I recommend two books that you absolutely HAVE to have and a couple of other ones that are optional:
First off, you HAVE to have the OpenSolaris bible. It's the best book I've seen that covers all the new features specific to OpenSolaris and Solaris Express and it focuses a lot on solving problems using the command line so it's an absolutely essential reference when you're writing shell scripts: http://www.amazon.com/OpenSolaris-Bible-Wiley-Nicholas-Solter/dp/0470385480 Almost all the other books I read on Solaris system administration were way out of date by comparison (i.e. no mention of ZFS, zones, Virtual Box command line scripting, etc.) O'Reilly's "Classic Shell Scripting" by Arnold Robbins is really good as well, so I'd mark this one down as the second one that you HAVE to get if you're a total shell script noob: http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Shell-Scripting-Arnold-Robbins/dp/0596005954/ref=sr_1_37?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244973384&sr=1-37 It spends a lot of time covering different UNIX standards for how things are supposed to be laid out (some of which Solaris follows but Linux doesn't) and it gives the reason for why these standards evolved the way they did and why different UNIX-like operating systems (like say Linux and BSD) sometimes disagree on where utilities should be located and how things should work. It also talks a lot about how to use regular expressions in your shell scripts as well and most of what it teaches will work just as well in Linux or in Solaris. Overall it's a great book. This next one isn't required, but a lot of ancient, gray-bearded sandal-wearing UNIX gurus swear that Kernigan and Pike's "The UNIX Programming Environment" from 1983 is one of the all time classics of writing programs and shell scripts in UNIX: http://www.amazon.com/Unix-Programming-Environment-Prentice-Hall-Software/dp/013937681X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244974161&sr=1-1 This book was written by two of the top UNIX programmers at AT&T Bell Labs, and that old AT&T UNIX code eventually evolved into UNIX System V R4 which evolved into Solaris which is now evolving into OpenSolaris, so reading that book might give you a good philosophical and historical perspective on where Solaris came from. If you don't want to do everything in BASH, you might optionally want to get something that covers a little bit of the Korn shell too. Maybe get this book as well? http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Unix-Shell-Scripting-Administrators/dp/0470183012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244973544&sr=1-1 or this one? http://www.amazon.com/Unix-Shell-Programming-Stephen-Kochan/dp/0672324903/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b I haven't spent much time looking at that one as I spend most time on the OpenSolaris Bible and the O'Reilly book to be honest. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
