SYSTEM PROGRAMMING AND SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION

SEM-6TH
SECTION-D(NOTES)
SHELL:
A Shell provides you with an interface to the Unix system. It gathers input from you and executes
programs based on that input. When a program finishes executing, it displays that program's output.
Shell is an environment in which we can run our commands, programs, and shell scripts. There are
different flavors of a shell, just as there are different flavors of operating systems. Each flavor of shell
has its own set of recognized commands and functions.

Shell Prompt
The prompt, $, which is called the command prompt, is issued by the shell. While the prompt is
displayed, you can type a command.
Shell reads your input after you press Enter. It determines the command you want executed by looking
at the first word of your input. A word is an unbroken set of characters. Spaces and tabs separate words.
Following is a simple example of the date command, which displays the current date and time −
$date
Thu Jun 25 08:30:19 MST 2009

You can customize your command prompt using the environment variable PS1 explained in the
Environment tutorial.

Shell Types
In Unix, there are two major types of shells −

 Bourne shell − If you are using a Bourne-type shell, the $ character is the default prompt.

 C shell − If you are using a C-type shell, the % character is the default prompt.
The Bourne Shell has the following subcategories −

 Bourne shell (sh)

 Korn shell (ksh)
 Bourne Again shell (bash)
 POSIX shell (sh)
The different C-type shells follow −

 C shell (csh)
 TENEX/TOPS C shell (tcsh)
The original Unix shell was written in the mid-1970s by Stephen R. Bourne while he was at the AT&T
Bell Labs in New Jersey.
Bourne shell was the first shell to appear on Unix systems, thus it is referred to as "the shell".
Bourne shell is usually installed as /bin/sh on most versions of Unix. For this reason, it is the shell of
choice for writing scripts that can be used on different versions of Unix

Shell Scripts
The basic concept of a shell script is a list of commands, which are listed in the order of execution. A
good shell script will have comments, preceded by # sign, describing the steps.
There are conditional tests, such as value A is greater than value B, loops allowing us to go through
massive amounts of data, files to read and store data, and variables to read and store data, and the script
may include functions.

Shell Comments
#!/bin/bash

# Author : Zara Ali

# Copyright (c) Tutorialspoint.com
# Script follows here:
pwd
ls

A variable is nothing more than a pointer to the actual data. The shell enables you to create, assign, and
delete variables.

Variable Names
The name of a variable can contain only letters (a to z or A to Z), numbers ( 0 to 9) or the underscore
character ( _).
By convention, Unix shell variables will have their names in UPPERCASE.

Defining Variables
Variables are defined as follows −
variable_name=variable_value

Accessing Values
To access the value stored in a variable, prefix its name with the dollar sign ($) −
For example, the following script will access the value of defined variable NAME and print it on
STDOUT −
#!/bin/sh

NAME="Zara Ali"
echo $NAME

Variable Types
When a shell is running, three main types of variables are present −

 Local Variables − A local variable is a variable that is present within the current instance of the
shell. It is not available to programs that are started by the shell. They are set at the command
prompt.

 Environment Variables − An environment variable is available to any child process of the

shell. Some programs need environment variables in order to function correctly. Usually, a shell
script defines only those environment variables that are needed by the programs that it runs.

 Shell Variables − A shell variable is a special variable that is set by the shell and is required by
the shell in order to function correctly. Some of these variables are environment variables
whereas others are local variables.

Command-Line Arguments
The command-line arguments $1, $2, $3, ...$9 are positional parameters, with $0 pointing to the actual
command, program, shell script, or function and $1, $2, $3, ...$9 as the arguments to the command.
Following script uses various special variables related to the command line −
#!/bin/sh

echo "File Name: $0"

echo "First Parameter : $1"
echo "Second Parameter : $2"
echo "Quoted Values: $@"
echo "Quoted Values: $*"
echo "Total Number of Parameters : $#"

Special Parameters $* and $@ (WILDCARDS):

There are special parameters that allow accessing all the command-line arguments at once. $* and $@
both will act the same unless they are enclosed in double quotes, "".
Both the parameters specify the command-line arguments. However, the "$*" special parameter takes
the entire list as one argument with spaces between and the "$@" special parameter takes the entire list
and separates it into separate arguments.
We can write the shell script as shown below to process an unknown number of command line
arguments with either the $* or $@ special parameters −
#!/bin/sh

for TOKEN in $*
do
echo $TOKEN
done

SHELL PROGRAMMING CONSTRUCTS:

The following types of loops available to shell programmers −

 The while loop

 The for loop
 The until loop
 The select loop

while Loops
It is possible to use a while loop as part of the body of another while loop.

