Laboratory 2 - Basic UNIX and Network Utilities

Due - Tuesday, November 25, 2003

In part 1 of this lab you will be finding out more about UNIX. Following are a couple of URLs that you might find helpful. However, you should also spend some time web surfing on your own.
http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/startdoc/
http://wks.uts.ohio-state.edu/unix_course/intro-137.html
http://www.math.utah.edu/lab/unix/unix-commands.html
One helpful hint as you do this assignment is to remember that you can find a great deal of information by consulting the man pages for the UNIX commands and network tools. These pages will tell you how to run the command/tool, and may also give you some insight into what the command/tool is for and how it works. If you want to access a man page you simply type man and the command. For example: man ping.

In part 2 of this lab, you will be using a number of tools to discover what is actually happening in the network. You will be asked to find out more about how to run the tools, understand how each of the tools works, and analyze the information we can gather from using the tools.

This assignment should be done on one of the Linux machines in the lab -- Clapp 202. All of the machines are dual boot. If you want to work on a machine that is currently in windows, reboot into the linux partition. Also, the machine cmpscii.mtholyoke.edu should remain in Linux so that you can log in remotely. You can telnet in from anywhere. If you want to do the assignment elsewhere, you should contact me first.

This assignment is to be done individually and should be turned in by the start of class on the due date. Late assignments will not be accepted (that is -- you will get a 0 if you do not turn the assigment in on time). No extensions will be granted without explicit prior approval from me.

Part 1

Question 1 - 5 points
Suppose you type the URL of the class web page in your browser and you get a page that says "403 Forbidden". What command would I need to use to remedy the situation so that you could load the page from anywhere?

Question 2 - 5 points
Suppose I wanted to create a "symbolic link" such that when I am in my home directory /users/fac/srollins I can type cd public_html and subsequently be in the directory /world/srollins. What command would I type?

Question 3 - 5 points
Suppose I am logged into MHC from home and I have pine running. Now, suppose my connection is lost but the pine process continues to run. What is the series of commands I would need to use to find and kill the process?

Question 4 - 10 points
Suppose I have run a simulation experiment and I have a file named myOutput that looks like the following:
waittime 30
servicetime 45
waittime 44
servicetime 105
waittime 77
waittime 99
servicetime 432
In order to manipulate the data, I want to have two files, the first should contain the waittime output and should look like:
30
44
77
99
And the second should contain the servicetime output and should look like:
45
105
432
So, I want to separate the waittime and servicetime results AND I want to get rid of everything but the actual data. How would I do that?

Question 5 - 10 points
Suppose I ask you to run the command traceroute. You log in to cmpscii and type traceroute, but you get the following output:
[srollins@cmpscii srollins]$ traceroute
bash: traceroute: command not found
Describe two ways I can get the traceroute program to run?

Part 2

Question 1 - 30 points
ping
Hint: You can use control-c to quit ping, or you can consult the man pages for more information on how to get ping to terminate in a more elegant fashion.



Question 2 - 20 points
traceroute


Question 3 - 15 points
host
Sami Rollins