Linux Workshop - Day 1

Preliminary Preparations:
1. Linux Flavors ~ Acquiring a Taste
2. Making a boot diskette in Windows/MS-DOS
3. Partitioning schemes
4. The installation process
5. LILO / Grub (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/)

I. Introduction to Linux
a. Basic Concepts
b. Creating Accounts
c. Logging in
d. Virtual Consoles
e. Shells and commands
f. Logging out
g. Changing your password
h. Files and directories
i. The Directory Tree
j. The Current Working Directory
k. Case sensitivity

II. Communicating with your Linux system

a. The console
b. Virtual consoles
c. Secure Shell (ssh)
i. PuTTY
ii. WinSCP

III. Navigating
a. Home directory
b. The tilde (~)
c. Absolute vs. Relative paths
d. The "cd" command
e. Viewing the contents of a directory
i. The "ls" command and its switches
ii. Hidden files (the dot-file naming convention)
iii. The "dot" (.) and "dot-dot" (..) directories
iv. What is "dot-slash" (./) and why should I use it?
f. Creating new directories (the "mkdir" and "mkdir -p" commands)
g. Removing directories
i. Empty directories --> rmdir
ii. Directories with contents --> rm -Rf
h. Creating files
i. The "touch" command
ii. Creating files with a text editor
g. The Linux Filesystem Overview
i. /
ii. /etc
iii. /var
iv. /bin
v. /sbin
vi. /usr
vii. /home
viii. /dev
i. The SME/E-smith Filesystem Overview
i. Modifications to the standard Linux system
ii. SME/E-smith's Templating Framework
IV. Working with Files
a. Copying files (the "cp" command)
b. Copying directories (the "cp -R" command)
c. Moving files (the "mv" command)
d. Moving directories
e. Removing files (the "rm" command)
i. Interactive (default)
ii. Non-interactive (the "rm -f" command)
f. Viewing files
i. The "cat" command
ii. The "more" command
iii. The "less" command
g. Filename limitations
h. Finding files and directories
i. The "find" command
ii. The "whereis" command

iii. The "which" command

iv. Scripts that help
i. The "head" and "tail" commands

V. Shortcuts
a. Wildcards ("*" and "?")
b. Command line completion (using the tab key)
c. Standard Input and Output (STDIN & STDOUT)
d. Redirection
i. creating new files
ii. appending to existing files

VI. Editing Files

a. The "vi" editor
i. Command mode
ii. Insert mode
iii. Moving around in vi
iv. Quitting vi
* :q (quit without changes)
* :w (save file without quitting)
* :wq (save file and quit)
v. Using "vi.tutor"
b. The "pico" editor
i. The pico menu
ii. Quit without changes (^x --> n)
iii. Save and quit (^x --> y)
iv. Save without quitting (^o)
v. Searching

VII. Shells
a. The Bourne Again Shell (bash)
i. Scripting
ii. Variables
iii. Environment
iv. Initialization Files
b. Other shells
i. Bourne shell (sh)
ii. C shell (csh)
iii. TC shell (tcsh)
iv. Korn shell (ksh)
VIII. Pipes
a. The concept of pipelining
b. "Piping" STDOUT to other commands
c. Combining redirection and pipelining

IX. File Permissions

a. Owner-Group-Other
b. Read-Write-Execute
c. Reading File Permissions
d. Setting File Permissions
i. The "chmod" command
ii. Different approaches to the "chmod" command

X. File Ownership
a. The User and Usergroup concept
b. The "chown" command
c. The "chgrp" command
d. Combining the chown and chgrp commands

XI. Creating and Using Links

a. Hard links (the "ln" command)
b. Symbolic links (the "ln -s" command)

XII. Job control

a. Foreground and background jobs
b. Killing jobs
c. Suspending and restarting jobs

XIII. Basic System Administration

a. The "root" account
b. Getting root
c. The superuser account (su)
d. Startup, Shutdown, and Reboot
e. Managing the Startup sequence
i. The "rc" directories
ii. The inittab file

XIV. Working with Filesystems

a. Filesystem types
b. Mounting and Unmounting
i. Mount points
ii. CD-ROM and Floppy drives and media
c. Devices and Device Naming conventions (the "/dev" directory)
i. /dev/fd0
ii. /dev/hda[0-9]
iii. /dev/sda[0-9]
iv. /dev/
d. Checking filesystems (the "fsck" command)

XV. User Management

a. The /etc/passwd file
(UID,GID,username,passwd,realname,homedirectory/shell)
b. Adding users
c. Removing users
d. Changing passwords
e. Changing shells
f. The "shadow" system
 g. SME/E-smith User Management
i. Server-manager method
ii. Adding Multiple Users
iii. Deleting Users
iv. Giving users access to the system

XVI. Archiving and compressing files

a. The "tar" command
i. Making a tape archive (tar -cvf)
ii. Extracting a tape archive (tar -xvf)
b. The "gzip" and "gunzip" commands
c. Combining "tar" and "gunzip" (tar -xvzf)
d. Backing up to a diskette
i. Mounting the diskette (the "mount" command)
ii. Formatting the diskette (the "fdformat" command)
iii. Copying the files
* tar -cvfz /dev/fd0 /directory
* tar -cvfzM /dev/fd0 /directory (spans multiple diskettes)
iv. Unmounting the diskette (the "unmount" command)
e. Restoring the backup
f. Dealing with older compression schemes (*.Z)
g. Dealing with newer compressions schemes (*.bzip2)