Although it sounds like Wiseowl is in fact a skilled and experienced systems administrator, I will just add that, in my experience with a variety of hardware, Suns give you more help along these lines than anything else I've used (although you should understand that my recent experience with IBM and HP workstations is limited to non-existant). If anyone wants to learn more about this, I would suggest browsing to docs.sun.com. Here Sun has put up the complete online documentation for all of their hardware and software. Look, for example, under Systems Administration, Installation and Setup subheading. Just browse around for a while in the documentation, and you'll get a sense of it. Find the answerbook on the OpenBoot PROM, for example. In printed form, this is about a three-quarters inch thick manual on how to program the boot PROM, which is implemented as a Forth interpreter (other workstations do in fact use the OpenBoot PROM, but Sun was the innovator). Find the SunDiags manual, and the SunVTS manual, and peruse those. Similarly, look through the hardware answerbooks, which document how you install and replace system componants.
--Bob Drzyzgula |
