CMSC 121 - Introduction to UNIX - Fall 2004 - HW 1
Out: Thursday, September 30th       Due: Tuesday, October 5th

The goal of this assignment is to get you to log on and experiment and to play with Linux, Gnome & KDE, as well as become familiar with the UMBC UNIX environment, and basic UNIX commands.

  1. Other than what was listed in the class notes, what are some other differences between Linux & Microsoft Windows?
     
  2. In your own words what is X windows?
     
  3. In your own words what is a desktop manager?
     
  4. In your own words what is a shell?
     
  5. Log onto Linux using both Gnome and KDE? List at least 2 notable differences between the two interfaces.
     
  6. KDE and Gnome both have a panel that allows you to add one click access to common programs. Tell me the steps of how to add a button to the panel that launches the "xclock" command. A good starting point is to right click on the panel.
     
  7. I want you to create a very simple webpage (if you do not have one already), at UMBC. Recall that in order to see a webpage, you must create a file called "index.html" and place (copy) it into your /afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/pub/www/ directory. If this directory does not exist, create it using the commands that we learned in class. You can create a very simple webpage by copying and modifying the code below. For this assignment you need not actually create the file in a SSH shell, but rather can copy it over using one of the techniques we talked about in class. You can verify that everything is correct, if you can see your page at "http://userpages.umbc.edu/~username/". Note you need not hand in anything for this part, I will take a look at webpage you have created to check. 

    <html>
 <head>
  <title>My Homepage</title>
 </head>
 <body>
  <h3>Welcome to NAME_HERE's Homepage<h3>
  <hr>
  <a href="http://www.google.com/">Search Google</a>
 </body>
</html>

  8. What command would show me the contents of this directory in this format?
      

    linux1[9]% ??????????????
total 65k
drwx------    4 dhood2   rpc          2.0k Sep 30 10:40 ./
dr-xr-xr-x   43 dhood2   rpc           24k Sep 30 16:13 ../
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc          9.7k Sep 30 10:39 .emacs
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           101 Sep 30 10:37 1.dat
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           135 Sep 30 10:37 2.dat
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           846 Sep 30 10:37 Circle.C
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           471 Sep 30 10:37 Circle.H
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc          1.5k Sep 30 10:37 DisplayObject.C
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           785 Sep 30 10:37 DisplayObject.H
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc          2.1k Sep 30 10:37 Makefile
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc          1.1k Sep 30 10:37 Matrix.H
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           596 Sep 30 10:37 Point.C
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           353 Sep 30 10:37 Point.H
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc          3.1k Sep 30 10:37 Proj1.C
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc            18 Sep 30 10:37 Proj1.ps
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc          1.5k Sep 30 10:37 Raster.C
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           539 Sep 30 10:37 Raster.H
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc          1.1k Sep 30 10:37 Rectangle.C
-rw-------    1 dhood2   rpc           535 Sep 30 10:37 Rectangle.H
drwx------    2 dhood2   rpc          2.0k Sep 30 10:38 bar/
drwx------    2 dhood2   rpc          2.0k Sep 30 14:56 foo/
linux1[10]%

  9. Let's assume that you had a file called "foo.c" in a directory called "projects" that was right off your home directory (/afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/home/projects/foo.c) that you accidentally deleted, but was in your account the day before. What would the command look like that would restore a copy of this file?
     
  10. Let's assume that you are sitting in front of a UNIX computer logged into your GL account and have a shell open. You want to copy a file in your home directory called myfile.txt to another UNIX server that you have an account on. Let's call this other server foobar.edu, and assume that your login id is the same as your UMBC GL id. What would the command look like to securely copy this file to the other server?
     
  11. What is wrong with FTP and Telnet? and what are the replacements for these?
     
  12. Let's assume that you have changed directories to the root directory (/), list 3 different ways to change back to your home directory.
     
  13. We mentioned that there are many different types of UNIX, including Linux, of which there are also many different distributions. Name 2 additional types of UNIX, and 2 different types of Linux that are not mentioned in the class notes.
     
  14. You are logged onto a Linux machine and want to find out if there are any UNIX commands that open a graphical calculator. Use one of the commands that we talked about, to search for a command regarding a calculator. Note: this functionality is not currently working on linux.gl.umbc.edu. You will need to ssh to irix.gl.umbc.edu instead of linux.gl.umbc.edu.
     
Daniel J. Hood
Last modified: Thu Sep 30 17:24:17 EDT 2004