The platform that was selected for these exercises was Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS 32-bit installed on a Virtual Box virtual machine. The network configured for these exercises was in the range 10.1.1.X.
Exercise 1
As briefly as possible, preferably in one line, describe the commands below.
- iostat
- vmstat
- locate, updatedb
- find
- Purpose of file “/etc/fstab”
- mount
- grep -r <search_string> <path>
Exercise 2
In the directory structure of Ubuntu the following directories are significant:
In one line per directory describe the purpose of the directories show in the image.
Exercise 3
Find a way to create a partition on the Ubuntu server provided to you. Once you have created the partition format it using the “ext2” file system. Now, can you find a way to reformat the same partition so that it holds a NTFS file system?
Exercise 4
1. Using the credentials provided login to the server.
2. Create a new user with user-id “trainee”.
3. Update the password of the user and set it to a password of your choice.
4. Log-out from your existing session and login again with the user-id “trainee”.
Exercise 5
1. Check the IP assigned to your server.
2. In order to change this to a different IP check for an available IP in the range 10.1.1.56 to 10.1.1.66.
3. Assign the first available IP in this range to your server.
TIPS:
(a) Assigning an IP manually does not involve a DHCP server.
(b) One way to assign an IP manually is to assign a static IP to your computer.
(c) To assign a static IP you will need to use the file /etc/network/interfaces.
Exercise 6
1. Install the software package sysstat using aptitude on your Ubuntu server. Since the server is running in a virtual machine we can refer to it as a guest machine. The virtual machine we created is running inside a program called Virtual Box. The computer that launched the VirtualBox program can be referred to as a host machine.
2. Locate the file ubuntu-12.04-server-i386.iso on your host computer.
3. Copy this file to the /home/trainee folder inside the guest machine.
4. While the data is being copied run the iostat utility inside the guest machine to collect IO related statistics. Can you determine the speed in terms of kilobytes per second at which data gets copied onto the guest machine?
Exercise 7
Can you check if a network time server is installed on your operating system? If it is not can you install one and configure it such that it uses the US (eastern pacific time) zone. Ensure that even after a system reboot the network time server stays configured to the new time zone.
Exercise 8
Can you configure your operating system in such a way that when you ping http://www.google.com it resolves to your own server’s loop back address?
Exercise 9
There are multiple mysql databases running on the Ubuntu server. When you type mysql on the terminal you will get a message from one of these mysql databases. Let’s call this your default mysql database. Can you change the password for the root user of this database? Note that the root user does not need to enter the password if they attempt to log in from the local machine. To force the database to ask for a password you will have to specify the “-u” flag.
Exercise 10
It is possible to configure multiple IPs on a single interface. Additional IP(s) configured in this way are called virtual IP(s). Can you find a way to configure a virtual IP to your server’s NIC card through the command line?
computer science *consciousness 