COMP SCI  370 Linux Systems Programming -- Fall 2007

Professor:  William Shay   Office:  MAC C308   Phone:  465-2316/5038

Click here to get the course syllabus

Click here to get the course policies

During the semester I'll make a number of things available through this site. Specifically, you'll have access to bash-shell scripts, PHP/MySQL scripts, and C programs that I will demonstrate during the semester.  You will be able to download them directly to your Linux account if you map your Linux directory to a network drive. To do that,  follow the steps below.

• Right click on the My Computer icon in Windows and select Map Network Drive.
• Select the drive letter you want to use and enter \\icsd\youraccount in the folder textbox. I'll assume you use drive letter L: for our purposes here.
• Click on the Finish button.
• When the Enter Network Password window appears, enter your Linux account name in the Connect As box and your password in the other box. Click on OK. Your directory should now be attached as drive letter L:.

If you don't see the links now, be patient, links will be established as the semester progresses.

The files you download have been tarred and compressed. This is Linux terminology for combing multiple files into one file and then compressing it. It's the same as winzip except it's done with Linux utilities. In order to extract the original files, enter the following commands at the Linux shell prompt:

• uncompress demos.Z.  This assumes you stored the downloaded file as demos.Z (Note the capital Z). This will uncompress the file and store it under the name demos.
• tar -xvf demos. The tar command is one that can combine numerous files and directories into a single archived file or extract them from an archive file that has been "tarred". This is like extracting files from a winzipped file.. The tags specify that you are extracting (tag x) files from an archive which you are specifying (tag f). The v tag simply runs the command in verbose mode. That is, you get to see what's going on. After this command is run you should see a subdirectory containing the files that have been tarred and compressed.

If you're interested in how I created the tarred and compressed files initially, I entered the following commands:

• tar -cvf demos directoryname . This tars all files in the directory (and, recursively, any included subdirectories) and put them into an archive named demos. The c tag indicates that I have specified the archive name.
• compress demos. This compresses the demos file and creates demos.Z.

• Click here to download a compressed and tarred file containing bash script files.
• Click here to download a compressed and tarred file containing sample HTML files and PHP scripts. You will need to put these in your public_html subdirectory and set permissions as discussed in class.
• Click here to download a compressed and tarred file containing some mySql script files. You don't have permission to use all of them but at least you can see what they look like.
• Click here to download a compressed and tarred file containing C program files.
• Click here to download a compressed and tarred file of a cgi program written in C.
• Here is a C program written for Visual Studio .NET that represents the client side of a simple chat program.

NOTE: At this point, I am not sure which files we will cover in class, although I will cover most of them. That will depend on how much time it takes to get through them. I will also likely make some minor changes to some of these programs as we progress through the semester. When I do so, I will let you know so that you can re-download them.

I've tarred and compressed an html document and a C program which, together, simulate part of what a search engine does. The html document allows you to enter a search string. When you click on the submit button it will call a compiled C program that will return a number of links, depending on the search string you entered. Make sure both are in your public_html directory. Also, compile the C program to an executable named search.cgi and make sure the executable file has 701 access privilege. Download the two files here.

Here is a zipped file containing a Visual Studio .NET solution. It represents a client side of a client/server application that uses sockets to let the client (run in the .NET environment) and a server (running in Linux) exchange some messages. The server portion of this application resides in the previously downloaded compressed file containing various C program demos. This will show you how to set up communications between programs running on different machines.

If you have any questions or need to contact me, please send email to Bill Shay at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

Last update on: Thursday, November 29, 2007 August 8, 2007 3:09 PM