ENIB S7-NSA - Network and System Administration

{1 #activity } Activity

This course is primarily based on a series of tutorials aimed at introducing the vocabulary and fundamental principles of network and system administration.
It helps in understanding how a deployed IT solution interacts with its hardware or virtualized environment.
These tutorials will take place in a UNIX environment:

01_shell — Commands and scripts
02_storage — Storage management
03_network — Network basics
04_sockets — Socket programming
05_architecture — Network architecture
06_infrastructure — Infrastructure services
07_users — User management
08_security — Encryption, authentication and security
09_containers — Container basics
10_application — Containerised application
11_images — Container image reduction
12_deployment — Container deployment

Beyond these practical aspects, documents addressing the issue of resources used by the deployment of IT solutions will also be studied.

13_resources — Resource consumption (independent work during unsupervised sessions)

Installation on a personal computer

If needed, to retrieve or upload files, you can access your ENIB Linux lab account from outside the school following this procedure provided by ENIB's SNUM (IT service).

If you wish to repeat the tutorials on your own computer, you will need to retrieve these three files from the ENIB Linux Lab rooms:

/home/TP/tools/S7NSA_base.img
/home/TP/tools/s7nsa_machine.py
/home/TP/tools/s7nsa_hub_switch.py

The s7nsa_machine.py script uses the QEMU software to emulate a PC-type computer.
Be aware that some Linux distributions are shipped with versions of QEMU that do not support the options required here.
In such cases, the simplest solution is to compile this tool yourself; this is what was done (with a few minor differences) in the ENIB Linux Lab rooms:
$ sudo apt update ↵ $ sudo apt install gcc make bzip2 pkg-config libgtk-3-dev libcap-dev libattr1-dev ↵ $ wget https://download.qemu.org/qemu-4.2.1.tar.xz ↵ $ tar xvJf qemu-4.2.1.tar.xz ↵ $ cd qemu-4.2.1 ↵ $ sed -i 's/nopie/no-pie/' ./configure ↵ $ ./configure --target-list=x86_64-softmmu --disable-sdl --enable-gtk --enable-virtfs ↵ $ make ↵ $ sudo make install ↵ The version indicated here is quite old, but sufficient for what we are doing; it is of course possible to use a more recent version.
If you use WSL on Windows, the previous installation is also possible.

To make the s7nsa_hub_switch.py and s7nsa_machine.py scripts executable, enter the following command: $ chmod +x s7nsa_*.py ↵ When starting QEMU, you may encounter an error indicating that you do not have the required permissions to use KVM; in that case, simply run the s7nsa_machine.py script again with sudo.

{2 #assess } Assessment

The assessment of this module is individual.
At ENIB, we are required to formulate the assessment as a breakdown based on “Intended Learning Outcomes”.

“Intended Learning Outcome” n°1
At the end of this course, a student will be able to recognize the vocabulary and explain the fundamental principles in the field of network and system administration.

Assessment method: three comprehension quizzes based on the completed tutorials.
- Quiz 1: Based on Tutorials 01–04, takes place at the beginning of Day 3.
- Quiz 2: Based on Tutorials 05–08, takes place at the beginning of Day 5.
- Quiz 3: Based on Tutorials 09–12, takes place at the end of Day 6.
Criterion: for each quizz, the student is able to answer correctly the questions.

“Intended Learning Outcome” n°2
At the end of this course, a student will be able to apply basic operations in the field of network and system administration.

Assessment method: attendance records for the tutorials and monitoring of engagement in the proposed activities.
Criterion: for each tutorial, the student is present and engaged in the activity.

“Intended Learning Outcome” n°3
At the end of this course, a student will be able to identify elements related to the resources used by IT solutions.

Assessment method: a written report analysing the assigned documents, as described in Brief 13.
Criterion: The report follows the recommendations provided in the exercise statement.

The overall grade for the subject is the average of the grades for the “Intended Learning Outcomes” of the subject.