Syntax
while command1 ; # this is loop1, the outer loop
do
Statement(s) to be executed if command1 is true

while command2 ; # this is loop2, the inner loop

do
Statement(s) to be executed if command2 is true
done

Statement(s) to be executed if command1 is true

done

The shell performs substitution when it encounters an expression that contains one or more special
characters.

Example
Here, the printing value of the variable is substituted by its value. Same time, "\n" is substituted by a
new line −
#!/bin/sh

a=10
echo -e "Value of a is $a \n"

Variable Substitution
Variable substitution enables the shell programmer to manipulate the value of a variable based on its
state.
#!/bin/sh

echo ${var:-"Variable is not set"}

echo "1 - Value of var is ${var}"

echo ${var:="Variable is not set"}

echo "2 - Value of var is ${var}"

unset var
echo ${var:+"This is default value"}
echo "3 - Value of var is $var"

var="Prefix"
echo ${var:+"This is default value"}
echo "4 - Value of var is $var"

echo ${var:?"Print this message"}

echo "5 - Value of var is ${var}"

Upon execution, you will receive the following result −

Variable is not set
1 - Value of var is
Variable is not set
2 - Value of var is Variable is not set

3 - Value of var is
This is default value
4 - Value of var is Prefix
Prefix
5 - Value of var is Prefix

SHELL CONSTRUCTS:

The looping constructs, for and while, allow a program to iterate through groups of commands in a
loop. The conditional control commands, if and case, execute a group of commands only if a particular
set of conditions is met. The break command allows a program to exit unconditionally from a loop.
following two statements that are used to control shell loops−

 The break statement

 The continue statement

The infinite Loop

All the loops have a limited life and they come out once the condition is false or true depending on the
loop.
A loop may continue forever if the required condition is not met. A loop that executes forever without
terminating executes for an infinite number of times. For this reason, such loops are called infinite
loops.
#!/bin/sh

a=10

until [ $a -lt 10 ]
do
echo $a
a=expr $a + 1`
done

The break Statement

The break statement is used to terminate the execution of the entire loop, after completing the
execution of all of the lines of code up to the break statement. It then steps down to the code following
the end of the loop.

Syntax
The following break statement is used to come out of a loop −
break

The break command can also be used to exit from a nested loop using this format −
break n

Here n specifies the nth enclosing loop to the exit from.

ADVANTAGES OF SHELL PROGRAMMING
A. Easy to use.
B. Quick start and interactive debugging.
C. Time saving.
D. System admin task automation.
E. Shell scripts can execute without any additional effort on nearly any modern UNIX / Linux / BSD /
Mac OS X operating system as they are written an interpreted language.

DISADVANTAGES OF SHELL PROGRAMMING

A. Compatibility problem between different platforms.
B. Slow execution speed.
Advanced Shell Scripting
The special operator && and || can be used to execute functions in sequence
grep '^harry:' /etc/passwd || useradd harry

The || means to only execute the second command if the first command returns an error. In the above
case, grep will return an exit code of 1 if harry is not in the /etc/passwd file, causing useradd
to be executed.

Special Parameters: $?, $*,...

An ordinary variable can be expanded with $VARNAME. Commonly used variables like PATH and
special variables like PWD and RANDOM
$*
Expands to the positional parameters (i.e., the command-line arguments passed to the shell script,
with $1 being the first argument, $2 the second etc.), starting from one. When the expansion
occurs within double quotes, it expands to a single word with the value of each parameter
separated by the first character of the IFS special variable. That is, "$*" is equivalent to
"$1c$2c...", where c is the first character of the value of the IFS variable. If IFS is unset, the
parameters are separated by spaces. If IFS is null, the parameters are joined without intervening
separators.
$@
Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one. When the expansion occurs within
double quotes, each parameter expands to a separate word. That is, "$@" is equivalent to "$1"
"$2" ... When there are no positional parameters, "$@" and $@ expand to nothing
$#
Expands to the number of positional parameters in decimal (i.e. the number of command-line
arguments).
$?
Expands to the status of the most recently executed foreground pipeline.
$-
Expands to the current option flags as specified upon invocation, by the set builtin command, or
those set by the shell itself (such as the -i option).
$$
Expands to the process ID of the shell. In a () subshell, it expands to the process ID of the current
shell, not the subshell.
$!
Expands to the process ID of the most recently executed background (asynchronous) command.
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION:

