Introduction to Linux and LabNet

St. John’s Linux Users Group
and
Department of Computer Science,
Memorial University of Newfoundland

What is Linux?

• Linux is an Open Source operating system
• It was created by Linus Torvalds in ’91 while he was a grad student at the University of Helsinki (and only 21 years old).
• A Linux distribution is really a combination of the Linux kernel, GNU utilities, and other programs.

Operating System?

• An “operating system” is piece of software that acts as a layer between the computer hardware and the application software.
• Some people broaden their definition of operating system to include the supporting applications. In this case the core piece is known as the kernel.
• Both definitions are accepted, but note that Linux is the kernel portion and when bundled with the GNU utilities the distribution is more properly called GNU/Linux.

Open Source?

• In a nutshell, it’s software that you’re free (and encouraged) to modify and redistribute.
• In 1985 Richard Stallman (RMS) created the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Public License (GPL) and began creating a body of software:
• GCC (C compiler)
• GDB (debugger)
• Emacs (text editor)
• …and others…
• By 1990 his team began working on a kernel for the system, but it was progressing very slowly.
• After Linus released his kernel in 1991, it quickly became the de facto kernel for the GNU system.

Open Source? (2)

• In ’97 Eric Raymond (ESR) published an essay ‘The Cathedral and The Bazaar’ outlining the differences between the closed and open source models, and why he thought the open source model would produce better, less expensive software.
• Closed source = The Cathedral: one person/company in charge
• Open source = The Bazaar: everybody doing their own thing
• Today, Open Source is gaining popular support in industry. It has the support of companies such as IBM, Oracle, Sun, and Dell.

The Linux Filesystem

• The Linux filesystem does things quite differently than the Windows one.
• The biggest difference is the unified filesystem.
• Single, hierarchal directory structure, rooted at /
• Different drives/partitions are ‘mounted’ into directories – essentially grafting them into the filesystem.
• e.g. my CD-ROM might be accessible by looking in the directory /mnt/cdrom.
• The filesystem is case sensitive
• Most pieces of hardware are accessible by special files in the /dev directory.

Links/References

• Wikipedia: Operating System
• A Brief History of Free/Open Source Software Movement
• Getting Started with Linux - Lesson 1
• The Linux filesystem explained

Choices Choices Choices

• Desktop Environments

• Window Managers

• Common Functionality

Desktop Environments

• KDE
• GNOME
• XFCE

Window Managers

• KWM (KDE)
• Metacity (GNOME)
• XFWM (XFCE)
• Enlightenment
• The *Boxes
• FVWM
• WindowMaker

Common Functionality

• Multiple Desktops
• Shading
• Sticky
• Mouse Buffer

Questions & Hands-On

Challenge:

Copy and paste two seperate, non-contiguous pieces of text from one application to another, but only switch between the applications once.

Open Source Productivity Software

These applications are available on multiple platforms.

• Web Browser: FireFox
• Office Suite: OpenOffice
• Instant Message Client: GAIM
• Image Manipulation: GIMP

FireFox

• Part of the Mozilla Suite
• Built in Popup Blocker
• Tabbed Browsing (‘Ctrl + t’ for a new tab, ‘Ctrl + PgUp|PgDn’ to cycle tabs)
• Does not load ActiveX controls
• Familiar features of other browsers with added extras (RSS integration, plugins, themes, and more)

OpenOffice

The following reference OpenOffice 2.0 Applications.

• Word Processor: Writer
• Open/Save As .doc format.
• Export as PDF
• SpreadSheet: Calc
• Open/Save As .xls format.
• Export as PDF.
• User defined macros.
• Presentation Manager: Impress
• Open/Save As .ppt format.
• Export as PDF, SWF (Flash)

OpenOffice

The following reference OpenOffice 2.0 Applications.

• Drawing Program: Draw
• Export as HTML, PDF, SWF (Flash)
• Other Formats: bmp, emf, eps, gif, jpg, met, pbm, pct, pgm, png, ppm, ras, svg, svm, tif, wmf, and xpm
• Math Program: Math
• Database: Base

GAIM

A multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client

• Compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks
• Logon to multiple accounts on multiple networks.
• Tabbed conversations
• Spell Checking!

GIMP

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program.

• Photo retouching
• Image Composition
• Image Authoring
• Supports many file types
• I recommend reading the GIMP tutorials to learn how to get to most from this software: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

References/Links

For more information on the applications covered please visit:

• FireFox: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
• OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/
• GAIM: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
• GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/

What is it and why should we use it?

The shell provides a very powerful scripting interface to the operating system.

Advantages:

• Easier to accomplish complex tasks than using a GUI
• Sometimes, just impossible to use a GUI
• Don’t need a myriad of utilities

Basic shell commands

These basic commands should be adequate enough to navigate around in the shell.

More advanced commands

The basic commands will only get you so far with the shell. The real power belongs to the extra commands.

