Updated: 2011-12-08 12:40 EST
Your hard disk is very sensitive to shock. Don’t store it unpadded in the bottom of your backpack where it will hit the floor every time you drop your backpack. Keep it in a thick bubble wrap envelope or wrap it in your clothes. Store it in your locker when you aren’t using it and don’t carry it around all the time.
Your hard disk is sensitive to temperature changes. Keep it at room temperature. Don’t bring it into a warm room and power it on right after it has been stored outside in your freezing car overnight or in a cold backpack in winter. If you have a very cold hard drive, give it a few hours to warm up before turning it on.
Put your name on your caddy so we can contact you if you leave it behind in a lab some day.
Treat every virtual machine as you would a real physical computer. You must power on and power off your real and virtual systems in the correct order to avoid file system damage and locked VMware images:
Reverse these steps, bottom-to-top, to power on your systems.
Lock files are left behind when you fail to Shut Down or Suspend your virtual machines before closing VMware or before shutting down your Windows XP host. Locked virtual machines may be corrupted, since they did not shut down cleanly. To unlock your locked virtual machines:
D:
drive).lck
” and remove itAll your machines should be unlocked; some may be corrupted or damaged and may not work properly. Do not remove the lock files of running virtual machines. Follow correct shutdown procedures.
Updated: 03:45 November 12, 2011
You must download, fill in the answers, and upload/submit your assignments online via Blackboard, following these rules.
Start your Fedora 12 virtual machine. Make the window full-screen. (You may benefit from first adjusting your display settings under your host O/S to increase the screen resolution of your display.)
Inside your Fedora virtual machine, download your assignment ODT file (in OpenOffice format) to a directory on your virtual hard drive. Make sure you download the ODT file, not the PDF file.
Inside your Fedora virtual machine, open the assignment ODT file you downloaded using OpenOffice. Do not open the assignment inside Microsoft Word - the layout will be wrong. You must use Fedora’s OpenOffice (or LibreOffice). DO NOT USE MICROSOFT WORD.
Also open a Fedora shell terminal window. (From the Fedora 12 menus, select Applications->System Tools->Terminal.)
Adjust your lab document window and your terminal window so that you can have both the lab document and terminal open at the same time. (Refer to Item #1 above about increasing the resolution of your display to allow two windows to fit side-by-side.)
Go read the section on Enabling Focus Follows Mouse if you want your typing to go into the window containing the mouse, eliminating the need to click to type in that window. (Highly Recommended!)
There are two ways to enter answers into this ODT document:
You can change between INSRT and OVER mode by clicking the INSRT/OVER button in the status line at the bottom of the document, or by pushing the [Insert] key. Make sure all your answers are red.
If you make a mistake, use the Undo button or Edit|Undo menu to undo your mistake and start over. Save your document after you enter each answer.
Enter your name and lab section at the top of the OpenOffice document.
Follow the assignment instructions. Type your answers to replace the lines of straight red underscores in each answer in your OpenOffice document. You may be able to cut-and-paste some of the longer answers into your document instead of writing them by hand, but you will learn more by reading the terminal output and copying by hand. If you want to learn the material, do not cut-and-paste.
When you are entering answers into the OpenOffice document, be sure to pay attention to the following points, otherwise you will badly mangle the formatting of the document and it will not be marked:
Answers must be entered in RED so that they stand out clearly from the original document’s text, and your lab instructor can easily read your answers. All answers must be coloured red.
Document pagination must remain the same. Do not add extra lines to the document, and do not delete lines, unless you need to delete the occasional blank line to make room for a multi-line answer. Students must compare the modified version with the original and make sure the answers still have the same numbers or letters and appear on the same page numbers. Don’t change pagination and don’t insert accidental questions that change the question numbering or lettering. If you make a mistake, you can use the Undo button or select Edit|Undo to undo the change.
The best way to type an answer into the OpenOffice document is by double-clicking on the red answer underscores to select the entire line and then typing your new answer to replace all the underscores.
I don’t recommend copying and pasting, because you don’t learn the output of commands by cut-and-paste. If you must paste lines into the OpenOffice document (not recommended), follow these rules:
Pasting doesn’t always work between Terminal and OpenOffice. You may have to type those answers manually, which is what I recommend in the first place. You will learn more by re-typing the answers.
When you have answered all the questions, and filled in your Name and Lab section at the top of the first page, save the document. Keep a copy of all your lab documents until the course is over. We may need to check your copy.
If you are uploading more than one file for marking (e.g. you have a log file to upload as well as the ODT document), make sure the secondary files are complete before you start the upload process. Always upload both the ODT file and all the secondary files in every submission. I only mark the most recent submission and ignore all previous submissions, so the most recent submission must contain ALL the required files. You cannot upload part of an assignment in one upload and a second part in a later upload. I only look at the latest upload and ignore the earlier ones.