Systems administration is the installation and maintenance of the UNIX computer system. The system
administrator will need to maintain the software and hardware for the system. This includes hardware
configuration, software installation, reconfiguration of the kernel, networking, and anything else that's
required to make the system work and keep it running in a satisfactory manner. To do this the system
administrator can assume superuser, or root, privileges to perform many tasks not normally available to
the average user of the system.
A system administrator, or sysadmin, is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration,
and reliable operation of computer systems; especially multi-user computers, such as servers.
The system administrator seeks to ensure that the uptime, performance, resources, and security of the
computers he or she manages meet the needs of the users, without exceeding the budget.
BOOTING PROCESS:

1. BIOS
 BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System
 Performs some system integrity checks
 Searches, loads, and executes the boot loader program.
 It looks for boot loader in floppy, cd-rom, or hard drive. You can press a key (typically F12 of
F2, but it depends on your system) during the BIOS startup to change the boot sequence.
 Once the boot loader program is detected and loaded into the memory, BIOS gives the control
to it.
 So, in simple terms BIOS loads and executes the MBR boot loader.

2. MBR
 MBR stands for Master Boot Record.
 It is located in the 1st sector of the bootable disk. Typically /dev/hda, or /dev/sda
 MBR is less than 512 bytes in size. This has three components 1) primary boot loader info in 1st
446 bytes 2) partition table info in next 64 bytes 3) mbr validation check in last 2 bytes.
 It contains information about GRUB (or LILO in old systems).
 So, in simple terms MBR loads and executes the GRUB boot loader.

3. GRUB
 GRUB stands for Grand Unified Bootloader.
 If you have multiple kernel images installed on your system, you can choose which one to be
executed.
 GRUB displays a splash screen, waits for few seconds, if you don’t enter anything, it loads the
default kernel image as specified in the grub configuration file.
 GRUB has the knowledge of the filesystem (the older Linux loader LILO didn’t understand
filesystem).
  Grub configuration file is /boot/grub/grub.conf (/etc/grub.conf is a link to this).

4. Kernel
 Mounts the root file system as specified in the “root=” in grub.conf
 Kernel executes the /sbin/init program
 Since init was the 1st program to be executed by Linux Kernel, it has the process id (PID) of 1.
Do a ‘ps -ef | grep init’ and check the pid.
 initrd stands for Initial RAM Disk.
 initrd is used by kernel as temporary root file system until kernel is booted and the real root file
system is mounted. It also contains necessary drivers compiled inside, which helps it to access
the hard drive partitions, and other hardware.

5. Init
 Looks at the /etc/inittab file to decide the Linux run level.
 Following are the available run levels
 0 – halt
 1 – Single user mode
 2 – Multiuser, without NFS
 3 – Full multiuser mode
 4 – unused
 5 – X11
 6 – reboot
 Init identifies the default initlevel from /etc/inittab and uses that to load all appropriate program.
 Execute ‘grep initdefault /etc/inittab’ on your system to identify the default run level
 If you want to get into trouble, you can set the default run level to 0 or 6. Since you know what
0 and 6 means, probably you might not do that.
 Typically you would set the default run level to either 3 or 5.

6. Runlevel programs
 When the Linux system is booting up, you might see various services getting started. For
example, it might say “starting sendmail …. OK”. Those are the runlevel programs, executed
from the run level directory as defined by your run level.
 Depending on your default init level setting, the system will execute the programs from one of
the following directories.
 Run level 0 – /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/
 Run level 1 – /etc/rc.d/rc1.d/
 Run level 2 – /etc/rc.d/rc2.d/
 Run level 3 – /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/
 Run level 4 – /etc/rc.d/rc4.d/
  Run level 5 – /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/
 Run level 6 – /etc/rc.d/rc6.d/

BACKUP AND RESORATION:

