Week 7 at a Glance
Intro:
This week we are going to go through two chapters. It is the only week that we are completing more than one chapter, and the two chapters are short (only four activities in the first one, and two in the other). The book has you create accounts using both the command-line interface and the GUI interface. I've only created accounts using the command-line method, and have often written simple scripts to create a bunch of accounts all at once (like, say at the beginning of the semester). Bash and Python (as well as many other scripting languages) can be used to facilitate this bulk creation.
The next chapter goes over the network. Much of the background information is covered in our NET110 course (as some of it was also in CIS 118), so those of you that have already taken NET110 are that much ahead. The two systems that we use to connect our virtual systems to the real network are Linux servers (with a very large number of virtual network interfaces on them - one interface for every student or faculty member that can use the VMWare cluster).
We also have another homework assignment related to the activities this week, so make sure to take notes as you complete the activities (the list of what to turn in is given when you get to the "Complete the activities" steps).
Finally, in activity 8-3, you are asked to reboot your Linux system. I want to point out that one of the major advantages to making changes to Linux is that you don't often have to reboot (you just restart the service "aka daemon"). I find that unless I am upgrading the kernel itself, I can patch my system and make system changes without having to reboot it