Unix Tools 2008–09
Principal lecturer: Dr Markus Kuhn Taken by: Part IB Syllabus
This non-examinable 10-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 2008 October 9 –
November 11, 10:00–11:00 in Lecture Theatre 1 of the William Gates
Building.
Study Materials
All in PDF for
easy printing:
Related links
- Single UNIX Specification (shell
command language, utility
conventions, sh,
make)
- GNU Tools Source Code:
bash,
coreutils,
make,
rcs,
cvs
- Subversion manual
- Csh
programming considered harmful – a periodic posting by Tom
Christiansen to comp.unix.shell
- Related FAQs
- Perl documentation, Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
(CPAN), Perl.com, Perl Mongers
- TeX Users Group, The UK TeX Archive (FAQ)
- MATLAB documentation
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 openSUSE Linux 10.3. 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 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, Mandriva, Novell/SUSE, RedHat/Fedora, Gentoo, Knoppix, Ubuntu), 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,
Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu Linux distributions.
The following steps outline briefly, how to install SUSE
Linux on your PC. (The instructions and links are for openSUSE
Linux 10.3, which is what the PWF uses, but should work similarly for
future releases):
First make sure you have space for a generous new harddisk
partition. While a minimal system can be installed in as little as 500
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 PartitionMagic or GNU Parted.
Then there are three options for getting the software onto your PC:
Directly from the network: If your PC is connected to the Cambridge University Data
Network:
- Prepare the openSUSE 10.3 installation boot CD by burning the
image openSUSE-10.3-GM-i386-mini.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/opensuse/i386/10.3/repo/oss
(addons: linux/opensuse/i386/10.3/repo/non-oss)
- To perform online updates after the initial installation is
complete, add in YaST the Installation Source
- protocol: HTTP
- server name: nfs-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk
- directory: pub/linux/suse/update/10.3
to fetch automatic updates also from a local Computing Service server.
- More information can be found on the openSUSE download and documentation
pages.
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 the
full five CDs or the single
DVD from the ISO images provided by the Computing Service. There
is also a Installing Novell
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
(PCWorld, Maplin, etc.).
|