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

Week 2 (Sept 8) - File Systems and Logical Volume Management

• 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

Week 3 (Sept 15) - Linux Startup

• 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

Week 4 (Sept 22) - Linux Package Management

Task	Ubuntu - apt	Opensuse - zypp	Fedora - yum/pkcon
Install  a package	apt-get install <pkg>	zypper install <pkg>	yum install <pkg> pkcon install <pkg>
Remove a package	apt-get remove <pkg>	zypper remove <pkg>	yum erase <pkg> pkcon remove <pkg>
Update package list	apt-get update	zypper refresh	yum check-update
Update system	apt-get upgrade	zypper update	yum update pkcon update-system
List all repositories	cat /etc/apt/sources.list	zypper repos	yum repolist
Add a repository	(edit /etc/apt/sources.list)	zypper addrepo <path> <name>	(add <repo> to /etc/yum.repos.d/)
Remove a repository	(edit /etc/apt/sources.list)	zypper removerepo <name>	(remove <repo> from /etc/yum.repos.d/)
Search for a package	apt-cache search <pkg>	zypper search <pkg>	yum search <pkg> pkcon search details <pkg>
List all installed packages	dpkg -l	rpm -qa	rpm -qa pkcon get-packages

Week 5 (Sept 29) - Building a New Kernel

• download source from kernel.org
  • wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.26.tar.bz2
• unpack source
  • tar xvjf linux-2.6.26.tar.bz2
• create configuration (.config) file
  • cd linux-2.6.26
  • cp /proc/config.gz .
  • gzip -d config.gz
  • mv config .config
  • make oldconfig
• customize your configuration
  • make menuconfig
• compile kernel and modules
  • make
• copy kernel image to /boot
  • cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26
• copy system map to /boot
  • cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.26
• install the modules
  • make modules_install
• create initial ram disk image
  • mkinitrd -k vmlinuz-2.6.26 -i initrd-2.6.26
• update GRUB
  • vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
• reboot