Notes on ITE2 labs. Last updated 01 November 2007 10:30am. Changes and corrections welcome. These notes were made from the pdf lab manual therefore don't have lab numbers on them because the pdf lab manual doesn't have numbers on the labs. Follow this file down and mark off the labs you have done to ensure the notes refer to the correct lab. Search for *** to find the separation between the labs. It is probable that there will be differences between Debian and Redhat, we will fix these as we come to them. There is a new ITE cariculum which we hope to be teaching next year which will superceed these labs. General notes: It is advantagious to use ed or pico or ae instead of vi because the h j k and l commands do not work well in a screen reader and the refreshing of the terminal can be a little strange with vi. Also it can be difficult to tell if you are in insert mode or not in VI. You can use the Debian or the Redhat virtual machine to do these labs; debian notes are given for conversions. Specific labs: 1st NIS lab: This lab works unchanged on the fedora virtual machine. Hostname does not change however. Debian does not ship with nis by default; you need to install it. apt-get install nis ypbind should be active by default; no need to activate it; given that the nis configuration is never actually used. Debian will prompt you for the Nis domain name; no need to set it. It will then try to connect to the NIS server; which will not succeed. Wait for it to fail and continue on with the lab. Note that having Nis installed will increase the time required for the virtual machine to boot up completely. To aleviate this; dpkg -r nis after the lab is complete. *** second lab windows 2000 device manager. Standard lab no modifications note that you can access device manager with start run devmgmt.msc You will need to use Jaws cursor to read contents of windows; use control tab to switch tabs. You can use control insert w to virtualize the window so you can cut and copy text out of it. *** hcl lab: This might take longer than 20 minutes with websites and a screen reader. *** create swap space on linux server lab: no modifications. This lab will work just fine under either distribution. *** install windows 2000 demo: Use a virtual machine and talk people through the install. optionally discuss unattended installs. These were discussed in previous lectures; see podcast on unattended install of Windows XP on http://www.blindcooltek.com/ *** configure ip settings in w2k lab: Use jaws and virtual machine. *** log on lab: set jaws to run at startup. no changes. *** using w2k GUI: use keyboard instead of mouse. *** w2k admin tools: use arrow keys; some jaws cursoring required. *** using w2k cli: easy enough with jaws but may rquire jaws cursoring to reread information on screen. Do not fullscreen the window; maximizing is ok. *** using w2k and explorer: use explorer with Jaws and also use my computer. *** w2k creating users lab: Jaws is fine with this. Note that to right click either use the applications key or hit shift f10. You can also right click by hitting numpad slash. The virtual machine logs in by default as user cavi1. To log in as administrator select log off cavi1 from the shutdown menu. start ->shutdown ->log off cavi1 now log in as administrator. Advanced users can turn off autologin in machine properties or using tweakui on the virtual machine. *** modifying user account properties under w2k lab: Note to expand folders rather than clicking on the plus sign use the right arrow to expand the folder. Left arrow will close a branch on the tree view. *** Creating files and folders w2k lab: use file menu rather than clicking on empty space. *** create groups in w2k: similar to users however you are doing groups instead. *** assigning permitions in win2k: no changes necessary this is doable with jaws. Mention cacls perhaps easier to do some of this from command-line. *** configuring http services in Windows: no problems with this lab; however you will need to connect an iso of the cdrom to your virtual machine rather than inserting the original cd. This procedure will vary depending on whether you are using vmware server or player. In vmware player it is difficult to connect the ISO image so you can optionally burn the ISO to an actual blank cd and insert it when the virtual machine is powered up. You will need software such as Nero burning rom or simlar to burn the cd. If running vmware server it will allow you to connect the iso to the virtual machine which is faster, and also saves you on a piece of blank media. *** configuring telnet on windows 2000: use Teraterm for client side or a Linux box with speech at a shell prompt. *** stopping and starting services: Note that you can start and stop services from command line example net start service or net stop service. also to access the services control pannel you can start ->run ->services.msc *** creating script on windows 2000: no changes. *** installing Linux: This will be done as a demo; also virtual images provided. There is an audio recording of a Ubuntu install up on the website. *** Set network configuration: no changes necessary. *** configuring an x-server: Skip this lab, new X works without a config file and is set up at install time, the below is useful if you want to try this anyway. We might want to use xf86config rather than xconfigurator because xf86config is line based. Most modern distributions configure X at install time; and the virtual machines don't have X Windows on them. google up the xf86config manpage and have a bit of a read; the actual lab itself won't help us much. *** configuring netscape: need to check usability of browser with x-based screen reader; otherwise you ccan get netscape off the ftp site and untar it by hand. Turns out firefox 3 (still under development) has accessibility support; try out lynx instead. under fedora: yum install lynx under Debian: apt-get install lynx If a graphical browser with speech is desired, students can obtain and boot vinux from www.vinux.org.uk and boot it in a virtual machine. *** customizing kernel limits: use nano or ed instead of vi to edit rc.local. Most of this stuff is handled under the sysfs file system in 2.6; look at the stuff in /sys document a little of what you find and try a couple of targetted google searches. *** Logging into a