UNIX/Linux: Essentials and Programming

Course: UNIXEP

Duration: 5 Days

Level: I

Course Summary

By combining our UNIX/Linux Essentials and Shell Programming courses, this course not only gets you started as a UNIX/Linux user, but will put you well into the Power User category.

The "Essentials" portion starts off by building on a student's prior experience as a Windows desktop user: developing an understanding of what the UNIX/Linux operating system is, and how it's file-system and commands support familiar file handling activities. Then you'll learn to apply the UNIX/Linux concepts of standard input/output/error and command pipelines as you learn to take advantage of the ways that the Korn or Bash shells interpret commands you enter. We'll cover all the common UNIX/Linux "filter" commands that let you extract exactly the data you need from very large files such as application logs or data-base queries. We'll also discuss some very basic system troubleshooting techniques.

Then you'll move into the "Programming" part, where you'll see that the UNIX/Linux command-line is actually a complete programming language, allowing you to implement sophisticated automation of procedures that less experienced users need to spend time doing manually. We'll also go well beyond the "Essential" use of UNIX/Linux Power Tools such as grep, sed and awk, by thoroughly covering the principles of regular expressions, and how that understanding lets you apply those tools to solve just about any data extraction and processing requirement.

This course is applicable to any version of UNIX and/or Linux, including Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu and others. The course content is fully applicable to both Korn and Bash shells (but not csh or tcsh), noting where incompatibilities between them occur.

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Topics Covered In This Course

What Is UNIX/Linux

Why Would Anyone Use UNIX/Linux?
What Is UNIX/Linux?
Components of a UNIX/Linux System
The Common UNIX/Linux Shells
Accessing A UNIX/Linux System

Getting Started

Logging In To UNIX/Linux
Installing/Configuring PuTTY
Getting To The Shell
Working With The Shell
Getting Help
Try A Few Common Commands

Navigating The Filesystem

Translating Windows Explorer to Shell Commands
What's That Stuff In My "ls" Output
Absolute and Relative File Names
Working With Directories
Working With Files
Standard ?Places? In the UNIX/Linux Filesystem

Basic Shell Features

Is It UNIX or Is It Shell ?
Shell Magic
File-Name Matching
A Key UNIX Concept: Standard I/O
I/O Redirection
Command Pipelines
Command Aliases

Editing Files With Vi

Editing Without A Mouse
"Just Getting By" With Vi
"A Bit More Efficient" With Vi
Command-Line Editing
Avoiding Vi: Copy and Paste
Avoiding Vi: File Transfer

Managing Processes

Programs and Processes
Foreground and Background
Basic "Job" Management
Advanced Job Management
UNIX Signals

What?s Happening on The System

What?s Running?
Where?s My Drives?
Basic Troubleshooting Techniques

Common UNIX Tools

Commands That Give You Information
Sending E-mail
Comparing (Similar) Files
Slicing and Dicing Data
Analyzing File Content
Searching/Filtering Idioms

More Advanced UNIX Tools

Sorting
Automated Editing
Finding Files
Processing Files That You Find
Archiving With "tar" and "cpio"
Compressing Files and Pipelines

Understanding "The Environment"

Using Shell Variables
Scope of Variables
What's In The UNIX Environment
Managing File/Directory Access Permissions

Getting Started With Shell Scripts

How the Shell Finds Commands
Turning A Script Into A Real Command
Using Command-Line Arguments
Getting Input From The User
Getting Data From Other Commands
Doing Arithmetic

Conditional ("if") Programming

Testing For Command Failures
Comparing Strings and Numbers
Testing For File Status
Short-Circuit Operators
Multi-Way Branching Logic
Debugging Shell Programs

Loop Programming

Iterators
Logical Expression Loops
Calculated (Counting) Loops
Breaking Out of A Loop
Looping Through Command-Line Arguments
I/O Redirection With Loops
Bash/Ksh Differences

Additional Shell Programming Techniques

Shell Functions
The "dot" command
Creating Reusable Libraries
The "set" Command
The "typeset" Command
Using Arrays
Substitution Parameters
Precise Output Formatting
Using Command-Line Options
Scheduled Tasks (Cron Jobs)

Understanding Regular Expressions

Simple Regular Expressions (Patterns!)
Character Classes
Anchors
Repetition
Sub-Expressions and References
Basic vs. Extended and Other Implementations

The UNIX Power Tools

Getting More Out of Grep
Getting More Out of Sed
Combining Power Tools With Scripts

Awk: The Ultimate Power Tool

One Liners
Selectors and Methods
Programming Syntax
Awk's Built-In Functions
"Non-Standard" I/O
Extracting Data From Reports

What You Can Expect

This course is fairly intense since it assumes relatively little experience with UNIX/Linux at the start, but by the end it moves into shell and tool techniques that are quite advanced. Consider taking the Essentials and Shell Programming courses separately for a more "relaxed" experience while covering the same topics.

On completing this course, a delegate can expect to be able to:

understand the basic structure of the UNIX/Linux operating system, and how its similar to and different from Windows.
thoroughly understand UNIX/Linux command-line syntax.
use shell wildcards, variables, history, and other syntax to save typing and work more effectively.
perform any kind of file-management activity including creating, copying, renaming, and setting access permissions for both directories and files.
use pipelined commands to work more effectively at the command-line level.
use UNIX tools alone or in combination with shell-scripts for extracting data from, and processing text files.
create and maintain your own shell and awk scripts, even fairly complex ones.
understand, debug and modify shell and awk scripts originally written by expert UNIX/Linux programmers.
do basic troubleshooting of Linux and application operation and performance.

Who Should Take This Course

This course is ideal for technical staff that have user-level experience with mainframe or Windows systems and are finding they now have the need to work as effectively and confidently on Linux based systems. It's also a great refresher for staff who find that their UNIX experience has become dated.

This course is recommended for those staff that will have the need to automate procedures (e.g., system administration, application monitoring, analysis, testing, etc.) using UNIX/Linux. Users who want to be effective UNIX/Linux users, but are not interested in programming, will find the stand-alone Essentials course will meet their needs more effectively.

Recommended Prerequisites

No prior experience with the UNIX or Linux operating system is required, however a background in programming using any language is strongly recommended.

Training Style

Short lecture sessions, along with extensive hands-on workshops.

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Related Courses

Code	Course Title	Duration	Level
SUSE10E1	SuSe Enterprise Linux 10 Essentials	5 Days	I	Details
UNIXE	UNIX/Linux: The Essentials	3 Days	I	Details
SHELL	UNIX Shell Programming	3 Days	II	Details

Every student attending a Verhoef Training class will receive a certificate good for $100 toward their next public class taken within a year.

You can also buy "Verhoef Vouchers" to get a discounted rate for a single student in any of our public or web-based classes. Contact your account manager or our sales office for details.

Schedule For This Course
There are currently no public sessions scheduled for this course. We can schedule a private class for your organization just a couple of weeks from now. Or we can let you know the next time we do schedule a public session.

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