Updated: 2022-07-29 02:04 EDT

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CST 8207 Course Home Page

Canadian Flag GNU/Linux Operating Systems I

Fall (SeptemberDecember) 2012

Instructor
Ian! D. Allen
Contact E-mail, Office, Phone
See the Prof Timetable
WWW
My Teaching Home Page
My Personal Home Page
Office Appointment Hours
See my Prof Timetable schedule.
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Important Dates for CST8207 Students

See also Academic Calendar Fall 2012 [PDF].

  • 2012-09-03 – Week 1 – Monday September 3 – Labour Day (no classes)
  • 2012-09-04 – Week 1 – Tuesday September 4 – classes start
  • 2012-10-01 – Week 5 – Monday October 1 – Midterm #1 of 2 (15%)
  • 2012-10-08 – Week 6 – Monday October 8 – Canadian Thanksgiving Day (no classes)
  • 2012-11-05 – Week 10 – Monday November 5 – Midterm #2 of 2 (25%)
  • 2012-11-09 – Week 10 – Friday November 9 – final withdrawal date
  • 2012-12-08 to 2012-12-15 – Week 15 – Algonquin Final Assessment Week (Exams)
  • 2012-12-10 – Monday December 10 15h00 (3pm to 5:30pm) – D101 (Café) – Final exam (35%)

Final Exams

Laptop Machine Requirements

This is a Mobile Program Course – you must have with you a portable ("laptop") machine running Virtualization Software into which Linux can be installed for the duration of the term. You are encouraged to bring your machine to all your labs and classes so that you can participate in exercises.

For first-term CST8207 alone your machine requirements are modest. Most any machine (PC or Mac) that can run VMware, or Fusion, or Virtualbox, or Parallels and has 50GB of free disk space will do. (Other courses and other terms may need more than this.)

Laptop Support, Maintenance, Loans

Read the section What if my laptop breaks before you need it: Mobile Learning Support.

So You Want To Be A System Administrator?

Sysadmin devotion to duty

Is sysadmin the career path for you? Check these 10 signs that you aren't cut out for IT.

This program is well-suited for students who:

See Computer Systems Technician.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. - Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Read All The Words

who has time to read?

When you are given an assignment, read all the words. Read all the words before you answer a question. Read all the words before you ask anyone for help. Years of students have passed before you; the answers to most of the questions are already written in the assignment. Read all the words.

Redirect or Forward your Algonquin EMail

Plagiarism and Academic Fraud

No unauthorized copying! Restricted group work! Restricted working together!

For the modern student, plagiarism isn't all it used to be. In fact, many don't see it as an issue in the least. According to the New York Times, technology has fostered a laissez-faire attitude towards the practice. Many students plagiarize -- and many don't think they're doing anything wrong. More Students Misunderstand The Fundamentals Of Plagiarism

Group work and Working together is not permitted except in assignments specifically labelled by the instructor as group assignments. Share your ideas, never your answers.

Cutting-and-pasting an answer is not solving a problem. Do your own thinking and type your own answers. No cutting-and-pasting. Assignments containing cut-and-paste answers will be penalized.

Even where using another person's material is permitted (from other students, books, the Internet, or even from the blackboard or posted course notes), copying material from other sources and submitting it without proper credit to the author is an academic offence called plagiarism. You must credit the source of material that you did not write yourself, no matter from where it comes!

Students working together without authorization or submitting work containing cut-and-paste or plagiarized material will be charged with academic fraud under Algonquin Academic Regulations. Read the plagiarism document for details.

See also: Algonquin College Directives and Algonquin College Policy AA20 – Plagiarism

Cutting-and-pasting an answer is not solving a problem. Do your own thinking and type your own answers. No cutting-and-pasting. Assignments containing cut-and-paste answers will be penalized.

Recommended Course Textbooks

learning Perl is good

There is no required textbook for this course. We have selected some recommended (not required) textbooks for this course; the titles and purchase information are given in the Course Outline. The recommended textbooks are a reliable, comprehensive sources of accurate GNU/Linux information. Motivated students may choose instead to discover and use free Internet resources instead of a purchased textbook. Additional web-based notes will be provided on-line.

Alternate Web Notes

Web notes for this course are kept at multiple sites, including some broken web sites at Algonquin College. I pay for the notes to be stored on commercial Linux-based web hosting services, with backup copies located in various locations.

Write down the locations of the web notes and their backup copies from the list below. (You won't be able to get to this page if the main web site is down!)

  1. http://teaching.idallen.com/cst8207/12f/    (main .com site)
    The main dot .com site is located in a large data centre in Troy, Michigan, USA.
  2. http://teaching.idallen.org/cst8207/12f/    (note the dot .org domain suffix!)
    The .org site is located in a large data centre in New York.
  3. http://acadunix.algonquincollege.com/~alleni/teaching/cst8207/12f/     (on campus)
    The ACADUNIX site is accessible from inside Algonquin College even when the College Internet is broken. Unfortunately, the web server on ACADUNIX is not configured correctly to run CGI scripts and it will not serve up the directory index files correctly. (See this note.) You can read the Class Notes by appending /notes/ to the above URL.
  4. http://elearning.algonquincollege.com/coursemat/alleni/idallen/cst8207/12f/     (on campus)
    The ELEARNING site is accessible from inside Algonquin College even when the College Internet is broken. Unfortunately, the web server on ELEARNING is not configured correctly to run CGI scripts and it will not serve up the directory index files correctly. (See this note.) You can read the Class Notes by appending /notes/ to the above URL.