latest versions of the Solaris documentation are available when you select "All Solaris versions" and then select "Software Express for Solaris".

• File a change request using the OpenSolaris bug database interface. For documentation requests, select Category "doc". In a day or two, you should be able to find your request when you search the database. Then you can monitor the progress of your request easily by searching for the bug ID number.

• Post or reply to a post on an OpenSolaris discussion.

• Post or reply to a post on a Sun forum.

Posted at 06:29AM Feb 03, 2006 by alta in Documentation  |  Comments[0]

Device Driver Tutorial - HTML download

Now you can download a tar file of the HTML version of the Device Driver Tutorial. Customize this copy for your own use, or annotate this HTML version and then send your comments to me so that I can help share your experiences more widely. What information did you need when you were writing your driver that you were unable to find easily in the Device Driver Tutorial or in the Writing Device Drivers book (WDD)? What other books or web sites are useful that I should list as resources in the tutorial? Is there any information in the tutorial or the WDD that is misleading or incorrect? What information would you change? What information would you add? Can you add to the examples?

Please email me or file a bug. Category is "Solaris Documentation" (doc), subcategory is devicedriver.

The version of the tutorial that is in this tar file is the SX 12/05 version. I listed a couple of new resources in this version, including the new OpenSolaris device drivers community web site.

Posted at 09:38AM Dec 19, 2005 by alta in Documentation  |  Comments[0]