Course Syllabus

Unix System Administration

Author: T.H. Shahinyan

Reviewers: V.Sh. Melikyan, Sci.D., Professor
A.N. Khachatryan

Introduction:
The course program on Unix System Administration is assigned for undergraduate education on
Electronic Design Automation specialization and is taught in the 6 th semester (3 year’s 2nd semester).

Objective:
The goal of the course is to get introduced to peculiarities and capabilities of Unix system administration.

Class Hours:
The course duration is 45 hours, lectures volume is 30 hours and laboratory works are 15 hours .

Homework and Exam:

Grades will be assigned on:
 Lectures (70 score)
 Practice Classes (30 score)
 Final exam

Prerequisites:
The course program is compiled taking into account that the following courses had been studied in
advance:
 Mathematics
 Informatics.
Understanding of the course is the basis for further specialized subjects destined by the educational plan
of Electronic Design Automation specialization.

Reference Materials:
To study the course the necessary list of references is given below.
1. E. Nemeth, G. Snyder, T. Hein, B. Whaley. UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook.
Prentice Hall; 2017
2. M. Green. Linux: The Ultimate Beginners Guide (Linux For Beginners, Linux Security, Linux
Administration, Linux Handbook); 2016
3. M. Jang, R. Messier. Security Strategies In Linux Platforms And Applications (Jones & Bartlett
Learning Information Systems Security & Assurance). Jones & Bartlett Learning; 2015
4. D. M. Perales. Learning Unix with examples; 2013

Grading:
This course will be graded according to Professor’s discretion.

Synopsys University Courseware

Copyright © 2017 Synopsys, Inc. All rights reserved.
Developed by: Vazgen Melikyan
Course Syllabus

Lectures (30 hours):

Topic 1.1 (3 hours) – Introduction to UNIX and System Administration
 Unix: essentials. Structure of Unix. Shell: essentials. Kernel: essentials. Users of Unix. System
Administration: essentials. System administration tasks. System administrator’s responsibilities.

Topic 1.2 (2 hours) – Major Unix Services

 Major services in Unix system: Init, Logins from Terminals, Syslog, Networking, Network Logins,
Network File Systems, Mail, Printing. Periodic command execution: cron and at.

Topic 1.3 (2 hours) – The Directory Tree, Permissions and Accessibility

 Filesystem Tree. The root filesystem. Subdirectories of root filesystem. The /etc directory. The
/dev directory. Permissions. Permission types. Chmod command. Permission numbers.
Permission: examples.

Topic 1.4 (2 hours) – Filesystems and Partitions

 Filesystem: essentials. General structure of Unix filesystem. Filesystem types. The /proc
directory. Creating filesystems. Mounting and unmounting. Partitions, general considerations.
Partition table. Extended and logical partitions.

Topic 1.5 (2 hours) – Managing User Accounts

 Accounts in Unix. Unix account types. User administration files. Commands for account and
group management. Adding a user group. Modifying and deleting user groups. Creating an
account. Changing a password. Modifying an account. Deleting an account.

Topic 1.6 (2 hours) – Booting and Shutdowns

 Introduction. The boot process. Shutdowns. Last step. Rebooting.

Topic 1.7 (2 hours) – Devices and Memory Management

 Devices: introduction. Making devices. Null and memory. Memory management: virtual memory.
The buffer cache.

Laboratory Works (15 hours):

Topic 2.1 (4 hours) – Basic Actions in Unix
Topic 2.2 (4 hours) – Basics of Bash Scripting
Topic 2.3 (4 hours) – Backup Directory
Topic 2.4 (3 hours) – Searching

Synopsys University Courseware

Copyright © 2017 Synopsys, Inc. All rights reserved.
Developed by: Vazgen Melikyan