Assignment: Role of Operating Systems and Command Line Interface (CLI)
Purpose of the assessment (with ULO Mapping) This assignment assesses the following Unit Learning Outcomes; students should be able to demonstrate their achievements in them.
a. Describe the role of Operating Systems (OS) and its different subsystems in controlling computer hardware
b. Demonstrate competency in the use of a command line interface to operate and perform simple OS administration
The assignment focuses on two aspects, the role of OS as an interface between the user and the computer hardware, and use of command line interface. It helps the students to understand the different types of OS and their functionalities on different devices. Also it assists the students to gain competency in using UNIX/LINUX commands in performing simple OS administration.
By doing this assignment, students will get to learn to research and comprehend the basic concepts of OS and how differently or similarly they play the interfacing role on various computing and communication devices. Also, they will appreciate the ease of using GUI over CLI.
Section 1: Operating Systems
The Operating system acts as an interface between the user and the computer hardware. Discuss in detail the roles of the OS as a resource manager and as an extended machine on the following systems:
- Client,
- Server, and
- Mobile devices.
Students may consider any of the OS for discussions, for instance Windows, Linux, iOS, MacOS, Android, etc. Further, the students must consider any five of the following features relevant to the systems for discussions.
How does OS on a client / server / mobile system
- support many devices simultaneously
- allocate resource to different users
- share resources among users fairly, efficiently, and safely
- resolve conflict in resource demand
- hides the implementation details
- Provide stable, portable, reliable, safe, well-behaved environment
- manage memory, processor, file etc.
- level of security it provides
Section 2: OS Administration using Command Line Interface
Refer totheman command to understand the syntax and parameters for the commands that you would be using in this section.
I. Demonstrate the following Unix/Linux commands in the lab to your tutor before week 6 and paste the screen shots of the execution in the same word file that has section 1 of the assignment.
i. How do you know if a remote host is alive or not?
ii. How do you find which process is taking how much CPU?
iii. How do you check how much space is left in current drive?
iv. How do you find whether your system is 32 bit or 64 bit?
v. In a file word UNIX is appearing many times. How will you count the number of these occurrences?
II. Type in the following commands and discuss the outputs you get after execution of the commands. Also, paste the screen shots of the output obtained in the same word file used for above question and section 1 of the assignment.
a. % cat /etc/hosts cat?
b. % echo "Home Directory Is home" uppercase $HOME?
c. % who | wc
d. % who > logged.users
e. %date "+%m/%d/%y"
%date "+%Y%m%d"
%date +'%-4.4h %2.1d %H:%M'