CS615 -- System Administration

Course Overview:

In a networked environment, the need for a skilled system administrator has become increasingly obvious, but what exactly does a System Administrator do? Traditionally, the System Administrator's job has not had a precise definition; in some places they are referred to as Systems Engineers, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), or perhaps Web Operations. Elsewhere, the boundaries between traditional "dev" and "ops" are being torn down, yielding a collaborative culture of "DevOps".

In this class, some of the most essential aspects of system administration and the rather broad skillset required in this profession will be covered, giving students the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to architect solutions for as well as analyze and troubleshoot problems arising in every day usage of complex networks and large-scale installations.

Some of the topics covered include: fundamental operating system and filesystem concepts, software installation and package management, configuration management, task automation and tools development, TCP/IP networking, common internet services, and system security.

Students are expected to be comfortable operating in a UNIX-like environment on a user level and have a solid understanding of TCP/IP networking and Operating System concepts. All coursework will be done exclusively on the command-line on linux-lab.cs.stevens.edu and/or AWS systems. This is not an introduction to using Unix!

If you email me to waive the prerequisites, please provide information about how you meet the requirements listed above in bold. (This has the added benefit of showing that you've actually read at least this far on this page.)

If you have questions about this class, please email jschauma@stevens.edu from your @stevens.edu address and (this is important to escape the spam filters) include "[CS615]" in the subject line.

Time, Date & Place:

Spring 2019: Mondays, 18:15-20:45, Pierce 220

Instructor:

Jan Schaumann [jschauma@stevens.edu]

Resources:

Tweets by @cs615asa

Textbooks:

This class does not have any strictly required textbooks. However, there are some books which are recommended, if only as a reference throughout the semester. These are:

``Principles of System Administration'', by Jan Schaumann
(Unpublished / work in progress)
``Principles of Network and System Administration'', 2nd Edition, by Mark Burgess
ISBN: 0470868074
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
``The Practice of System and Network Administration'', by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christine Hogan, Strata R. Chalup
ISBN: 9780321919168
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
``The Practice of Cloud System Administration'', by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christine Hogan, Strata R. Chalup
ISBN: 032194318X
Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Systems Used

In this class, we will make use of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud for most homework assignments; this will give students the chance to gain valuable experience in new technologies currently in high demand in the industry (cloud computing, IPv6) and also provide a possibility for students to gain superuser access to a number of operating systems otherwise not available at Stevens.

We will access EC2 from and use for almost all assignments and exercises the university's linux-lab.cs.stevens-tech.edu systems. It is the students' responsibility to get an account on these systems prior to the start of the class.

Grading:

There will (probably) be:

course participation, questionnaires, and course notes (10% of the grade)
team mission (10% of the grade)
a meetup requirement (5% of the grade)
a number of homework assignments (60% of the grade)
a group project towards the end of the semester (15% of the grade)

Letter grades will be given as follows:

90% - 100% of total points => A
80% - 89.99% => B
70% - 79.99% => C
0 - 69.99% points => F

Within each letter grade, there are +/- grades given at the discretion of the instructor. (Exception: there is no A+)

Plagiarism, Cheating and other ways to get an F

This really should not be necessary, but just to preempt any complains that I did not make myself clear:

Students are responsible for their own work. It is unethical (and in some cases illegal) to present as one's work the ideas, words or representations of another without the proper indication of the source. Therefore, it is the student's responsibility to give credit for any quotation, idea or data (such as statistical data or source code) borrowed from an outside source.

Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism, may imply copyright infringement and license violations and is viewed as cheating in this class, yielding a failing grade.

Any incidents are reported to the Dean of Graduate Academics, as per the Graduate Student Code of Academic Conduct.

Note: even if the license/author allows usage of the code or content, you may still not copy it and hand it in as your own work. You are responsible for your own work. Google->StackOverflow->copy'n paste does not count as "work", regardless of how long it took you.

Homework Assignments:

Homework assignments will be posted here throughout the semester.

