Linux Fundamentals

Course Introduction

• Administration and Course Materials
• Course Structure and Agenda
• Delegate and Trainer Introductions

Session 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM

• A brief history of UNIX / Linux
• The UNIX / Linux kernel
• The UNIX / Linux file system structure
• File and directory management commands
• Absolute vs Relative Pathnames
• Further basic commands
• Exercise: Navigating the file system

Session 2: BASIC COMMANDS

• Command line syntax
• Basic file handling commands
• Basic Directory handling commands
• Filename wildcard characters
• Using commands with logical AND and OR
• Sequential command execution
• Exercise: Manipulating files and directories

Session 3: REDIRECTION AND PIPES

• Input and Output redirection
• Redirecting errors
• Piping commands
• Exercise: Using redirection and pipe facilities

Session 4: INTRODUCTION TO THE vi/Vim EDITOR

• Overview of the vi/Vim editor
• The language of vi
• Undoing and Redoing changes
• Input Mode and Last Line Mode
• Further vi functions
• Executing commands within vi / Vim
• Customising the vi / Vim Environment
• Getting Help
• Exercises: Using the vi editor

Session 5: SEARCHING AND REPLACING TEXT

• Searching and replacing text using the vi/Vim editor
• Using regular expressions (regex)
• Using sed for search and replace
• Searching for text with grep, egrep and fgrep
• Exercises: Searching and Replacing Text

Session 6: RECALLING AND EDITING COMMANDS

• Overview
• The bash shell
• The korn shell
• Exercises: Recall and Edit Commands

Session 7: FILE PERMISSIONS AND ACCESS CONTROL

• Users and user groups
• File access permissions
• Changing file attributes
• Switching users and user groups
• Linking files
• Exercise: Setting and access permissions

Session 8: FILTERING AND FORMATTING TEXT

• Overview
• The paste command
• The cut command
• An introduction to awk
• The nl command
• Exercises: Filtering Text

Session 9: PROCESSES

• What is a process?
• Monitoring processes
• Killing processes
• Background processes
• Job Control
• Grouping commands
• Exercise: Monitoring and controlling processes

Session 10: THE USER ENVIRONMENT

• Customising the .profile or .bash_profile
• Customising the .kshrc or .bashrc
• Exercise: Setting up an environment

Session 11: MORE BASIC COMMANDS

• The find command
• Using xargs command
• The locate command
• The df command
• The cut command
• The sort command
• Finding duplicate content
• Number sequencing
• Exercise: More Basic Commands

Session 12: UNIX COMMAND REVIEW

• Basic Unix commands
• General commands
• File and directory handling commands
• Filename generation characters and regular expressions (regex)
• I/O Redirection features
• Other commands

Session 13: GETTING STARTED

• What is a shell script?
• Development guidelines
• Creating and editing shell scripts
• Naming and storing shell scripts
• Executing shell scripts
• Exercise: Write a simple shell script

Session 14: USING VARIABLES

• Environment variables
• Local variables
• Assigning values to variables
• Assessing variable values
• Using quotes
• Delimiting variable names
• Echo control sequences
• Exercise: Add variables to a script

Session 15: INTEGER ARITHMETIC

• Using the expr command
• Using the (( )) notation
• Exercise: Add integer arithmetic to a shell script

Session 16: HANDLING RUN TIME DATA

• The read command
• Command line arguments
• Exercise: Writing a generic shell script
• Exercise: Writing an interactive shell script

Session 17: CONDITIONAL EXECUTION

• The if statement
• The test command
• Exercise: Adding validation to previous scripts

Session 18: ADDITIONAL KORN, BASH & POSIX SYNTAX

• Other test notations
• Default and substitute variables
• Exit status codes
• Exercise

Session 19: LOOP CONSTRUCTS

• The while loop
• The until loop
• The for loop
• The while true and until false loops
• Loop control commands
• Exercise: Enhancing the previously written scripts
• Exercise: Writing a script to copy files using a 'for' loop
• Exercise: Writing a script to generate numbers with the 'while' loop

Session 20: MULTI-BRANCH DECISIONS

• The case statement
• Menu driven applications
• Exercise: Developing and writing a menu system

Session 21: SCRIPTING WITH AWK

• Fundamentals of AWK
• Basic AWK scripts
• AWK within Bash constructs
• Exercise: AWK scripts

Session 22: FUNCTIONS

• What is a function?
• Syntax
• Examples
• Exercise: Add a function to a script

Session 23: INTERRUPT HANDLING

• Interrupt signals
• Trapping interrupts
• Exercise: Adding traps to the menu script

Appendix A: ADDITIONAL FEATURES AND FACILITIES

• The exec commands
• The includes notation
• More about loops
• Arrays

Appendix B: VIM QUICK REFERENCE

Appendix C: UNIX COMMANDS QUICK REFERENCE

Appendix D: ADDITIONAL EXERCISES