1 Readings, Assignments, Labs, and ToDo

Read (at least) these things (All The Words):
Using your lynda.com account, watch Unix for Mac OS X Users
- 4. Ownership and Permissions 34m 58s
  - Who am I? 4m 3s
    - whoami
  - Unix groups 1m 52s
    - groups
  - File and directory ownership 6m 41s
    - ls -la, chown, sudo
  - File and directory permissions 4m 27s
    - rwx notation
  - Setting permissions using alpha notation 6m 49s
    - chmod

1.1 Assignments, Quizzes, and Lab work this week

Reminder: There are now two quizzes that you need to complete on Blackboard as part of your term Quiz mark. A third quiz will be posted before the Final Exam.

Check the due date for each assignment and put a reminder in your agenda, calendar, and digital assistant.

Read All The Words, Do, and then Submit via Blackboard:
- Assignment #07 HTML – setting permissions, mode, umask
- Assignment #10 HTML – CentOS 6.6 Installation and Configuration
- Really do Read All The Words. You don’t get a second chance to get it right.

1.1.1 Worksheets

The worksheets are available in four formats: Open Office (ODT), PDF, HTML, and Text. Only the Open Office format allows you “fill in the blanks” in the worksheet. The PDF format looks good but doesn’t allow you to type into the blanks in the worksheet. The HTML format is crude but useful for quick for viewing online.

Do NOT open the ODT files using any Microsoft products; they will mangle the format and mis-number the questions. Use the free Libre Office or Open Office programs to open these ODT documents. On campus, you can download Libre Office here.

Worksheet #02 ODT online viewing: Worksheet #02 HTML – Using standard Linux commands I
- PS1, cd, find, less, ls, man, mkdir, passwd, pwd, rmdir
Worksheet #03 ODT online viewing: Worksheet #03 HTML – Using standard Linux commands II
- cat, clear, cp, find, grep, history, less, man, mv, rm, sleep, touch
Worksheet #04 ODT online viewing: Worksheet #04 HTML – GLOB Patterns and Aliases
- bash GLOB patterns (wildcards), alias, sum
Worksheet #05 ODT online viewing: Worksheet #05 HTML – I/O Redirection and Pipes
- bash I/O redirection (including pipes), date, head, nl, tail, tr, wc
Worksheet #08 ODT online viewing: Worksheet #08 HTML – minimal permissions, mode, umask, octal
- chmod, ls -lid, umask

1.1.2 Optional Bonus Assignments – extra marks

Assignment #03 HTML – Optional BONUS VIM Text Editor Practice
- this is an optional worksheet for a BONUS assignment using vim
- Optional Reading: The VI (VIM) Text Editor
- Worksheet #06 HTML – Optional VIM Text Editor Practice
- this is an optional worksheet for a BONUS assignment using vim
- Optional command-line VIM tutorial: the vimtutor program on the CLS.
Assignment #05 HTML – Optional BONUS Midterm Assignment
- This is an optional BONUS assignment reviewing your midterm test.
- There is an Assignment #5 checking script available to verify the format of your file before you submit it for marking, but only people who Read All The Words here will know about it.
- New Due Date due to Blackboard failure last week.
Assignment #08 HTML – Optional BONUS Midterm Assignment
- This is an optional BONUS assignment reviewing your midterm test.
- There is an Assignment #8 checking script available to verify the format of your file before you submit it for marking, but only people who Read All The Words here will know about it.

2 From the Class Notes link on the Course Home Page

Review last week. Did you do everything assigned last week?

3 From the Classroom Whiteboard/Chalkboard

Take notes in class! Your in-class notes would go here.

Understanding pathnames and symlinks:

1. Ways of creating files in /tmp:
   $ touch /tmp/file ; cp foo /tmp/tmpfile ; mv bar /tmp/tmpfile
2. Create a directory in /tmp:
   $ mkdir /tmp/dir
3. Create a symlink in /tmp with target "linux":
   $ ln -s linux /tmp/symlink
   De-reference (relative path): /tmp/symlink -> /tmp/linux
4. Create a symlink in /tmp/a/b/bar with target "../../a/../foo":
   $ ln -s ../../a/../foo /tmp/a/b/bar
   De-reference: /tmp/a/b/bar -> /tmp/a/b/../../a/../foo -> /tmp/foo

The diff command from GNU Diffutils:
- diff file1 file2
- Lines starting with < are in file on left (file1) ; lines starting with > are in file on right (file2).
- Description of Output
- If you know VI, use a wide terminal screen and try vimdiff
- If you run a Linux GUI, see also meld (and gvimdiff for VI)
Advanced answer to Assignment #06 easy, medium, etc. disk usage
1. Find all the inode numbers under foo and print them one per line
2. For each line, run find to find all inodes with that number and delete.
Patrick Ouellette will be giving a presentation on the 3rd year Security program in B370 on Tuesday, November 11th at 5:30pm. More information on the program is available here: http://www.algonquincollege.com/sat/program/computer-systems-technology-security/

3.1 Midterm Test #2 Analysis

Number of students who entered their own name incorrectly on the mark-sense form: 12
Number of students who entered the wrong test version number: 37
Number of students who got question #45 wrong even though the answer was given in the Test Instructions printed at the top of the test: 5
Class scores for 139 (out of 159 registered) students:

