UNIX Fundamentals

Duration

5 Days

Introduction

Elements of this syllabus are subject to change.

This course provides a detailed look at the UNIX operating environment, it builds a foundation of UNIX system structure and commands designed to develop the student’s understanding of UNIX. Following the completion of this course, the student will have a proficiency in the commands necessary to exploit the power of the UNIX operating system.

Audience

This course is designed for system/application end-users who have little or no experience with the UNIX operating system. This course provides a functional familiarity with basic system tools and commands to those individuals with other operating systems experience.

At Course Completion

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand the history and development of UNIX
• Understand the details of the UNIX file system
• Understand how security is implemented in UNIX
• Understand the UNIX operating system and its features
• Understand how the Korn shell works
• Use the VI editor
• Understand how to use different UNIX utilities
• Use scheduling commands to execute other UNIX commands at a future time
• Understand the various UNIX commands that allow for session management
• Understand how UNIX provides networking services such as FTP, Telnet
• Understand how to communicate with other users
• Use printer commands

Topics

• UNIX history and overview
• Getting started
• File systems
• File system security
• Additional UNIX commands
• Using the VI editor
• Introduction to the UNIX shell and shell programming
• UNIX Power Tools
• Scheduling Commands
• Session Management
• UNIX in a Wider World - Networking
• Communicating with Other Users
• Printing

Course Outline

I. An Introduction to UNIX

• A brief chronology
• What is UNIX?
• Key UNIX characteristics
• The Structure of UNIX
• Some practical applications
• Some of the variants of UNIX and the UNIX standards

II. Getting Started

• Access levels in UNIX
• How to log in
• How to log out
• Passwords
• Password rules
• Switching groups

III. File Systems

• Commands, switches and arguments
• ls examples
• Basic command: ls
• The man command
• User Files and User Directories
• Default Directory
• /etc/passwd file format
• Default Group
• /etc/group file format
• Absolute and relative pathnames
• Pathname abbreviations
• File tree navigation
• System directory structure
• File systems and their functions
• The Role of the file system
• File system naming guidelines
• Basic file commands
• pwd
• cd
• mkdir
• rmdir
• cat
• more
• tail
• head
• cp
• mv
• rm
• Hard and Symbolic links
• More file commands
• du
• df

IV. File System Security

• Detailed output of Is
• UNIX File Security: permissions
• Working with permissions
• Changing permissions with chmod
• Examples
• UNIX Directory permissions
• Octal and mnemonic notation
• Default permissions with umask
• Changing owner and group with chown and chgrp
• Switching groups

V. Additional UNIX Commands

• Commands
• who
• wc
• date
• file
• diff
• cmp
• touch
• whereis
• whence
• cal
• banner

VI. Using the VI Editor

• UNIX text editors
• Editing text with vi – modes
• Insert mode
• Scrolling
• Editing
• Repeating commands
• File commands
• Creating the ./.exrc file
• Regular expressions
• Searching for text
• Substitution

VII. Introduction to the Unix Shell and Shell Programming

• The UNIX shell
• Key features
  
• Different shell flavors
  
• The shell prompt
  
• Intro to shell variables
  
• Creating and using shell variables
  
• The environment and shell variables
• Understanding shell quote usage
  
• Command line editing
  
• Shell initialization: startup scripts
  
• Shell scripts
  
• Languages: compiled versus scripting
  
• Viewing exit status in the shell
  
• Shell redirection
  
• Shell pipes
  
• Shell wildcards
  
• Shell aliases
  
• Shell process management
  
• Shell background processes
  
• Shell job control commands
  
• Shell job control: the kill command

VIII. Introduction to the UNIX Power Tools

• A. Power commands
• sort
• grep
• sed
• awk
• UNIX metacharacters
• examples
• find
• archiving utilities: tar
• archiving utilities: cpio
• archiving utilities: pax
• compressing utilities: compress
• compressing utilities: uncompress
• compressing utilities: gzip
• compressing utilities: gunzip

IX. SED

• The Streaming Editor
• Simple SED commands
• SED scripts

X. AWK

• A pattern scanning language
• Simple AWK commands
• AWK scripts

XI. Scheduling Commands

• The roles of at, batch and cron
  
• At security considerations
  
• Scheduling tasks with at
  
• Batch commands
  
• cron security considerations
  
• Scheduling tasks with cron

XII. Session Management

• Multi-tasking and UNIX processes
  
• Executing commands in the background
  
• Terminating processes with the kill command

XIII. UNIX in a Wider World - Networking

• UNIX and TCP/IP
  
• Using IP addresses
  
• Using telnet to log into remote systems
  
• File transfer protocol and ftp
  
• Basic commands
  
• Options
  
• Getting and putting files
  
• Transferring multiple files

XIV. Communicating with Other Users

• The difference between electronic mail and messaging
  
• Retrieving system mail from cron and lp
  
• Using write and wall
  
• The mesg command
  
• The finger and talk commands

XV. Perl Overview

• When to use Perl
  
• Typical Uses
  
• Sample Scripts
  
• Perl Vs Shell Scripting

XVI. Shell Scripting Overview

• Comparison of Shells
  
• When to Shell Script
  
• Which Shell to use
  
• Strength and Weaknesses
  
• Example Shell Scripts

XVII. Printing (OPTIONAL)

• General concepts of the lp “print spooler”
  
• UNIX printer names
  
• Using the lp command and its options
  
• Specifying printer destinations
  
• The print job-id
  
• Using lpstat and its options
  
• Canceling print jobs

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