In the descriptions below, the term team refers to either a single student
or multiple students working together as a team from a single terminal. In
many cases, it is more instructive to pair the students into teams for the
purposes of lab work.
All of the system administration courses require the following setup, with
course-specific requirements covered in separate sections.
-
The teams will need
root access to accomplish certain lab exercises.
This is not always practical in a production environment; if a production
machine is to be used for labs, it is recommended that only the instructor
have root access and demonstrations will be conducted by the instructor
instead of actual labs performed by the students.
-
Some type of terminal-based access to an AIX machine is required.
If the teams will be using ASCII terminals (such as IBM3151 terminals),
this satisfies the access requirement. If the teams will be using some
kind of terminal emulation software instead, and because not all terminal
emulators are created equal, please start at the top of this list when
checking options:
-
PuTTY (download
here)
-
eXceed
telnet
-
ReflectionX
telnet
-
Other name-brand
telnet emulator
-
Windows
telnet
-
Each team should be given a username on the system, using the default
settings for all fields, except for secondary groups as described in
the following sections. The usernames for the teams may be chosen by
the site technical setup person, but the examples in the course material
consistently use teamXX where the XX is replaced with a two-digit
number. For example, team01, team02, and so on, up to team14,
if there were to be 14 teams working on the labs.
-
Using the information contained here, most labs may be completed by
multiple teams all working from the same server. However, there are
exceptions: any labs dealing with physical hardware (such as
Backup and Restore)
and labs that involve changes affecting the entire system, such as
software installation and rebooting the server. If a single server is
to be used for courses that include these topics, the instructor should
be given
root access and demos of the labs will be used instead of
each team working through the lab on its own. If each team will be
using its own server, they may complete the lab as written.
This section describes the basic setup requirements for the first
of the administration courses. Note that configuration specifics are not
covered in the System Administration Lite course, so
no additional setup is required beyond having a machine that the
students can access.
-
A standard system load of the Base Operating System and the associated
manual pages (documentation) are all that is required for this course.
If AIX 5L is being used, either the CDE or Gnome graphical user
interface may be chosen.
-
If multiple systems are used for the labs, they should be networked
together so that files may be copied from machine to machine (this is
a convenience factor for the instructor, should a student accidentally
perform an operation that is not easily reversible). The instructor will
be carrying a laptop system that will require access to the same network
as the student machines. The student's learning experience will be
enhanced if the instructor's machine is also capable of reaching the
Internet with the proper firewall/proxy configuration.
-
If a printer is available in the classroom, it can be used by the
students for the Printer Configuration lab -- no pre-configuration
of the printer is required. If a printer is not available, the students
will be given instructions that will still allow them to complete the lab.
-
Print configuration will require that the teams are members of the
printq and system groups.
-
The teams should be members of the
security group in order to complete
Security labs. Because each team will require a total of 3 usernames
in order to verify permission settings, those accounts should be created
in advance, or if the main team login is also a member of the system
group, the team can add two additional usernames as part of the lab (the lab
includes these instructions).
-
The teams should be members of the
adm group in order to complete
Performance labs.
-
The teams should be members of the
system group in order to complete
File System labs. In addition, at least 2 physical partitions per team
should be available for allocation (overlaps with Logical Volume Manager
requirements, below).
-
The teams should be members of the
system group in order to complete
Logical Volume Manager labs. In addition, at least 2 physical partitions
per team should be available for allocation (overlaps with File System
requirements, above). Portions of the lab will be more instructive if the
free partitions span multiple physical volumes.
This section describes the additional setup requirements for the second
of the administration courses.
-
In addition to the requirements for System Administration I, above, the
system should also have installed the Performance Agent software.
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[ Last updated:
Fri Mar 13 01:03:01 EDT 2009
]