Use Blackboard to submit and upload the completed ODT document (and any secondary files) to the correct assignment section of this course. Do not change the name of the files when you upload - use the exact same names you were given. Do this:
Always upload both the ODT file AND all the secondary files in every submission. I only mark the most recent submission and ignore all previous submissions, so the most recent submission must contain ALL the required files. You cannot upload part of an assignment in one upload and a second part in a later upload. I only look at the latest upload and ignore the earlier ones.
If you wish to claim that you uploaded the file correctly but Blackboard “lost it”, you must show me your screen capture of the full Review Submission History page to prove that you uploaded it correctly to the correct course and assignment number.
Only modified original lab ODT (OpenOffice) documents with original pagination and question numbering preserved will be marked. You cannot submit DOC or PDF answer files. Submit only edited ODT documents that follow these rules.
No marks are awarded for submitting to the wrong course or to the wrong assignment number, or submitting the wrong ODT file.
Normally you have to click in a Fedora window to make it accept focus (keyboard input), and that click also raises the window. You can change this behaviour so that simply moving the mouse into a window enables keyboard input without requiring any mouse click and without raising the window. This is called “focus-follows-mouse”. To enable this wonderful feature, install both the “control-center-extra” and updated “nautilus” packages, either through the System|Administration|Add/Remove Software menu or by becoming “root” and using the command line:
su
yum install control-center-extra
yum install nautilus
exit
Answer Yes to all questions. You will have to enter your root password and confirm the installation of some other related packages.
When installed, this package creates the menu System|Preferences|Windows. Select this Windows menu item to open the Window Preferences dialog box. Check “Select windows when the mouse moves over them”. You can leave “Raise selected windows after an interval” unchecked.
Now, just moving the mouse pointer into a window will enable keyboard focus. You don’t have to click in the window to type there any more.
Your Fedora 12 installation will at some point announce that dozens of security updates are available for your Linux system, as well as hundreds and hundreds of other non-security updates - over 900MB of updates in total. Don’t attempt to do this during the day on campus. Wait until a time when the network is less used, or perhaps do it from home late at night. If you only use Fedora in your virtual machine, don’t bother with doing any updates.
If you resume a virtual machine in a different room than where you Suspended it, the resumed networking will likely be wrong - it will be the networking used in the room where you Suspended the machine. Under the Network menu on the top menu bar, you have to “Disconnect” and then reconnect the wired network to get networking functioning again.
When you first power on a VMware virtual machine on hardware different from that on which it was created, you may be asked if you moved or copied the virtual machine. The answer is simple: If this virtual machine is not a copy of an existing machine, reply moved it (this is the usual case). If you actually did make a file copy of the virtual machine file and power on the new copy, reply copied it.
To get a longer pause at the VMware BIOS boot menu, edit (using Notepad) each of your VMware *.vmx
configuration files and add this line at the bottom: bios.bootDelay = "60000"
The mouse does not work on any BIOS/POST screens or GRUB (boot menu) screens. First click in the virtual machine window (to set keyboard focus there), then use the keyboard arrow keys to change selections and ENTER to proceed.
A linked clone/snapshot links to the base version using a host-specific absolute pathname that doesn’t work directly on alternate architectures. You can still use the clone/snapshot, but you have to manually browse to the new absolute pathname when booting the system.
Using VMware to Suspend a machine is faster and more convenient than using the menus to shut it down. One time you should not use Suspend is if you are going to restart the machine on a different processor.
VMware gives a warning about problems if the processor vendor changes when you restart a machine. Avoid restarting a Suspended machine on a different processor. If you know you’re moving to a different processor (e.g. moving to home from school or vice-versa), shut down your virtual machines instead of suspending them.
You must have a valid and current anti-virus installed in any Windows systems used on Campus. Your caddy Windows XP comes with ESET. You can update your ESET license via the Computer Systems Technician course on Blackboard, under “ESET Instructions”.
11F_H_0150X_WO_F_A_01_01 Computer Systems Technician
Eset-Fall-2011-Update ver.6400-20110822-students.xml
You can never recover or find out an existing password from Linux. All you can do is set a new password to replace the old one.
Since the default VMWare mouse escape (Hot Keys) starts with CTRL+ALT
, you may need to change this in the VMWare Edit|Preferences|HotKeys dialog before the following instructions using CTRL+ALT+F2
can work. I recommend changing the Hot Key Combination to Custom and using CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+WIN
in “Down” mode.