Job Control

Sometimes you may have a command which will take a little while to complete. You can put this command into the background and continue to work on something different.

Ripping and encoding an audio cd

This example will use the following constructs:

• For loop
• Error checking
• Path variables
• Shell specific special characters

Find and Download the Software Package

• Linux software packages can be found using Google or Sourceforge, for example.
• Package types include .rpm and .deb which typically contain binaries.
• We are interested in packages that end with .tar.gz, which can contain source code.
• What is a .tar.gz file?
• A tar file is a Tape ARchive. An archive is simply many files combined into one file to make downloading more convenient.
• To save space and transfer time, a tar file is usually compressed using a utility called gzip or bzip2.
• A .tar.gz file is similar, in principle, to a .zip file.
• We’ll install a small program called lpairs

Extract the contents of the .tar.gz file

• We use a program called tar to extract the archive.
• This command has many options. Important ones include:

  z :	(de)compress (gzip)	x :	extract
  j :	(de)compress (bzip2)	c :	create
  f :	operate on a file	v :	verbose

• Sample usage:

    $ tar -zxvf lpairs-1.0.tar.gz
    lpairs-1.0/
    lpairs-1.0/Makefile.in
    lpairs-1.0/README
  

        …remainder of output deleted…

Compiling and installing the program

• Properly created archives make their own directory when extracted e.g. lpairs-1.0/
• We must change into this directory:

  $ cd lpairs-1.0

• You should at least browse the README and INSTALL files in this directory.
• Configure the build (creates a Makefile):

  $ ./configure --prefix=~/apps --disable-audio

• Compile/build the program (uses the Makefile):

  $ make

• If there were no errors, then install the program:

  $ make install

Run the program

• Remember that during the ./configure step, we specified an installation prefix directory of ~/apps.
• The executable for the program is stored in the bin subdirectory of the ~/apps directory.

  $ cd ~/apps/bin
  $ ls -l
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 slug study 157240 Sep 13 16:46 lpairs
  

• We can now finally run the program:

  $ ./lpairs

• Visit http://lgames.sourceforge.net and try downloading and installing the Barrage game.

Links and References

• For more information/instructions:
• www.linuxgazette.com/node/157
• www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/15903.html
• To find Linux applications:
• freshmeat.net
• sourceforge.net
• lgames.sourceforge.net
  • More games written by Michael Speck
• google.com/linux

MUNLabNet - Network of automated computer labs

• Automated client computer software management through the use of NFS (network file system) mounted from application server.
  

MUNLabNet - Network of automated computer labs

• Automated server software management through the use of rsync.

MUNLabNet - Network of automated computer labs

• Automated distribution of Win 98 and WinXP images upon reboot of client computer.

MUNLabNet - Network of automated computer labs

• Client and server configurations are maintained in a database that manages all client and server specific configuration information.
• A web based program manages the updates to the client and server configuration database
• A daemon running on all servers waits for changes in the database and makes relevant changes in the system configuration files for both client and servers systems.

MUNLabNet - Authentication

• User authentication is managed by a replicated LDAP database that can manage authentication in the Linux domain as well as the Microsoft domain.
• A set of web tools manage the entries in the LDAP database and facilitate the creation of accounts (authorized against the Campus Card Database) and the account renewals.
• Will be able to authenticate MUN wireless users so that they will be able to utilize LabNet services.
• Will soon be able to authenticate with Mac OS computers on campus allowing them to utilize LabNet services.

MUNLabNet - Hardware Services

• LabNet Computer workstations in 22 locations.

MUNLabNet - Hardware Services

• 48 Laser printers including a large format colour laser printer
• 3 multimedia labs with sound and video projector
• 2 terra bytes of user disk space backed up on a daily basis
• Digital scanner available in the DMC
• Multimedia video editing in the DMC
• DVD/CDROM burners and players
• Hardware support for multimedia and USB devices

MUNLabNet - Software Services

• Automated support for three operating systems:
• Linux
• Windows 98
• Windows XP
• Support for a wide range of popular software such as:
• Open Office
• Office 2000
• Several web browsers
• Multimedia
• Several statistical packages
• Several email packages
• Several database packages

MUNLabNet - Software Services

• Web tools for account maintenance:
• Tool for viewing your printer account information.
• Tool for setting password, mail forward and shell preferences
• Tool for retrieving backups from the daily backup archives
• Visual basic script for accessing LabNet resources from personal wireless laptops
• Support for static or dynamic personal web pages including access to a MySQL database

MUNLabNet - Workshop Activity

• Go to the webtools home page at http://webtools.cs.mun.ca and try out the following tasks:
• Retrieve a file off of yesterday’s backup
• Find out what your mail forward is currently set to.
• Check on your current printer account balance.

Linux Installation Guides

• Gentoo Linux x86 Quick Install Guide
• FreeBSD Handbook
• Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide

Linux Live CDs

• Gentoo
• FreeSBIE
• Knoppix