[Techtalk] Help with Linux class outline?

[Magni Onsoien]

On 2006-05-17 13:43:17 -0700, Cynthia Kiser said:
> If you want folks to know more about the Linux OS, I would suggest
> installing something with less of a InstallShield style click click
> click GUI installer. Perhaps Ubantu (Slackware is probably overkill on
> the "do it all yourself to learn"). But if the point is a working
> system so you can get on with the rest of the course, then, by all
> means, use Fedora or one of the free RHEL clones (CentOS or Scientific
> Linux) - unless you have a RHEL site liscence.

Ubuntu is hardly less clicky than RedHat, I think - unfortunately I
don't know any other distros than Debian that still has a CLI-like
installation (but I suppose Slackware has, based on what Cynthia said).
You could use any distro to get them started, it doesn't matter what
packaging system it's based on as long as you are comfortable with it.
Ideally you could install RedHat in the beginning of the course, then
let them change it to Debian at the end of the course, to let them try
another kind of installation (including the post-install stage) and
another packaging system, but time may be a problem.

> Week 3 looks a little light. Strategies for user/group management can
> fill volumes - but folks won't have a lot of perspective on the issue
> until they are trying to set up a group project with specific security
> needs. Perhaps spend an hour on users/groups and spend the other 4 on
> network configuration and trouble shooting - DHCP vs fixed IP, use of
> nmap, traceroute, netstat, lsof. How to tell if you have a firewall
> blocking your access. How to turn services on and off (stand alone
> services and ones run through xinetd).
> 
> I would move the Bash stuff earlier in the course so they can have
> more tools for poking around the file system. Definitely cover using
> 'find' and perhaps some multifile editing using perl -e -ibak

Teach them how to automate tasks, and that the graphical tools the
distro provides usually not are very "multiuserfriendly" - you probably
can't get a list of the college's 300 new students and use the graphical
tool to create accounts for all of them. But you certainly can with a
nifty command line.

> For the group project, I might suggest building a system to DO
> something - for example, build a cluster of machines that all use a
> common LDAP server to authenticate. (You did say these were students
> who were focussing on networking) Or get some kind of LAMPish thing
> running - so they have to install OS, database, web server, and
> application code and permission it so that the web monkey can change
> content but not change the server config files. It would be good for
> them to understand dependencies and how to plan for and deal with them. 

I'd say a LAMP project would be quite suitable, it's certainly
technology that will be useful in a work setting. It also doesn't HAVE
to be very time consuming, if you don't make them do too much research
into different solutions (just tell them to use apache, mysql, php and a
specific application with just one or two "weird" dependencies for
modules etc besides the standards). 5 years ago you probably should have
taught them how to build everything, but now there are good packages
included and you don't have to spend time on teaching them how to
configure, compile and distribute it.

An interesting twist would also be to start the whole thing with an
RPM-based distro with a graphical installation, do the LAMP project at
some stage, then reinstall the server with a Debian-based less graphical
distro and let them set up LAMP again. This will teach them a lot about
different distros, as well as what can happen when you migrate a
solution from one platform to another, and maybe a little bit about how
you can use backups (I bet at least one person/group will nicely backup 
their RedHat-/etc, then move all of it over to the new server and untar 
it there....)

I don't remember (I don't have MS Office or OO here, so I rely on memory
about what you wrote in your Word-file...) if you planned to teach them 
how to build software from source, but I think you should show them how
it's typically done and how/where to find documentation about how to do
it: README, configure-scripts, Makefile, the project's webpage etc. They
have to understand where to find the information, and that it won't
always be the same. If your students are very bright and/or interested,
you could also teach them how to build a simple package for their
distro, with a pre-written specfile they only have to change very little
in. They won't understand the magic, but they may learn what to do with
a src.rpm.

Good luck with your course!



Magni :)
-- 
sash is very good for you.