------------------------- Week 01 Notes for NET2003 ------------------------- -Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - www.idallen.com Remember - knowing how to find out an answer is more important than memorizing the answer. Learn to fish! RTFM! (Read The Fine Manual) CS Department News http://www.algonquincollege.com/sat/cs/news.htm Home Page and Course Outline Find the Winter 2008 NET2003 course home page via Algonquin Blackboard or via: http://teaching.idallen.com/net2003/08w/ Make sure you find the page for this term, not last term! Bookmark it. I do not keep any course files on Algonquin Blackboard. Read the course home page carefully, including the parts about plagiarism and course notes. Note the important dates. Write down *on paper* the location of the Alternate Web Notes. Read the Course Outline, including the parts about tests and lab attendance. Find and look at my Timetable. Know how to set up an office appointment with me by email. Review the Course Outline: net2003-08w.pdf Midterm test dates are posted on the Course Home Page. EMail and Web-based EMail archives EMail is a critical component of course delivery for this course. Forward your Algonquin email (see the link on the course home page). Test to make sure that your forwarded Algonquin email works! Send yourself a test message. You must have a working Algonquin EMail address for this course (that you can forward elsewhere). You must read your course email regularly, either in your mailbox or via the web archives. For class online discussion I'm considering using a Course Mailing List, available as a link on the top left of the Course Home Page. Please post questions related to course content to this mailing list. (Please answer the questions if you know the answer!) Do not send me private email questions about course content; post course questions to the mailing list so I can answer them there. Attendance and Attention Attendance is also critical to course success. If you know the material and don't need to come to classes, ask for a Prior Learning Assessment. If you paid to be here, please be here. If you are in class, shut your laptop and pay attention to your lecturer. The person at the front of the room cannot compete with the entire Internet for your attention - he doesn't have the budget. If you're bored or falling alseep, take notes. Lab attendance is recorded - make sure you're signed in each week. I often give out a small lab exercise to submit as proof that you attended the lab that week. Taking Notes You will need to take notes in class. Not everything I say ends up in these online files. Passing the information through your body onto paper helps you remember it, even if you never read the notes later. If you have a question about course content, the first thing I will ask is to see your notes, to see what you wrote down about the topic. Often the answer is there! Textbook Purchase the course textbook (see the course home page). The textbook is needed for the second half of the course. If you don't buy it now, the bookstore will return unsold copies. I will assign exercises that use the textbook. You need it. Workload The overall term workload sometimes overwhelms students who try to leave everything to the last minute. You need to put in approximately an extra hour per day, per course, to keep up. There aren't enough hours in a day to catch up in mid-term. Timeliness Late assignments are penalized, usually resulting in a mark of zero. The due date for an assignment is given in the assignment. Read each assignment to know the due date. Preparation Lab time is precious. Most lab exercises are time-limited and will require you to have done advance preparation. If you haven't read the material and done the preparation, you won't finish on time. Linux Working Environment The material taught and used in this course is intended to be portable; you can use most any Linux machine to write and test your code. The final test run must be on the machine given in the assignment specification. This might be one of the Course Linux servers, or it might be a different machine. Off-hours Lab Access You are encouraged to use the lab outside of assigned lab hours. The hours of operation are posted on the door. You may ask other instructors if you may work quietly at the back of their classes. Remote Access to Linux You can access most Unix/Linux machines remotely. For Windows users, the "ssh" protocol is available in such programs as "ewan" and "PuTTY", which you can download for free from the Internet. Do a Google search for: putty download You need to use the Algonquin VPN to get to the Course Linux Server from off-campus; but, be aware that this VPN is not a split-tunnel and *all* your Internet traffic will pass through it, which will slow down the rest of your home network severely as long as the VPN is runnning. http://algonquincollege.com/its/ http://algonquincollege.com/its/support/connecthome/index.htm Running Linux at Home You may download (and optionally install) most any Linux distribution at home for free. Most any distribution will be support the material taught in this course. Many Linux distributions (e.g. Knoppix, Mandrake Live, Ubuntu) will boot directly from a CDROM and run entirely in memory, bypassing the need to do any disk installation at all. Be aware that when you shut down such an in-memory system, everything is lost - you must save any important files on real disk before you shut down. Linux User Groups See the Ottawa Canada Linux User Group (OCLUG): http://www.oclug.on.ca/ They meet on the first Tuesday of every month. Plagiarism You may not copy code from anywhere else without clearing the copying with me, in writing or by email, first. If your code contains enough unique lines found in other files, I am required to inquire whether you are the author of this code. If I authorize copying, you must attribute the source of material you use that isn't yours. You earn marks for the new material that you write, not code that comes from other sources. The Course Linux Server - 10.50.254.148 Check that you can login via SSH to the NET2003 Course Linux Server. I control this server - see me to have your password reset. Do *NOT* consult Algonquin ITS about the Course Linux Server. They don't know anything about it. See me for all problems. VIM editor You will need to know how to use the VIM text editor to modify files under Unix/Linux. Login to the Course Linux Server and complete the VIM tutorial mentioned in this Notes file: vi_basics.txt The VI (VIM) Editor - Basics * At most Linux shell prompts you can type: vimtutor A copy of the VIM tutorial file is in the Course Notes. See file vi_basics.txt in the course notes for details. See the vi_refcard reference card in the course notes. You must complete the tutorial to do the upcoming lab exercises. Unix and the Internet: - the Internet is not just the WWW (HTTP) - but Algonquin College blocks most non-HTTP traffic - in particular, the SMTP port (25) is blocked to external sites - blocks are "drop packet", not "refuse packet" types; they time out - WWW slashes are "forward" slashes because the WWW grew up on Unix machines. DOS/Windows came much later. - Open Source Motto: "Rough consensus and running code." Find Lab #1 as lab01.txt in the course notes.