Assignment-01

Due Date: 31th Oct 2019 Operating System-325

Problem Statement
The purpose of this assignment is to give you an in-depth knowledge of the Operating System concepts as well as their
implementation on your Linux/UNIX systems. This will not only help you practice OS concepts, get graded marks in your
in your mid and final exams. Be precise and to the point in attempting these questions. No need to write stories.

1. Give a brief history (one page summary) of Linux/UNIX operating systems.

2. What do you understand by a Linux/UNIX Shell? Give the salient features and drawbacks of Bourne,
Korn, Bourne Again, C, TC, RC, and Z Shells.
3. Why does a shell process terminate when you press <^D> at the beginning of a new line?
4. Give a command line to display the types of all the files of the personal directory in your home directory
that do not start with letters b, r, H, or D and the third letter in their name is not a digit and not a letter
(upper or lowercase)
5. What is the difference between internal and external shell commands? How does a Linux shell execute
the internal and external commands? Explain your answer with an example.
6. What is the search path for a shell? What is the name of shell variable that is used to maintain it for the
Bash shell? Where (in which file) is this variable typically located? How can you change this variable
for the current session, for a particular user, for the entire system?
7. Mention the hidden files that are there in your home directory, with one line description of their usage.
8. Mention ten important writable and ten important read only Bash Shell Environment variables, with one
line description of each.
9. Explain the Shell Initialization process.
10. What are special files in UNIX? What are character special and block special files? Run ls /dev | wc -w
command to find out the number of special files your system has.
11. What do the following commands do? Write a single line description for each and do practice them.
a. rm –f ~/personal/memo*.doc
b. rm –f ~/unixbook/final/ch??.prn
c. rm –f ~/unixbook/final/*.o
d. rm –f ~/courses/ece446/lab[1-6].[cC]
e. mv –i ~/courses/ece345/lab[123] ~/newlabs.ece345
f. rm *[a-zA-Z]??[1,5,8].[^p]*

12. What do you mean by archiving and compression? Give a series of commands for archiving and then compressing
a directory tree that is located in your home directory. Later, also mention steps to uncompress and un-archive the
tar ball in some other directory.
13. Why is the tar command preferred over the cp –r command for creating backup copies of directory hierarchies?
Mention copying a directory tree from one location to another using tar in one command.
14. What is a link in Linux? Name the types of link that Linux supports. How do they differ from each other? Give
pros and cons of each.
 15. What do the following commands do:
a. cat 1> letter 2> save 0< memo
b. cat 2> save 0< memo 1< letter
c. cat 1> letter 0< memo 2>&1
d. cat 0< memo | sort 1> letter 2> /dev/null
e. cat 2> save 0< memo | sort 1> letter 2> /dev/null
16. In UNIX jargon, what is a daemon? Give examples of five daemons.
17. Execute the $ps -l command on your system. Mention and explain the fourteen columns of output that is
displayed on the screen.
18. Give a command to run the date command after 10 seconds. Make use of the sleep command; read the manual
page for this command to find out how to use it.
19. Practice using the commands like free, du, mkfs, top, fdisk.
20. Write down a paragraph each on the structure and working of following configuration files:
a. ~/.bashrc and /etc/bashrc
b. ~/.bash_profile and /etc/bashprofile
c. /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, /etc/gshadow,
d. /etc/default/useradd, /etc/login.defs, and /etc/skel/
e. /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab
f. /etc/crontab
g. /boot/grub/grub.conf
h. /etc/inittab
i. /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

Submission Instructions:
 You have to submit your assignment in HAND written form on plain A4 Sheets. The cover page should be
printed with information like assignment # and its title, student id, name subject, etc.
 No file covers required. Simply staple the papers of your assignments and hand over to CR of your class.
Respective CRs should submit all the assignments on due date to class TA.
 NO late submissions will be accepted for this assignment.
 If any plagiarism detected, result will be ‘F’