Intermediate Linux

Course Objectives

This skills-focused course is about 50% lab to lecture ratio, combining expert instructor-led discussions with practical hands-on labs that emphasize current techniques, best practices and standards. Working in this hands-on lab environment, guided by our expert practitioner, attendees will explore:

• Review of the File System
• Introduction to Shells: sh, bash, and ksh
• Shell Programming
• Advanced Shell Features
• Text Manipulation Utilities
• File Processing Utilities
• Multitasking and Batch Processing
• Regular Expressions

Course Prerequisites

This is an intermediate-level course for attendees with basic Linux experience. Attendees should have experience with common UNIX/Linux user-level commands, such as moving, copying and editing files. Experience with the vi editor is a plus.

Course Agenda

1. Review of the File System

• File System Organization
• File Types
• File and Directory Naming Rules and Conventions
• Commands for Navigating the File System
• Introduction to Inodes
• Ownership, Permissions, and Dates
• Manipulating Files and Links
• Manipulating Directories
• Determining Disk Usage
• Other File System Utilities

2. Introduction to Shells: sh, bash, and ksh

• Shell Functions
• I/O Redirection and Pipes
• Command Separation and Grouping
• Background Execution
• Filename Expansion
• Shell Variables
• Command Substitution
• Quoting and Escaping Metacharacters
• Bash Shell Features
• Korn Shell Features
• Command Execution
• Startup Files
• Customizing the User Environment

3. Shell Programming

• Shell Script Features and Capabilities
• Creating and Running a Script
• Working With Variables
• Environment Variables
• Working With Data Types
• Formatting
• Base Conversion
• Setting Special Attributes
• Input/Output Techniques
• Conditional Constructs
• if/then
• else/elif
• Looping Constructs
• for, while, until
• Math Operators

4. Advanced Shell Features

• Manipulating Strings
• Writing and Calling Functions
• Controlling Process Priorities
• Interpreting Command Line Arguments
• Making Scripts Interactive
• Special Shell Variables
• Advanced I/O with Streams
• Improving Performance of Scripts

5. Text Manipulation Utilities

• Editing a File from a Script
• Scripting with ed or sed
• UNIX and Linux Utilities to Manipulate Files
• Regular Expressions
• grep and egrep
• The Stream Editor sed
• Sorting in Scripts
• Generating Reports with awk
• Splitting Large Files
• Counting Words, Lines, and Characters
• Transforming File Contents

6. File Processing Utilities

• Examining and Comparing Files
• Reporting Differences Between Files
• Comparing Files of Any Format
• Displaying Data in Octal and Hex
• Compressing Data
• Converting File Formats
• Extracting Text Strings

7. Multitasking and Batch Processing

• Multitasking
• Scheduled Execution Using cron
• The at and batch Commands

8. Regular Expressions

• Regular Expression Overview
• Regular Expression Implementations
• Regular Expressions
• RE Character Classes
• Regex Quantifiers
• RE Parenthesis