Open Source Unix Course Syllabus
Course Description
This course is designed for students interested in learning the commercial and private application of open source unix operating system software. The operating system software in this course's progression is open source and distributed free of charge according to the terms of the BSD License. The material and instruction provided for students in this course provide the necessary basic skills and, later, advanced techniques to learn the full spectrum of the power of the Unix operating system without regard to their financial ability to purchase primary, secondary and (often) tertiary software. Students are not limited by the software in any way by their financial position but only by their tenacity and desire
The full program progression consists of 3 interlinked classes.
- Fundamentals of open source unix -- 4 weeks of Introduction to Unix instruction and exercises; Introduction to the C Shell environment and Bourne Shell scripting in addition to basic command line interface navigation and use, editor functions, and the "make Makefile" environment.
- Open source unix administration I -- 4 weeks of Unix Administration I: Working in a workstation environment: You will install FreeBSD and use it in a Desktop environment on a workstation computer. You must have a second computer on which to install FreeBSD, or a dual boot environment on any single PC with enough available space to accommodate the Desktop and /usr/ports/ environment (20 GB recommended)
- Open source unix administration II-- 4 weeks to install a multi-user instance of FreeBSD including a webserver, alternate languages, productivity software and 2 database backends (MySQL and PostgresQL)
While this is a non-graded course, each participant will receive either a pass or fail grade. Each student will be required to pass each section of the class material to be eligible to receive the NIIT/FreeBSD certification at the end of the entire program's completion. Certification candidates must maintain an 85% (or above) grade in each of the 3 certification course sections.
For successful completion of this course, you will be expected to accomplish the following:
- Read the online content for each module.
- Complete each module's assignments.
- Complete the quizzes for all Modules Participate in class discussions (where appropriate).
- Demonstrate a cumulative understanding of the course content
Instructor Information
The instructor for this course is Tim Kellers. He will monitor the course site on a daily basis. You can expect your review questions to be checked within 48 hours of your submitting them. Additionally, should you have questions during the course, you may post them via e-mail to either the mailing list, directly, or kellers@njit.edu. Your instructor will answer your questions within the same time frame.
Grading Criteria
The instructional period for these courses is four weeks.You will have eight weeks to complete this online course. One nice thing about this course is that you can progress as quickly as you want. However, that does not mean that you can wait until the last week to complete the entire course.
Minimum Requirements
You don't have to be a computer guru or technologically savvy to take this online course! However, since this course is entirely online, participants are expected to have at least an elementary knowledge of their computer system and basic knowledge of software and tools such as e-mail and an Internet browser.
The MINIMUM Technical Requirements for this course are as follows:
- Internet access either via modem and phone line, a direct network connection at work or a Cable/DSL Modem.
- Internet service provider for home access and/or access from work (must have prior to start of the course).
- Pentium II or better.
- Windows XP, Mac OS X Operating System or better.
- 256 MB RAM (or more).
- 56k or better Internet connection.
- A secure shell client (ssh). The recommended program is putty.exe. It can be downloaded from the Putty download page.
- Web Browser -- Mozilla (Firefox) 2.0 or Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher version (these are free downloadable programs). Safari 4.0 or higher (note: some editing functions in Moodle are not supported)
- A Media Player (Quicktime or VLC preferred). This can be downloaded for free at www.apple.com/quicktime. or www.videolan.org/vlc/
- If you use AOL as your Internet Service Provider (ISP) it is highly recommended that you still use either Netscape or Internet Explorer as your web browser.*
*NOTE:. America OnLine accounts may not support the use of a secure shell client to access the NJIT FreeBSD server. You may be required (at your own expense) to obtain an internet accessible account which supports secure shell access to remote servers.
Getting Support
If you have a technical question that the instructor is unable to answer you are welcome to contact help@online.njit.edu
Course Completion
Upon successful completion of the course, verified by your instructor, you will receive a certificate signifying your achievement. Please direct any questions about your certificate to: certificate@online.njit.edu