If you forget the password of your ordinary (non-root) account, switch to a text console (e.g. use CTRL+ALT+F2
), log in as the root user and use the command passwd user
where user
is the account for which you want to set a new password. (You cannot log in as root via the Fedora GUI; you must switch away from the GUI to use a text console.)
After you have set the new password, log out from root by typing exit
, switch back to the Fedora GUI using either CTRL-F1
or CTRL-F7
, then log in as user
using the new password. Remember it!
If you forget the password of your root account, you have more work to do. Read this whole section through once before you begin.
To recover the root account, you have to Shut Down and restart Linux in single-user mode. Look for the “I forgot my password” PowerPoint file on Blackboard, which has pictures and is mostly right but not completely correct, or follow these directions here which are definitely right (Fedora 12, September 2011):
#
”).passwd root
command to change root’s password.reboot
at the prompt.You can also change any other user account password as root in single-user mode, using the same passwd user
syntax. See the man page for passwd.
Don’t forget your passwords!
You can take your caddy home (or connect it to your laptop) and plug it in as a second external hard disk, either ESATA or USB. You can then open your virtual machines and run them using either the free VMware Player (from http://vmware.com/), or the full VMware Workstation application.
The version of VMware Workstation pre-installed in your Windows XP host O/S this term is already licensed for a year. (You can renew the license via the VMware Web Store, mentioned below.) You only need a license for the second copy of VMware Workstation that you download at home (or on your laptop).
You can get an updated license for VMware Workstation by following the directions you got in a recent email message sending you to the VMware Web Store at onthehub.com
. (You can also get to this store via the Drivers and Downloads menu at http://cstech/.) You do not need Workstation to run your existing virtual machines - the free VMware Player application will do that. You need a licensed copy of VMware Workstation only to modify or create new virtual machines.
For home or laptop use, use your caddy as an additional external hard disk and connect it to your existing Linux/Windows/Mac computer or laptop using an ESATA or USB cable. In most cases you won’t even need to reboot your system when you connect the external disk; the disk will be recognized when you plug it in.
Do not use your caddy drive as a boot drive (main disk) other than in the Algonquin caddy labs T108, T110, T111, T113, T114, T115, T126. Booting from the caddy anywhere else will confuse the Windows XP host operating system (because the hardware will be different), and it may lock you out and require you to re-image your O/S partition over again to recover.
Make sure your Networking is working before you configure a network printer. (Check the Network icon in the Linux top menu bar, and make sure you can use Linux Firefox to open a Google window inside Linux.) Installing a network printer requires network access.
Athough the printer in T126 is a Lexmark model Optera T632, the Lexmark E220 driver is available and works, so we use that below.
Note that the printer will only work if your Fedora Linux system is fully connected to the network, as indicated by the Network icon in the Linux top menu bar. Be careful about queueing multiple print jobs with the network disconnected - all those print jobs will rush to the printer when the network becomes active. Go to System -> Administration -> Printing and right-click on lp126 and select “View Print Queue” to see and delete queued print jobs you don’t need. Once all the print jobs go to the printer, you have to physically go to the printer and use the front panel buttons to cancel the print jobs.
Installing VMware Tools into your Linux system will improve many aspects of using Linux under VMware. See the last paragraphs, below, for details.
Arrange your windows so that you can read these instructions and see your Linux desktop at the same time. (You may find it easier to open these instructions in a web browser in your Windows XP host O/S.)
Start by going to the VMware “Virtual Machines” (“VM”) menu and select “Install VMWare Tools”. A dialog Question may appear, giving you instructions similar to what you read here (but with less detail). Click “Install”. A CD/DVD volume named “VMWare Tools” should appear on your Linux desktop.
A file browser dialog box should open with the title “VMware Tools”. If the file browser does not open, double click on the “VMware Tools” CD/DVD icon to open it. Two icons are visible inside the browser window: a manifest.txt file and a compressed VMwareTools file ending in “.tar.gz”.
When you can see the compressed VMwareTools tar.gz file, click-and-drag that icon to your Linux Desktop to copy the file. Close the file browser dialog box when you are done. The VMwareTools compressed tar.gz file should now be a file visible on your Linux Desktop.
Go to the Linux menu "Applications" -> "System Tools"
and open "Terminal"
(usually at the bottom of the menu). A command terminal will open, with a shell command-line prompt. Arrange your windows so you can read these instructions and type into the command window at the same time.
