Linux Basics for Power Users

Target Audience

• The course is intended for technical personnel who need to use the Linux/Unix terminal on a daily basis, in an effective manner.

Prerequisites

• Basic familiarity with MS Windows or Mac OSX.
• Experience with a text editor like notepad, emacs, vi, or pico.
• Basic understanding of files and directories.

Objectives

• Understand and use the Linux/Unix terminal in effective way
• Be comfortable with most of the command line tools available in Linux/Unix
• Learn using Bash to make the daily work efficient

Course Format

• Duration of the course is 16 academic hours. (Usually 2 days or 4 half-days).
• The course includes approximately 40% hands on lab work.

Language

• The course is given in Hebrew with slides and materials in English.

Syllabus

1. Introduction
   • What is Unix and Linux?
   • Unix and Linux, a brief history
   • Philosophy - Open Source, Free Software, Freware, Propriatery Software
   • Open Source Licenses - GNU GPL, BSD and in between
   • Linux distributions (Fedora, RedHat, CentOS, Debiam, Ubuntu etc.)
2. Linux as Desktop
   • Login/Logout/Reboot
   • Gnome/KDE desktop environment
   • Installing programs, package management system
   • Basic maintenance - installing security upgrades
   • Overview of a few selected desktop applications
   • e-mail, web browsing, word processor, spreadsheet, file system browser
   • Opening the Terminal
3. Setting up your Linux Shell
   • Accessing Linux from another computer (telnet, ssh, putty)
   • Environmental variables
   • PATH, path
   • Customizing the prompt
4. The Bourne Again Shell (Bash)
   • Starting a Bash shell
   • The history facility
   • Command line editing
   • Aliases
   • Job control
5. Writing Scripts with Bash
   • Executing Commands in a Bash Script
   • Variables
   • Running the Script
   • Arithmetic operators
   • Logical operators & Conditionals
   • Control Statements
   • Loops
6. Findig Files
   • find, locate, whereis
   • Wildcard (glob) patterns
7. Searching Through Files
   • grep et. al.
   • awk
   • sed
   • Finding text in binaries
   • Piping and redirection
8. Regular Expressions
   • Pattern Syntax
   • Remembering Patterns
   • Metacharacters
   • Examples
9. Working with Files
   • Basic vi
   • Utilities such as cut, paste, sort, uniq, head, tail, wc
   • Comparing files with cmp, diff, patch
10. File Permissions and Ownership
    • Permissions
    • Owners (users and groups)
    • chown, chmod, newgrp, id
11. File System Basics
    • File System Hierarchy
    • Hard and Symbolic Links
    • i-nodes, ls, stat
    • du, df, mount
    • tar, gzip, sha1sum
12. Processes
    • What's a process?
    • Process states
    • Foreground, Background, suspended
    • Sending Signals using kill, pkill
    • Monitoring Processes with top, htop, ps, pgrep

Contact

Contact: Gabor Szabo gabor@hostlocal.com
Phone: +972-54-4624648