95.6 93.3 91.1 91.1 91.1 91.1 91.1 91.1 91.1 88.9 88.9 88.9 86.7 86.7 84.4 84.4 84.4 84.4 84.4 84.4 84.4 83.6 82.2 82.2 82.2 82.2 82.2 81.5 80 80 80 77.8 77.8 77.8 77.8 77.8 77.8 77.8 75.6 75.4 73.3 73.3 73.3 73.3 73.3 73.3 73.3 73.3 71.1 71.1 71.1 68.9 68.9 68.9 68.9 66.7 66.7 66.7 64.8 64.7 64.4 64.4 64.4 64.4 64.4 64.4 62.7 62.7 62.5 62.2 60.4 60 60 60 60 57.8 57.8 56.4 55.6 53.9 53.9 53.3 52.8 52.8 52.2 52.2 51.7 51.7 51.1 51.1 51.1 50.1 49.6 48.9 48.9 48.9 48 47.4 46.7 46.7 46.7 45.3 44.4 44.4 44.4 44.4 43.9 43.4 42.2 41.8 41.8 40 38.8 37.8 37.8 37.8 37.2 36.6 35.5 33.4 33.4 33.3 31.1 31.1 29.3 28.9 25.9 24.4 24.3 23.5 21.6 21.5 20.9 20 15.5 14.6 14.2 13.3 8.9

 90% - 100%   9  *********            
 80% -  90%  22  **********************
 70% -  80%  20  ******************** 
 60% -  70%  24  ************************
 50% -  60%  18  ******************   
 40% -  50%  19  *******************  
 30% -  40%  12  ************         
 20% -  30%  10  **********           
 10% -  20%   4  ****                 
  0% -  10%   1  *

You can see the errors in Midterm Test #2 PDF.

3.2 Learning the Material

You learn the material because you want to be a Computer Systems Technician.
- You like doing this work; you want to be good at it.
Review your mistakes on the first midterm test (questions re-appear).
For practice tests and quizzes, see the Practice Test README
Review the commands used in each lab worksheet (and their common options).
- Unix/Linux Command List
Review how the shell works: GLOB, redirection, quotes
- Know why the shell behaves that way. Copy/paste teaches you nothing.
- process quotes, split on semicolons and pipes next, then do redirection
What are the Four Rules for Output Redirection? Three Rules for Pipes?
- Unix Shell I/O Redirection (including Pipes)
From Colin and Alex:

Read All The Words by Alex and Colin

4 Real Sysadmin Work

4.1 Locally Authored Linux Security Document

Mike Gifford runs OpenConcept Consulting here in town: “Open source web development for social change”. He works with Drupal, an open source web content management system (CMS).

He wrote:

We’ve been working on a best practices document for Drupal security that is geared specifically at government clients. […] We wrote this for a federal government department in town that had their site compromised earlier in the year. Figured it was a good time to write up a general document to help guide folks in the public sector. Security is certainly a complex issue, and most government departments just don’t seem to get it. For instance CSEC provides security information for Windows 2003, but not Windows 2008.

We are releasing this document because we believe that most government departments simply do not have the resources to put into properly setting up and maintaining the security of their servers. Our hope is that we will be able to build a community of people behind this process who can help build on and maintain a set of best practices. I’m also hoping that it helps to reach up into management a bit and be more approachable for folks who already with IT security.

I do hope that folks […] heard the recent court case with the 12 year old boy who is on trial for hacking into government computer systems in 3 different jurisdictions. To some extent that’s a reflection the rise of hacker culture on the Internet, but it should also be an indication of how far government security practices have fallen short. If a kid can hack away at government sites for fun, and get away with this much information, what are more politically or crime motivated hackers capable of? There is far too much security theatre and not enough collaboration within government about how to raise the lowest common denominator for security. I’ve blogged about this here:

http://openconcept.ca/blog/mgifford/when-even-our-kids-can-hack-government-site

We’ve released the initial security guide here for review here (we are asking for people to submit their name & email so that we can track who is making use of this PDF):

http://openconcept.ca/drupal-security-guide

We’d like to get feedback on this document, and our hope is that this starts an open conversation about security best practices. I would like to thank the people who have contributed to this document, but generally I have decided what is or is not listed in this release. There will be errors that I likely introduced and they will be addressed as they are raised.

There’s a GoogleDoc too for folks who are interested in adding comments directly to that version of the document.

Mike Gifford, President, OpenConcept Consulting Inc.
Drupal 8 Core Accessibility Maintainer –> http://drupal.org/user/27930
http://twitter.com/mgifford | http://linkedin.com/in/mgifford

Open source web development for social change – http://openconcept.ca

Take Notes in Class

Author: 
| Ian! D. Allen  -  idallen@idallen.ca  -  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| Home Page: http://idallen.com/   Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/
| College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/
| Defend digital freedom:  http://eff.org/  and have fun:  http://fools.ca/

Plain Text - plain text version of this page in Pandoc Markdown format

CST8207 Week 10 Notes
Permissions, package management, system logging, processes

Ian! D. Allen – idallen@idallen.ca – www.idallen.com

Fall 2014 – September to December 2014