Fall 2008 SYA710 Weekly Schedule

The tentative weekly schedule shown here is subject to change.

Week 1 (Sept 1) - Intro to SYA710 / Installing Linux

Course introduction
Introduction to Open Source and Linux
Introduction to our labs
- Lab T2107 - data recovery cards
Activities for this week
- Set up your accounts as described on the LUX Communication page.
- Complete the SYA710 Lab #0 and blog about the experience.
- Lab #0 is due before midnight Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Activities for this week
- Complete the SYA710 Lab01 and blog about the experience.
- Lab01 is due before midnight Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Concepts/Commands learned/used in this week's lecture
- File System: A way to organize data for efficient and easy access
- Containers: Objects (partitions, files, volumes) that hold file systems
- Virtual File System: Allows transparent access to files on different file systems
- Commands: mkfs, fsck, fdisk, mount, umount, e2label, resize2fs
Using UUIDs (universally unique identifiers)
- 128-bit numbers make hard disk management easier
- add UUID= entry in /etc/fstab
- Linux file systems support UUIDs, Windows not so much
- Commands: blkid, vol_id, uuidgen, tune2fs, findfs
Working with Logical Volumes (LVM)
- Physical Volumes (eg partitions) are joined into Volume Groups
- Logical Volumes are drawn from Volume Groups
- Commands: pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate

Activities for this week
- Complete the SYA710 Lab02 and blog about the experience.
- Lab02 is due before midnight Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Concepts/Commands learned/used in this week's lecture
- Linux Boot Process
  - Power on - Code in ROM BIOS finds and loads 1st stage loader from boot device (MBR)
  - 1st stage loader finds and loads 2nd stage loader (GRUB)
  - 2nd stage loader finds and loads Linux kernel and initial ram disk
  - kernel checks the system hardware, mounts the root device and loads the needed kernel modules
  - kernel runs init program (PID=1)
- Init Process (System V)
  - init reads /etc/inittab to get default run level
  - init runs rc
  - rc runs runlevel scripts
- Init Process (Upstart)
  - init gets jobs/tasks from /etc/events.d/
  - init emits startup event to start system
  - init waits for more events
  - fully compatible with System V