Linux Programming

Dear Students,

We have talked about the Types of Operating systems, history of Unix/Linux Operating System,
UNIX Architecture, UNIX File system hierarchy and Features of UNIX.

But few students were absent in the class. Those who were absent they can use text books I
mentioned names below, and understand how Linux OS came into picture. As Linux is much
powerful OS, it is very much important for us to learn and understand the Linux OS in the
developer’s perspective. As Linux is similar to UNIX we will use the following text book for our
subject:

1. Unix concepts and applications, 4th edition, Sumitabha Das, TMH.

We have already studied the Operating Systems concepts in the previous semester. With that
knowledge you can easily understand some concepts in the LP subject. All the students have to
do the following Assignment and submit it by 12/12/2017.

Assignment 1

The first step to start our subject is to understand the UNIX Architecture, and its Features and
Commands. You can refer the text book “Unix concepts and applications, 4th edition, Sumitabha
Das, TMH” to do the Assignment.

You have to read the following and prepare the notes for the same.

Task1: UNIX Architecture, Features of UNIX, locating commands, Command Structure, Internal
and External Commands, Manual Pages On-line.

Task2: General purpose utilities (Commands) - cal, date, echo, printf, bc, script, passwd, who,
whoami, uname, tty, sty.

For Task2 you can either refer the text book or use the manual pages.

Manual pages means: The description, Syntax, Options, examples etc, for all the commands /
Functions that we use in Linux are available as Manual pages in the system. You can open the
terminal and type man command. For example if you want to see the manual page of printf
command you can type the following in the terminal. man printf

In the similar fashion you can get the all the details about any command. Understand the
description of all commands (in Task2) and use them by taking some examples.
There will be many options for most of the commands; each option will give you a different kind
of output. It is also necessary to understand the options of each command so that you can use
the commands in an efficient manner to get the desired output.

As there will be many options for each command it may not be possible to cover each and every
option. Hence while doing the assignment it is not compulsory to write all the options for each
command but you have to perfectly understand, and write the examples for atleast 5 options
(incase if a command has less than 5 options, you can write the examples for the options that
are available).

In short, you have to do the following for Assignment1:

1. For Task1, Understand the concepts and prepare notes.

2. For Task2, Take each command and understand, prepare notes which should include
description of the command (purpose), syntax, atleast 5 options along with their description and
separate examples for each option.

Note: If you get any doubts while doing the assignment, you can discuss with your friends, use
the resources available on the internet. If your doubt is still not clarified, you can mail me.