linux system: no changes doable with speakup or by telnet/ssh into the box. *** using gui: examine orca. Turns out Orca is pretty awful; however you can get a feel for it by doing the following: go to www.ubuntu.com grab down the Ubuntu desktop cd. Burn it to a blank cd. Boot the cd on real hardware. Once the cd is booted; press control-f2 then type orca If your soundcard is recognized (most are) you should get speech. software speech breaks up under a virtual machine in Linux we are not sure why this is yet. You can also download grml http://www.grml.org which will give you software speech at the console if you follow the directions on the website however you can get through this course without looking at grml although ubuntu and orca is worth a look. Teraterm to a virtual machine is easier unless you have hardware speech available and can dedicate it to Linux for the labs. *** navigating file system: No changes needed. *** contrasting 2 shells: no changes needed. *** using the VI editor: tricky with speech but doable. Use arrows instead of h j k l hit escape twice and if it beeps you are in command mode. don't run VI from xterm, do it from a telnet session. *** using the awk command: no modifications needed although you might want to use ed rather than vi. *** adding users in linux: no modifications needed if you are doing the lab under Redhat. Under debian you run adduser username and answer the questions. addgroup adds groups. *** manageing usernames and passwords: no modifications needed. *** Creating groups in Linux: no mods needed except for addgroup instead of groupad in Debian. *** creating directories in linux: no mods needed. *** managing runlevels: no mods needed. *** apache web server: If using Redhat: use text mode to install apache rpm. yum install apache If no network connection, rpm -i off the redhat dvd. You might need to mount the cdrom from command line and cd /mnt/cdrom If using Debian virtual machines that we have prepared apache is already installed. apt-get install apache2-doc as root and you can read it with dwww. Note that Debian puts the default webroot or documentroot as it is called in /var/www You can find information on this in /usr/share/doc/apache2/Readme.Debian.gz readable with dwww. use less rather than more; you can scroll backwards in less and it is more speech friendly. Note that only root can add information into /var/www by default; you may wish to put content into a normal user's home directory and access it as http://ip.of.server/~username When looking at the home page use lynx on a Linux host or internet explorer/firefox on a Windows host. Substitute the ip address of your virtual machine into the address bar: http://192.168.21.128/ for example. Note your ip will be different. *** configuring ftp under linux: no modifications needed for Redhat. On our image Fedora does not install ftp by default; so you'll have to install it; yum install proftpd then start it /etc/init.d/proftpd start You can't ftp in as root; make sure you have a normal user account created for this purpose. proftpd is launched by default by the system v init scripts, no need to mess with xinetd configuration files. Either test connectivity by using ftp (the command line client) on Linux and ftp to localhost or use the command-line client under Windows. Internet explorer will allow you to ftp in but it's not worth the trouble to put the credentials in for this exercise. For debian, you need to do the following: As the superuser: apt-get install proftpd Tell it to run as stand-alone by pressing enter. You will receive an error about not beeing able to fetch the ip hostname for an ipv6 address; this can be disregarded. You should be able to connect to the ftp server as user noddy if you supply the correct password Use either the command-line ftp or another GUI client to connect. *** telnet under linux: no modifications needed. configuring telnet: no modifications needed. under redhat. fedora: yum install telnet-server The telnet server is disabled by default so you will need to follow the lab on how to edit /etc/xinet.d/telnet and change service to enabled then /etc/init.d/xinetd stop /etc/init.d/xinet start In debian make sure telnetd is installed; apt-get install telnetd or preferably apt-get install telnetd-ssl configuring samba: no modifications needed under Redhat. Under Debian, apt-get install samba yes to the extra packages. You wish to use encrypted passwords and also you wish to create the local password database. Careful here since the default is not to create this file. backspace out the "no" and press y followed by return. To add a user to the samba database so they can authenticate; execute: smbpasswd -a username to change a user's samba password execute smbpasswd username as root or smbpasswd as the user in question. 2 excellent books on Samba are at http://www.samba.org/ they are called Using Samba and Samba by example. You can configure samba by editing files in the /etc/samba directory; the most interesting file is smb.conf By default the share that comments out the home directories is commented out; remove the semicollons to make it active. man 5 smb.conf or read the documentation with dwww; however that is a huge manpage; it is often easier to google up a tutorial for a quickstart. *** config telnet: no mods needed. *** config samba: no mods needed. *** Writing a script in linux: no mods needed. *** Backing up in Windows 2000: check accessibility of ntbackup; it looks fine. *** backing up files in Linux: no mods needed. *** syslog in Linux: no modifications needed however show use of grep. *** checking resource usage in Windows 2000: not sure whether the graph in performance monitor is readable. *** monitoring resource usage in linux: no modifications needed but you might want to turn off unwanted fields in top and enable no idle mode to show how it cuts down on screen clutter. I do this by pressing I for no idle mode; t for do not show totals, l for load average and m for memory. These are toggles. *** network monitor under Windows 2000: check refreshing information. *** Windows update: no modifications required. *** Operating system basics and Windows basics: just answer questions. Linux and Unix on the desktop and questions labs are fine. Linux distribution comparison: no mods needed. Windows user accounts: no mods needed.