Linux Utilities/Shell Programming UK Classes & Lessons (Unix and Linux)

About this class

This three-day course provides a follow-on from the Introduction to Linux course for power users and administrators who wish to learn more of the general purpose Linux utilities, and be able to automate tasks by writing Bash shell scripts. This course not only teaches you the utilities and programming skills, but also provides many examples of useful shell scripts. A further important aspect is that you will be able to readily interpret existing scripts.

Who will the lesson benefit?

Linux for Power Users and System Administrators

What prerequisites are required

Experience of Linux similar to the level covered in our Introduction to Linux course

Contents of this class

Review of shell facilities

Redirection. Piping. History Aliases Metacharacters Command line editing.

Regular Expressions

Commands that use regular expressions. Special characters in regular expressions. Examples of regular expressions used with the grep utility.

Linux utilities

Utilities for manipulating data, generating reports and much more (gawk, grep, sort, sed, cut, tr). Utilities for examining and converting data (dd, tar, mt, od, what, strings). Utilities for hunting around (find, which). Linux Comparison/Differential commands Using cmp, diff, diff3, comm for comparing files and directories.

Advanced vi

Using the more complex and powerful facilities of the vi editor. Moving blocks of text. Recovering previous deleted lines. Placing markers in text. Running Linux commands from vi. Setting and saving options. Using ex commands for rapid repetitive changes. Setting up keyboard macros.

Bash Shell Programming

A simple shell program. Execution of Scripts. Run time arguments. Input from the keyboard. Shell variables. Arithmetic facilities. Control statements. Loop statements. The case statement. Select statement. Catching interrupts with trap. Practicals include interpretation of existing scripts as well as writing new scripts. Techniques and practical tips for good scripts. Use of absolute & relative paths. Passing data between commands. Useful special files and directories. Labelling your output good programming practice.

The Spooling mechanism

Understanding the printer spooling mechansim. Using the spooling commands. Troubleshooting hung printers.

Overview of System Administration

Pointers to performing administration tasks on Linux, including:- Linux configurations & hardware support. System administration functions & procedures. How is administration carried out? System Administration tools.

Network Resources

Network File System (NFS) Overview - uses & benefits. NFS example. Overview of the network information services NIS and DNS Other major network facilities, e.g. web servers and browsers.

Optional follow-on classes

Linux System Administration (Part 1) and Linux System Administration (Part 2).

Those who need to tackle more advanced data manipulation and scripting techniques should also consider our range of Perl Programming courses.