Advanced System Administration (CIS-2235) Home Page

This is the home page for Peter Chapin's Advanced System Administration course notes for the Spring 2025 semester. Here you will find electronic versions of class handouts, homework assignments, lecture slides, and links to other references. If you are a student taking Advanced System Administration, consider bookmarking this page.

The course syllabus gives an overview of the course and its content, lists course resources, and describes the grading policy and related issues.
The homework submission area and grade book are on Canvas, but all other course resources are here.
I've prepared some general information on submitting assignments.
You can use Microsoft Copilot through the school's subscription. Log in using your VSC credentials.
My home page contains other resources of potential interest.

Topics

The lectures and the labs for this course are taught in face-to-face+ format. This means there are in-person times scheduled, but the course will also be accessible via Zoom at the same time.

2025-01-21. Introduced the course and discussed Lab #1.
2025-01-23. Completed the introduction and discussed package managers.
2025-01-28. Introduced filesystems.
2025-01-30. Discussed Lab #2. Introduced Copilot.
2025-02-04. Introduced RAID.
2024-02-06. Introduced LVM. Discussed Lab #3.
2025-02-11. No class.
2025-02-13. Introduced timed commands and Lab #4.
2025-02-18. Discussed processes and job control.
2025-02-20. Discussed the boot process and systemd/journald.
2025-02-25. No class (Vacation).
2025-02-27. No class (Vacation).
2025-03-04. Discussed web hosting.
2025-03-06. Discussed Lab #5 on installing web servers.
2025-03-11. Discussed logging and monitoring.
2025-03-13. Discussed security and encryption. Discussed Lab #6.
2025-03-18. Discussed Python programming.
2025-03-20. Discussed Lab #7 on writing Python programs.
2025-03-25. Introduction to single-sign-on technologies.
2025-03-27. Discussed user management.
2025-04-01. Discussed file servers (FTP, SSHFS, NFS, Samba/CIFS).
2025-04-03. Discussed Lab #8 on setting up file servers.
2025-04-08. No class (Vacation).
2025-04-10. No class (Vacation).
2025-04-15. Discussed backup strategies.
2025-04-17. Discussed the use of tar and rsync.
2025-04-22. Discussed email.
2025-04-24. ???
2025-04-29. Discussed DevOps and version control.
2025-05-01. ???

Slides

Lab Assignments

The lab set is summarized in the lab summary document, along with links to specific lab handouts and supporting code samples.