A Book This Good Should Be Kept Up-To-Date

What the other reviewers have said in consensus, I'll just stipulate: this book is a gentle but comprehensive introduction to core file analysis; it's also an excellent reference on kernel architecture. For its clarity of technical writing, it deserve some kind of award, considering how deathly-dull the subject matter can be. I couldn't stay awake through one pass of the assembly code illustrations, but I don't think the writers could have helped that. This book is a nonetheless a triumph, albeit a dated one.

Now, c'mon, Prentice-Hall, help the audience out! This book was written in 1995. It uses Solaris 2.3 and sun4d architecture as its latest and greatest. Solaris (2.)8 has been out for a while and 9 is on the way; sparcv9/64-bit architecture is here; mdb, the modular debugger, is going to replace adb; the book *must* be updated. It would be a crime to let it die now -- there's still no competitive title on the market.

The book is non-technical enough that I couldn't make all the changes needed to get the older examples to work. If I ever do, though, maybe I'll be good enough to write a competitive title myself...

That said, even if the next edition were to out in three months, I'd still buy this one now to get started; it's that good.

Other Reviews

• A simple easy way to the Solaris Abyss
• A Book This Good Should Be Kept Up-To-Date
• Mundane yet fun
• Good book - bad CD examples