Consider this course a study of operating systems and networking using Unix and the Internet as case study examples. In the course you will learn how to:
There are some useful skills. In addition, you will learn a bit about some valuable concepts, such as:
One section of course will meet on Tuesday evenings from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM in Robinson 004. If there are more than about twenty-four people in the first class, a second section will be created. Don't start thinking that you'll only use the workstations during the class period. There will be several homework assignments to keep you occupied.
The primary textbook for the course is Unix for the Impatient, written by Paul Abrahamson and Bruce Larson and published by Addison-Wesley (0-201-55703-7). This book covers the Unix part of the course. However, you'll probably want to own one additional book: The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog, written by Ed Krol and published by O'Reilley & Associates (1-56592-063-5). There may be a few additional readings from a forthcoming book edited by your instructor called the Unix System Handbook. This book should be published by McGraw-Hill before the end of the year.
The workstation lab of the Department of Computer Science consists of twelve machines: six DECstation 5000/25's running Ultrix 4.4, three Alpha AXP's running DEC OSF/1 V2.1, and three SPARCstation 5/70's running Solaris 5.3. The workstations are supported by two file servers with about 8 Gbytes of disk storage. There are some differences between the three versions of Unix used in the lab which may cause you occasional difficulties. Welcome to the real world!
All students enrolled in CSCI 273 will be given accounts on the Computer Science workstations. This account is for your use only. If you allow anyone else to use your account, even in your presence, your account will be disabled.
All the workstations are on the Internet. If your userid id is user, your Internet email address will be user@cs.unca.edu. If you telnet into UNCA to a computer, please connect to tryon.cs.unca.edu, our fastest file server.
Grades will be based on a combination of graded homework and projects, several quizzes, and one final exam. In the calculation of final grades, the following weights will be used:
The final exam will be given on Tuesday, December 13, from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM. Quizzes will be announced at least one week in advance. Projects will include tasks such as writing shell scripts and creating home pages.
My office is Robinson 221, and my phone number is 251-6446. Open office hours are Tuesday and Thursday from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM. I do frequently read electronic mail and sending a message to my computer account, brock@cs.unca.edu, is generally the best way to get a prompt response.