Operating Systems Administration (ASO)

This subjects aims for students to attain the level of competence necessary to carry out the tasks of a "junior" system administrator (according to the definition of the System Administrators Guild), which include the following:
-  The ability to independently manage a small installation (10 machines, all running on the same operating system, with up to 20 users), or a larger installation under the supervision of a more experienced administrator.
-  Direct attention to users.
-  Reception of problems, classification and forwarding of user claims to the appropriate administrator.

Knowledges

1. The tasks of a systems administrator and the knowledge required to discharge these functions.
   
   
   
   The ethical code applicable to system administrators.
2. Familiarity with most UNIX commands at both user and administrator levels.
3. Configuration of local services: temporisation and printer
4. Configuration of the main network servers: www, email, ftp, nfs, samba
5. Main aspects of system security. Prevention of local attacks (i.e. by users) and remote attacks (from external systems).

Abilities

1. Operating system planning and installation. Disk partitioning. Basic configuration.
2. Adding, removing and disabling users. Maintenance of the system"s databases.
3. Installation and configuration of applications. Maintenance of various versions of an application.
4. System monitoring and process management.
5. Maintenance of system files. Making and restoring back-ups.

Competences

1. Ability to act independently: Know how to work on one"s own with just the bare minimum of knowledge and guidance.
2. Ability to learn on one"s own.
3. Ability to relate to others. Receptiveness to the ideas of others.
4. Ability to solve poorly-structured problems.
5. Ability to take take decisions when faced with uncertainty or contradictory requirements

A combination of lectures, co-operative learning, lab sessions, and individual work is used in order to attain the course objectives.







The theory classes combine: the teacher"s exposition of the main concepts; co-operative learning, carried out in groups and covering some of the concepts set out by the teacher; individual study using the bibliography and dealing with those concepts not covered by the teacher.







Practical classes test students ability to put the knowledge and skills they have acquired into practice in a real situation, in which they act as system administrators of their respective machines.

The final grade for the course is based on an assessment of students" theoretical knowledge and the results of a lab test.

The grade for theory will be based on one or more part exams (P) throughout the term and a final exam (F). If the grade (P) is at least 6 the final exam will be optional. Practical work will be assessed on the basis of an individual test carried out in the last weeks of the course (L).
Additionally, an optional assignment (Opt) can be part of the grade upon agreement with the professors.

Schematically the evaluation is computed as follows:

If (P) >= 6 and the final exam was not taken
Grade = 50% (P) + 50% (L) + (Opt)
otherwise
Si (P) > (F) -> Grade = 25% (P) + 25% (F) + 50% (L) + (Opt)
Si (P) <= (F) -> Grade = 50% (F) + 50% (L) + (Opt)

• Evi Nemeth ... [et al.] UNIX system administration handbook, Prentice Hall PTR, 2001.
• leen Frisch Essential system administration, O'Reilly, 2002.
• Craig Hunt TCP/IP network administration, O'Reilly, 2002.
• W. Richard Stevens TCP/IP illustrated, Addison-Wesley, 1994-1996.

• Simson Garfinkel, Gene Spafford & Alan Schwartz Practical UNIX and Internet security, O'Reilly, 2003.
• Murray Stokely and Nik Clayton, [editors] FreeBSD handbook, FreeBSD, 2002.
• Varios autores The Linux System Admionistrator's Guide, Linux Documentation Project, 2001.
• Varios autores Linux Network Administrator's Guide (version 2), Linux Documentation Project, 2002.

1. http://sageweb.sage.org/
   



2. http://www.linuxdoc.org
   



3. http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/usc20_full.html
   



4. http://studies.ac.upc.es/FIB/ASO
   

User knowledge of UNIX: File system navigation (cd, ls), on-line help (man, apropos), searching for information in files (grep, find), familiarisation with the "vi" editor.

Basic knowledge of shell scripts.

Programming knowledge in "C", and the Make tool.

Knowledge of the internal structure of the operating system. Process table, input/output system, device descriptors, file systems, inodes, virtual memory.