The following exercises are not graded, but are recommended to be completed before or soon after the given lecture to help you better understand the concepts dicussed:

Syllabus:

Lecture slides and other supporting material listed here is from the Spring 2019 semester and may be updated/changed throughout the Spring 2020 semester. Updated materials will be uploaded here after each class.

Date	Topic	Suggested Reading Material	Course Material
2020-01-27	Introduction, Policies, Overview, UNIX history and basics	Frisch: Preface Nemeth et al: Chap. 1 Burgess: Chap. 1, 2, 14 Limoncelli & Hogan: Preface, 26 SAGE Job Descriptions for System Administrators An Introduction to System Administration Unix Documentation Techniques	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 01 slides HW#1
2020-02-03	Storage Models and Disks	Frisch: Chap. 10 Nemeth et al: Chap. 5, 8 File Systems and Storage Models	Lecture 02: Filesystems Exercise Lecture 02: Partition Exercise Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 02 slides
2020-02-10	Filesystem Basics Software Types	Limoncelli & Hogan: Chap. 23 (in first edition) or Chap. 28 (in second edition) Burgess (Principles): Chap. 4.6 - 4.8 Frisch: Parts of Chap. 3 File Systems and Storage Models Software Installation and Package Management	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 03 slides boot sequences for different OS HW#2
2020-02-18	Software Installation & Multi-user basics	Frisch: Chap. 6 Burgess: Chap. 5 Nemeth et al: Chap. 3, 6, 27 Software Installation and Package Management Of Users and Groups	Note: Tuesday Class Package Manager Exercise Pre-class questionnaire Exercise: adding users Lecture 04 slides
2020-02-24	Networking I	Frisch: Chap. 5 Nemeth et al: Chap. 13, 15, 20 Burgess: Chap. 3, 10 Limoncelli & Hogan: Chap. 18	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 05 slides
2020-03-02	Networking II	Frisch: Chap. 5 Nemeth et al: Chap. 13, 15, 20 Burgess: Chap. 3, 10 Limoncelli & Hogan: Chap. 18	Lecture 06 slides telnet strace EC2 script output EC2 binary tcpdump output tcpdump DNS lookup over IPv6 tcpdump DNS lookup over IPv4 tcpdump ping and traceroute tcpdump TCP port 80 over IPv6 tcpdump TCP port 80 over IPv4
2020-03-09	DNS, HTTP	Frisch: Chap. 9 Nemeth et al: Chap. 16, 19, 22 Burgess: Chap. 9 Limoncelli & Hogan: Chap. 19	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 07 slides Homework #4: monitoring DNS and HTTP traffic
2020-03-16	Spring Break
2020-03-23	SMTP, HTTPS	Frisch: Chap. 15 Nemeth et al: Chap. 21 Limoncelli & Hogan: Chap. 22	HTTP Exercise SMTP Exercise Pre-class questionnaire pcap files Lecture 08 slides
2020-03-30	Writing System Tools	Frisch: Chap. 14, Append. A Nemeth et al: Chap. 9 Automation Building Scalable Tools Writing System Tools Writing Consistent Tools	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 09: Regex Exercise Lecture 09: Scripting Exercise Lecture 09: Bugfiling Exercise Lecture 09 slides shell basics
2020-04-06	Backup and Disaster Recovery / Monitoring	Frisch: Chap. 8.1, Chap. 11 Nemeth et al: Chap. 16, Chap. 10 Limoncelli & Hogan: 26 SAGE Booklet: Backups and Recovery SAGE Booklet: Building a Logging Infrastructure	Pre-class questionnaire Know a Unix Command: tar(1) Lecture 10: Backup Exercise Lecture 10 slides
2020-04-13	Configuration Management	Configuration Management	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 11 slides
2020-04-20	System Security	Frisch: Chap. 7 Nemeth et al: Chap. 21 Burgess: Chap. 11, 12 Limoncelli & Hogan: Chap. 7 Information Security Basics The Attack Life Cycle	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 12 slides
2020-04-27	Ethics and Social Responsibility	Primum non nocere All is not lost (but we need your help)	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 13 slides
2020-05-04	Team Mission Review	All course materials and additional links.	Pre-class questionnaire Lecture 14 slides Capture the Flag!