CST8207-16F – GNU/Linux Operating Systems I

Class Notes:

Essential Course Notes:

Notes by Week:

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Alternate Web Notes

Fall (September–December) 2016

Instructor: Ian! D. Allen
Contact E-mail, Office, Phone: See the Prof Timetable
WWW: My Teaching Home Page
My Personal Home Page
Office Appointment Hours: See my Prof Timetable schedule.

IDAllen Tip Jar:

Important Dates for CST8207 Students

2016-09-05	– Week 1 –	Monday September 5 – Labour Day (College closed)
2016-09-06	– Week 1 –	Tuesday September 6 – All Woodroffe Campus classes for all levels are suspended Tuesday and replaced by Algonquin Orientation for all students at all levels.
2016-10-10	– Week 6 –	Monday October 10 – Thanksgiving Day (College closed)
2016-10-12	– Week 6 –	Wednesday October 12 – Midterm #1 of 2 (45 minutes – 10%)
2016-11-09	– Week 10 –	Wednesday November 9 – Midterm #2 of 2 (45 minutes – 15%)
2016-11-11	– Week 10 –	Friday November 11 – Last Withdrawal Date
2016-12-10	– Week 15 –	Algonquin Final Assessment Week (Exams end after 2016-12-17)
2016-12-15	– Week 15 –	Thursday December 15 11h30 (11:30am to 2:30pm) – T117/119 – Final exam (3 hours – 40%)
2017-01-09	– Week 1 –	Monday January 9 – start of Winter Term 2017 and CST8207 Winter 2017

See also the "Academic Calendar" on the Algonquin Registrar Office Page.

Course Description

Consult the Course Outline (PDF) for the official description.

Students learn the basic concepts and features of the GNU/Linux operating system and utilities, the world's most well-known Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) project and the underlying technology supporting Google, Facebook and Android smart phones. Students examine the power of the GNU/Linux command line and the basics of shell scripting and task automation are studied. Students perform file system searches, full-text searches, and data-mine system log files to generate analyses of network attacks and intrusion attempts. Students also customize their shell programming environment to simplify repetitive tasks and support system administration functions.

Alternate Web Notes

Web notes for this course are kept at multiple sites. I pay for the notes to be stored on commercial Linux-based web hosting services, with backup copies located in various locations.

Write down the locations of the web notes and their backup copies from the list below. (You won't be able to get to this page if the main web site is down!)

http://teaching.idallen.com/cst8207/16f/ (main .com site)
The main dot .com site is located in a large data centre in Troy, Michigan, USA.
http://teaching.idallen.org/cst8207/16f/ (note the dot .org domain suffix!)
The .org site is located in a large data centre in New York.
http://cst8207.idallen.ca/~idallen/teaching/cst8207/16f/ (on campus)
The CST8207 site is accessible from inside Algonquin College even when the College Internet is broken.
http://elearning.algonquincollege.com/coursemat/alleni/idallen/cst8207/16f/ (on campus)
The ELEARNING site is accessible from inside Algonquin College even when the College Internet is broken. Unfortunately, the web server on ELEARNING is not configured correctly to run CGI scripts and it will not serve up the directory index files correctly. (See this note.) You can read the Class Notes by appending /notes/ to the above URL.

Ottawa/Gatineau Linux Resources

A System Administrator – XKCD

Most people don't even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn't make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants. Programming Sucks