Backup media has generally fallen into two categories. One category is tape media and the other is
removal cartridge. Tape media is generally cheaper is cost and supports larger sizes; however, tape
media does not easily support random access to information. Removal cartridge drives, whether optical
or magnetic, do support random access to information; however they have lower capacity and a much
higher cost per megabyte than tape media. Finally, optical drives generally retain information for a
longer time period than tapes and may be used if a permanent archival is needed (side note: Nothing is
permanent, if that is a requirement, you must consider ways to make additional backup copies and
periodically check the media).
Many backup options out there:
tar
tape archive program, easy to use and transportable. has limit on file name size, won't backup
special files, does not follow symbolic links, doesn't support multiple volumes.

advantage is that tar is supported everywhere. Also useful for copying directories

tar -cf . | ( cd /user2/directory/jack; tar -xBf -)

tar cvfb /dev/tape 20 .
tar xvf /dev/tape .

cpio
Copy in/out archive program, rarely used except on older System V type machines. Must be
given a list of file names to archive. Use find to do this:

find . -print | cpio -ocBV > /dev/tape

reloading a archive from tape

cpio -icdv < /dev/tape

dump
dump (or rdump) reads the raw file system and copies the data blocks out to tape. dump is
program that is generally used by most groups. One feature of dump is that dump (via rdump) can
work across a network and dump a file system to a remote machine's tape drive. Dump cannot be
used to back up just a specific directory. Thus for backup of a directory tree tar or cpio is better
suited.

Restoring Files
It always arises to require a restore. To restore an entire file system you must remake the file system
(mkfs, mount), then cd to that file system and run the command restore -r. If you have multiple levels
of the file system restore will restore the files in reverse order of when they were dumped.
To restore just one file, use the restore command in interactive mode. This is done with the command
restore -i. In interactive mode, you use the basic unix commands to navigate on the restore tape and
then use the sub-command add filespec to add that file to the list to be extracted. When complete, use
the command extract to have restore load in the files from tape. Add a directory to the list also causes
all of the files within that directory to be added.
restore - restore files or file systems from backups made with dump
restore -C [-cdHklMvVy] [-b blocksize] [-D filesystem] [-f file] [-F script] [-L limit] [-s fileno] [-T
directory]
restore -i [-acdhHklmMNouvVy] [-A file] [-b blocksize] [-f file] [-F script] [-Q file] [-s fileno] [-T
directory]
restore -P file [-acdhHklmMNuvVy] [-b blocksize] [-f file] [-F script] [-s fileno] [-T directory] [-X
filelist] [ file ... ]
LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM:

Linux is one of popular version of UNIX operating System. It is open source as its source code is
freely available. It is free to use. ... Its functionality list is quite similar to that of UNIX.
Linux is one of popular version of UNIX operating System. It is open source as its source code is freely
available. It is free to use. Linux was designed considering UNIX compatibility. Its functionality list is
quite similar to that of UNIX.

Components of Linux System

Linux Operating System has primarily three components

 Kernel − Kernel is the core part of Linux. It is responsible for all major activities of this
operating system. It consists of various modules and it interacts directly with the underlying
hardware. Kernel provides the required abstraction to hide low level hardware details to system
or application programs.

 System Library − System libraries are special functions or programs using which application
programs or system utilities accesses Kernel's features. These libraries implement most of the
functionalities of the operating system and do not requires kernel module's code access rights.

 System Utility − System Utility programs are responsible to do specialized, individual level
tasks.
Architecture
The following illustration shows the architecture of a Linux system −

Basic Features
Following are some of the important features of Linux Operating System.

 Portable − Portability means software can works on different types of hardware in same way.
Linux kernel and application programs supports their installation on any kind of hardware
platform.

 Open Source − Linux source code is freely available and it is community based development
project. Multiple teams work in collaboration to enhance the capability of Linux operating
system and it is continuously evolving.

 Multi-User − Linux is a multiuser system means multiple users can access system resources
 like memory/ ram/ application programs at same time.

 Multiprogramming − Linux is a multiprogramming system means multiple applications can

run at same time.

 Hierarchical File System − Linux provides a standard file structure in which system files/ user
files are arranged.

 Shell − Linux provides a special interpreter program which can be used to execute commands
of the operating system. It can be used to do various types of operations, call application
programs. etc.

 Security − Linux provides user security using authentication features like password protection/
controlled access to specific files/ encryption of data.