Unix Tools 2004-05
Principal lecturer: Dr Markus Kuhn
Taken by: Part IB
Syllabus
This non-examinable 6-h lecture course takes you onto a quick tour
through a few important and highly useful Unix development tools
including the shell, make, Perl and LaTeX on 2004 October 7–26,
10:00–11:00 in the Heycock Lecture
Theatre, New Museums Site (except for the first lecture on 7
October, which is in Lecture Theatre 1 of the William Gates
Building).
Study Materials (in PDF for
easy printing):
Related links:
- Single UNIX Specification (Shell
Command Language, Utility
Conventions, sh,
make)
- GNU Tools Source Code:
bash,
sh-utils,
textutils,
make,
rcs,
cvs
- CVS Manual
- Csh
Programming Considered Harmful, a periodic posting by Tom
Christiansen to comp.unix.shell
- Related FAQs
- Comprehensive Perl
Archive Network (CPAN), Perl.com, Perl Mongers
- TeX Users Group, The UK TeX Archive (FAQ)
Most of the tools discussed in the course can be explored and used
on the PWF
Linux installation in the Computer Laboratory's Teaching Lab,
which is currently a customized version of SuSE Linux 9.0. However,
due to home directories residing on a Novell server, PWF Linux has a
few quirks and
restrictions compared to a typical Unix or Linux system. Problems
with PWF Linux should be reported to
pwf-linux@ucs.cam.ac.uk [but feel free to cc to me
(mgk25) as well].
Installing Unix/Linux on your own PC
I'd like to encourage students who own a PC and are interested in
Unix to try out one of the various excellent freely or cheaply
available Unix-like operating systems: Linux (Debian, Mandrake, Novell/SuSE, RedHat/Fedora, Gentoo, Knoppix), NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD. In particular, the
Computing Service's Unix
Support runs an FTP
and NFS
server with all the files and updates for the latest SuSE,
Red Hat/Fedora, and Debian Linux distributions.
The following steps outline briefly, how to install SuSE
Linux 9.1 on your PC:
First make sure you have space for a generous new harddisk
partition. While a minimal system can be installed in as little as 200
MB, partition sizes of 1–4 GB are recommended
for a full-featured system. If your entire harddisk is already used by
another operating system, you may want to reduce the size of an
existing partition first. This can be done without reformatting, using
tools such as FIPS.
Then there are three options for getting the software onto your PC:
Directly from the network: If your PC is connected to the
the Cambridge University
Data Network:
- Prepare the SuSE 9.1 installation boot CD by burning the image boot.iso.
This can be done using any CD writing application, on a Linux machine
for example with with xcdroast, k3b, or the
good old cdrecord.
- After having booted that, load the necessary kernel module for
your Ethernet card, set your IP address, and then configure as the
"installation source medium" the Computing Service server that stores
the remaining installation files:
- protocol: NFS
- server name: nfs-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk
- directory: linux/suse/i386/9.1
- If you want to perform online updates after the initial
installation is complete, use in the YaST Online Update tool the
settings
- protocol: NFS
- server name: nfs-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk
- directory: linux/suse
to fetch these also from a local Computing Service server.
- More information can be found in the SuSE User Guide and
Administration
Guide.
Using the Computing Service as an installation source will
not create network traffic outside Cambridge, for which your college
would otherwise be charged. If
you are not on the University network, use another
server.
From self-made CDs/DVD: Alternatively, you can burn yourself
the full five CDs or the single DVD from the ISO
images provided by the Computing Service. The same server host
also various Unix/Linux software
available under campus licence. See also the SUSE Linux in
Cambridge page there.
From bought CDs/DVD: Finally, boxed sets of these CDs with
printed manuals are available in various computer stores in town
(e.g., SuSE
Linux 9.1 Personal for £25 at PCWorld or Maplin).
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