IT6203 Systems & Network Administration
(
Optional
)
INTRODUCTION
This is one of the Optional courses designed for Semester 6 of the Bachelor of Information Technology Degree program. This course on Systems & Network Administration focuses on to provide theoretical & practical knowledge required to perform administration of computer systems and networks.
CREDITS: 04
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After successful completion of this course students will be able to: • Describe the role/scope of a system and network administrator • Install various operating systems
• Manage computer systems and undertake operational tasks • Provide network services to users
• Identify security policies and to apply necessary preventive & corrective steps to secure a system/network
• Apply scripting tools for automating system administration
OUTLINE OF SYLLABUS
Topic Hours
1- Introduction to System & Network Administration 03 2- Introduction to Operating Systems 07 3- Host Management 15* 4- Network Management 20* 5- Host and network Security 07* 6- Automating System Administration 08*
Total for the subject 60
SYNOPSIS/OVERVIEW
This course introduces the concepts and techniques of systems and network administration. The course covers topics in a wide range from host management, network management, host and network security to automating system administration. In this course learners will be installing and configuring various popular network based services in a Linux environment.
PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK
The main pedagogical framework of the course focuses on activity based learning. Students are supposed to do all the learning activities to cover the learning content.
EXPECTATIONS/EXAMINATIONS/REQUIREMENTS
REQUIRED MATERIALS Main Reading
Ref 1: Mark Burgess, “Principles of Network and System Administration” (2nd
Edition), John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2004.
Ref 2:Craig Hunt, “TCP/IP Network Administration” (3rd Edition), O’Reilly and
Associates Inc., 2002.
Ref 3: Matthias Kalle Dalheimer and Matt Welsh, “Running Linux”, (5th Edition),
O’Reilly and Associates Inc., 2007.
Ref 4: Ǽleen Frisch, “Essential System Administration”, 3rd Edition, O’Reilly and
Associates Inc., 2003. Ref 5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator Ref 6: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linuxboot/ Ref 7: http://www.gnu.org Ref 8: http://www.ahinc.com/linux101/users.htm Ref 9: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/csg/all-OS/quota.html Ref 10: http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/Postfix.html Ref 11: http://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/ConfiguringSquid Ref 12: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_page_(Unix) Ref 13: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_LAN Ref 14: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial-up Ref 15: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access Ref 16: http://pentangle.net/python/report.pdf
[The pages of the web addresses mentioned above last accessed on 25th
January 2009. The content of the above address are on the LMS.]
DETAILED SYLLABUS:
Section 1 : Introduction to System & Network Administration (03hrs) Instructional Objectives
Material /Sub Topics
1.1. Scope [Ref 1: pg.01-04] 1.2. Goals [Ref 1: pg.04-05] 1.3. Duties [Ref 5]
1.4. Ethics [Ref 1: pg.03] 1.5. Career Paths [Ref 5]
Section 2: Introduction to Operating Systems (07 hrs) Instructional Objectives
• Describe operating system concepts • Characterize different file system formats
• Describe operating system installation procedures
Material /Sub Topics
2.1. Operating Systems: Windows and Unix Variants [Ref 1: pg.16-25] 2.2. Processes and Job Control [Ref 1: pg.43-45]
2.3. Memory Management [Ref 3: pg.978-981] 2.3.1. Concept of Swap Space
2.4. File Systems [Ref 1: pg.25-43] [Ref 1: pg.115-120]
