Department of Computer Science

Kulliyyah of Information & Communication Technology

International Islamic University Malaysia

COURSE OUTLINE
CSC 4201: Networks and System Administration

Kulliyyah Department
Kulliyyah of Information and Department of Computer Science
Communication Technology

Programme Bachelor of Computer Science

Course Title Networks and System Administration

Course Code CSC 4201

Status Core

Level 3

Credit Hours 3

Contact Hours 3

Pre-requisites CSC 2201 Computer Networking

Teaching Methodology Lecture

Tutorials
Lab work
Method of Evaluation Assignment(s) : 20%
Mid Term : 20%
Project : 40%
Final : 20%
Total : 100%
Instructor(s) TBD

Semester Offered I and II

Course Objectives The main objectives of this course are:

1. Able to administer UNIX or UNIX-like system

2. Understand the concept of TCP/IP and LAN and be able
to implement it in the enterprise systems.
3. Competent to take UNIX based certification test (LPI).

Course Synopsis As the deployment of Linux systems in production environments

has accelerated, Linux administrators are much in demand in
Government departments as well as in industry where the
Government is pushing for implementation of open source
software. Therefore, computer science students are expected to
be confident with UNIX/Linux platform. They are expected to
know the administration and as well as internals of the operating
system to run and administer this operating system in production
environment. UNIX and Linux are being from the same family
the commands are 90% similar or same. If a student can master
Linux commands he/she has learned UNIX command for AIX,
HP-UX, Solaris, Silicon Graphics IRIX and so on. Linux is a
cheap platform to learn and experiment with operating systems.
The students will be exposed to the esoteric and subtle
differences between different variant of Unices.

Learning Outcomes At the end of the course, students should be able to :

1. administer Linux and/or Unix like system including:

a. installation of hardware
b. administer user account
c. system backup and maintenance
d. administration of the log files
e. job scheduling
2. configure and install UNIX/Linux operating system
3. install applications software under UNIX/Linux
4. setup the networking- LAN, client and server
5. distinguish between the UNIX file system (ext2,ext3,reiserfs)
Course Outlines

Weeks Topics Reference

1 The System Administrator Evi Nemeth, Garth

• What is a system administrator? Snyder and Hein,
• Superuser aka root Trent R.
• System administration interfaces (Chapter One)

2 A Review of the Shell Evi Nemeth, Garth

Snyder and Hein,
• What is the shell? Trent R.
• How the shell interprets a command? (Chapter One)
• Metacharacters and the shell
• Filename expansion
• Variable manipulation
• Command substitution
• Input/output redirection
• Background processing
• Preventing metacharacter interpretation
• Executing commands in UNIX

3 Starting and Stopping in UNIX Evi Nemeth, Garth

• Boot process and inittab Snyder and Hein,
• init - task master Trent R.
• Descendents of init (Chapter Two)
• SAF - service access facility
• Shutting the system down
• Login Process
• Logging in

4 Controlling Processes Evi Nemeth, Garth

• Components of Processes Snyder and Hein,
• The life cycle of a process Trent R.
• Signals (Chapter Four)
• Process states
• Runway processes
5 Common Filesystem Directories Evi Nemeth, Garth
• Finding file locations Snyder and Hein,
• Common directories Trent R.
• Compatibility (Chapter Five)
• New directories
• Finding the otherwise unfindable

6 User Maintenance Evi Nemeth, Garth

• Adding a user, useradd Snyder and Hein,
• Changing user attributes Trent R.
• Adding a group (Chapter Six)
• Deactivating accounts

7 Special Devices Evi Nemeth, Garth

• Character devices Snyder and Hein,
• Connecting a terminal using the serial Trent R.
interface (Chapter Seven -
• Physical connection Eight)
• Terminal communication settings
• Working with terminal databases
• Block devices
• Pipes
• Where special devices are stored
• Major and minor device numbers
• Creating device files from scratch

8 Using at and Cron Evi Nemeth, Garth

• at- singular process queuing Snyder and Hein,
• What is cron? Trent R.
Using Backups and Restores (Chapter Nine -
• Backup strategies Ten)
• dump/restore
• Creating archives using cpio
• Backing up raw devices
 9 Syslog and Log Files Evi Nemeth, Garth
• Logging policies Snyder and Hein,
• LINUX log files Trent R.
• Syslog (Chapter Eleven -
• Condensing log files to useful Twelve)
information

10 Drivers and The Kernel Evi Nemeth, Garth

• Kernel Adaptation Snyder and Hein,
Trent R.
• Why configure the kernel
(Chapter Eleven -
• Configuration method Twelve)
• Tuning a Linux kernel
• Adding a device driver
• Adding a Linux device driver
• Device files
• Loadable kernel modules
• Building a Linux kernel

11-12 Evi Nemeth, Garth

TCP/IP Networking Snyder and Hein,
• TCP/IP and the Internet Trent R.
• Packets and encapsulation (Chapter Thirteen -
• IP Addresses Fourteen)
• Routing
• ARP
• Adding a machine to the network
• DHCP: The Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol
• Linux dynamic reconfiguration and
tuning
• Security issues
• Linux NAT
• PPP: The Point-to-Point Protocol
13 - 14 Evi Nemeth, Garth
Snyder and Hein,
Routing Trent R.
• Packet forwarding: a closer look (Chapter Thirteen -
• Routing daemons and routing protocol Fourteen)
• Protocols on parade
• routed
• gated
• Routing strategy selection criteria
 • Cisco router
Review

References Required :

Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder and Hein, Trent R., (2002),

Linux administration handbook, Upper Saddle River: Prentice
Hall.

Recommended :

Behrouz A. Forouzan and Gilberg, Richard F., (2003)Unix

and shell programming, United States: Brooks Cole.

Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder and Hein, Trent R., (2000)Unix

system administration handbook, Upper Saddle River: Prentice
Hall.

Vicki Stanfield and Smith, Roderick W., (2001)Linux

system administration, United States: Sybex.

Proposed Start Date Semester 2, 2005/2006

Batch of Students to be All Batches

Affected