CST8207-17W – GNU/Linux Operating Systems I

Class Notes:

Essential Course Notes:

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Alternate Web Notes

Winter (January–April) 2017

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

Monday January 9 – All Woodroffe Campus classes for level 1 before 1pm are cancelled and replaced by Algonquin Orientation.

Your CST program program orientation is 8am to 10am Monday January 9 in room T119. Regular classes resume at 1pm; see your ACSIS timetable.

2017-01-09	– Week 1 –	Monday January 9 09h00 to 12h00 – Level 1 Orientation in T117 (no Level 1 morning classes)
2017-01-11	– Week 1 –	Monday January 11 – Level 1 classes start at noon
2017-02-12	– Week 5 –	Friday February 10 10am – in-class Midterm #1 of 2 (10%)
2017-02-20	– Week 6.5 –	Monday February 20 – Family Day (College closed)
2017-02-20	– Week 6.5 –	Monday February 20 – Study Break Week (no classes Monday-Friday)
2017-03-17	– Week 9 –	Friday March 17 10am – in-class Midterm #2 of 2 (15%)
2017-03-24	– Week 10 –	Friday March 24 – final withdrawal date (NEW DATE!)
2017-04-14	– Week 13 –	Friday April 14 – Good Friday (College closed)
2017-04-22	– Week 15 –	Algonquin Final Assessment Week (Exams end after 2017-04-29)
2017-04-28	– Week 15 –	Friday April 28 08h00 (8am to 11am) – CA-105 A,B,C – Final exam (3 hours – 40%)
2017-09-06	– Week 1 –	Wednesday September 6 – start of Fall Term 2017 and CST8207 Fall 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/cst8207/17w/ (main .com site)
The main dot .com site is located in a large data centre in Troy, Michigan, USA.
http://teaching.idallen.org/cst8207/17w/ (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/cst8207/17w/ (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/cst8207/17w/ (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