2.4.1. File Systems and Standards (UFS, NFS, NTFS, EXT 2/3) 2.4.2. File System Layout (inode and FAT based file systems) 2.4.3. Formatting, Partitioning and Building a File System 2.5. Installation of Operating Systems [Ref 1: pg.124-131]
2.5.1. Linux Boot Process 2.5.2. Single OS
2.5.3. Dual Boot 2.5.4. Cloning
Section 3: Host Management (15 hrs) Instructional Objectives
Material /Sub Topics
3.1. Booting and Shutting Down of an Operating System [Ref 1: pg.111-114] 3.2. Installation and configuration of Software [Ref 1: pg.131-140]
2.2.1. Proprietary Software 2.2.2. Open Source Software
3.3. Installation and configuration of devices and drivers [Ref 1: pg.121-124] 3.4. Super user/Administrator Privileges [Ref 1: pg. 21]
3.5. User Management [Ref 1: pg.163-167] [Ref 8] [Ref 9] 3.5.1 Adding / Removing users
3.5.2 Controlling User Resources 3.5.3 Disk Space Allocation and quotas
3.6 Process Management and Monitoring [Ref 1: pg.43-45] 3.6.1 Scheduling Processes
3.6.2 Killing/Stopping processes 3.6.3 Restarting a Process 3.6.4 Monitoring Process Activity
3.7 Maintaining Log Files [Ref 2: pg.354-358] [Ref 3: pg.375-378] 3.8 File System Repair, Backup and Restoration [Ref 1: pg.25-43] 3.9 Handling Man Pages/ Help System [Ref 12]
3.10 Kernel Customization [Ref 1: pg.140-143]
3.11 Managing Heterogeneous Systems [Ref 1: pg.229-231] 3.11.1 File System Sharing (Samba)
3.11.2 Printer Sharing (Samba/CUPS)
3.11.3 User IDs, Passwords and Authentication (LDAP) 3.12 Systems Performance Tuning [Ref 1: pg.314-324]
Section 4 : Network Management (20 hrs)
Instructional Objectives
• Plan and execute network management procedures
Material /Sub Topics
4.1 Introduction to Network Administration Approaches [Ref 1: pg.01-02] 4.2 TCP/IP Networking Basics [Ref 1: pg.46-48] [Ref 2: pg.9-23]
[Ref 1: pg.404-407] [Ref 1: pg.67-68] 4.2.1 IP Addressing and Sub-netting 4.2.2 VLAN Principles and Configuration 4.2.3 Routing Concepts
4.2.4 Network Address Translation
4.3 Configuring a Linux Box for Networking [Ref 1: pg.51-52] [Ref 13] [Ref 14] [Ref 15]
4.3.1 LAN and Wireless LAN 4.3.2 Dial-up and Broadband
4.4 Configuring a Linux Box as a Router [Ref 2: pg.107-204] 4.5 Configuring a Web Server (Apache) [Ref 1: pg.353-364] 4.6 Configuring a DNS Server (BIND) [Ref 1: pg.337-353] 4.7 Configuring Mail Transfer Agents (PostFix) [Ref 10] 4.8 Configuring a Proxy Caches (Squid) [Ref 11]
4.9 TCP/IP Troubleshooting: ping, traceroute, ifconfig, netstat, ipconfig [Ref 1: pg.182]
4.10 Network Management [Ref 1: pg.255-257] [Ref 1: pg.214-215] 4.10.1 SNMP Ver 2 Basic Components
4.10.1.1 Commands
4.10.1.2 Management Information Base 4.10.2 RMON
Section 5 : Host and Network Security (07 hrs) Instructional Objectives
• Identify security threats and plan for deployment for preventive methods
Material /Sub Topics
5.1 Security Planning & System Audits [Ref 2: pg.382-387]
5.4 Access Control and Monitoring: Wrappers [Ref 2: pg.409-418] 5.5 Firewalls [Ref 1: pg.485-493]
5.5.1 Filtering Rules
5.6 Detection and Prevention of Denial of Service (DOS) Attacks [Ref 2: pg.382-383]
5.7 Automatic Identification of Configuration Loopholes (Tripwire) [Ref 2: pg.407]
5.8 Intrusion Detection Systems [Ref 1: pg.493-495] 5.9 Security Information Resources: CERT [Ref 2: pg.385]
Section 6: Automating System Administration (08 hrs) Instructional Objectives
• Use appropriate scripting tools to automate system and network administration.
Material /Sub Topics
6.1 Use of Scripting tools [Ref 1: pg.549-580] [Ref 16] 6.1.1 Shell Scripting
6.1.2 Perl/Python Scripting 6.1.3 Use of Make Option
PLATFORM
• The operating system that is used in this module is Linux Operating System.
Activities -
Please refer to the activities on the e-learning material in your Learning Management System (LMS).
Assessment -
Exam paper will consist of four compulsory questions and it will be two hours duration.
Contact details