Read this entire next section before typing any of the commands below:
*
” in some file names and don’t insert any blanks before it.su
” below will require you to type in your Linux root password to start a shell running as the root user. (If you have forgotten your root password, you will have to follow directions in this page to boot Single-User Mode to set a new root password. After setting the new password, start over again at the top of the list of commands, below.)./vm*/vm*
” runs an installation script (as the root user) that will ask you questions. Wherever the running script asks you to enter or confirm something, push the ENTER key and accept the default value - do not type or change anything. Once the install script completes, the root shell prompt will re-appear. Wait for the root shell prompt to reappear before typing the next command.rm
” will produce no visible output. It removes all the files you don’t need after installing VMware Tools.Now, having read all the above instructions carefully, type each of these commands into your Linux Terminal window:
cd Desktop
tar -zxvf VM*
su
./vm*/vm*
exit
rm -rf VM* vm*
exit
After the terminal window closes, in your VMware application, under the “View” menu, un-check (turn off) “Autofit Window” and check (turn on) “Autofit Guest”.
The simplest way to get VMware Tools working is to shut down and restart your Linux virtual machine using the usual Fedora System | Shut Down and then Restart menu. Do this now.
When you next log in to Linux, you should find that your Linux Desktop is expanded to the full size of the VMware window containing it (no more black border), and changing the size of the VMware window will change the size of your Linux Desktop to match. (Sometimes, you may see a pop-up error message saying that the monitor size cannot be changed. Ignore this.)
With VMware Tools working, your mouse will now flow seamlessly between the virtual machine and the host machine, without having to push any escape keys to unlock it from the VMware window, and cut-and-paste will work between this virtual machine and the Windows host O/S.
Your first lab in this course contains printed instructions on troubleshooting a caddy that does not appear to be working properly. See also troubleshooting help on the http://cstech/ web site. (The cstech
web site only works properly inside the College or through the College VPN. You can find a partial mirror of some of the information here.)
If your caddy doesn’t work on a particular machine in a lab (i.e. your disk drive is not visible during POST, or the blue LED light never blinks during POST to indicate access to the hard disk, or the blue LED is constantly blinking even when the computer is off), follow these steps:
If your caddy still doesn’t work, take your caddy apart, unscrew, remove and re-insert the hard drive, making sure to push it firmly against the circuit board for a good connection. There should be no space between the hard disk and the circuit board. Screw it down firmly.
Many student drives shift during term and need to be re-seated inside the caddy enclosure.
If after all the above attempts you still can’t get the drive to work properly, go to a working machine or an open access centre and bring up the CSTECH problem report form and submit a problem report: http://cstech/
Under “Room Number:” either select the room you are in from the drop-down menu or use “General Inquiry” if you are in a different room. If you are in a different room, remember to include the room number in the description of the problem report so that the technician can come to you.
This CSTECH report will go immediately to the hardware people via pager, and if they are on duty they will come to your room right away to help you diagnose the problem. You can also try visiting the hardware lab in T110, though paging through the reporting form is probably faster.
You cannot return your drive or caddy to the campus store as defective until it has been signed off as defective by our hardware technicians. You must follow the above steps before you can get a replacement hard drive or enclosure.
VIM is an easy-to-use but hard-to-learn text editor. It doesn’t need the X Windows system to be running; you can use it over a serial line and a dial-up modem. Perhaps this will help: http://lifehacker.com/5844890/the-interactive-vim-tutorial-teaches-you-how-to-use-the-super+efficient-vim-text-editor
The UMASK value is a mask. It turns off permissions. Do not subtract a umask value from permissions; use it as a mask. For example: default 666 with umask 002 gives 664 but default 666 with umask 001 gives 666 (no change!) and default 666 with umask 007 gives 660.
In 2011, many distributions of Linux are still in a transition from the old static run-level system sysvinit inherited from System V Unix™ to the new event-driven upstart system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstart) or to the newer dependency-based systemd system (http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html and http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/why.html).
The old System V run-level system had a small number of system states, called run levels, each of which had an ordered list of processes running. Switching between states stopped and started processes in a given order. You couldn’t have dependencies such as “start this process whenever that process starts” or “start this process when this hardware changes”. The new upstart and systemd systems can handle these things, while retaining backward-compatibility with the legacy System V scripts.
While Linux is in transition, upstart emulates the old run levels using events and systemd extracts dependency information from the LSB (Linux Standards Base) headers in the old sysvinit files under /etc/init.d
. Many programs have not yet been converted to upstart or systemd and still use a legacy run-level start script. Fedora moved to upstart with Fedora 9, then to systemd with Fedora 15.
Many modern hard disks have 4KB blocks, not the old 512-byte blocks, but Windows versions prior to Vista(?) don’t handle these disks properly, leading to extremely slow access times. You need to re-align your 4KB-block disk to make it usable under old versions of Windows, especially Windows XP. See this link: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloadsw.asp?sid=128
The hardware kits supplied to students have Seagate disks that claim to have alignment software built into the disk.