National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences

Laboratory Manual

for
Operating Systems Lab

(CL-220)

Course Instructor Mr. Saifullah Tanvir

Lab Instructor(s) Ms. Saba Traiq
Mr. Irtaza
Section CS-4J
Semester Spring 2023

Department of Computer Science

FAST-NU, Lahore, Pakistan

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Tentative Course Outline:

Tools:
We will be working in Linux OS. As most of our systems are windows based, we will be using Ubuntu as
guest OS. Tools required for lab tasks are:

1. VMware/Virtualbox
2. Ubuntu/fedora(any version)
3. Or WSL can be used too

Installation:
You can download virtualbox from the following link:

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads/WindowsHosts

You can download execution file of Ubuntu from the following link:

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https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop/download/22.04LTS

After downloading both, installation processes starts. You have to view following video to do that:

https://youtu.be/v1JVqd8M3Yc

You need to share folder between hosts and guest OS. To do that watch following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZBiyKfSTA4

Your installation is done now. Let’s start working!!

Objectives
In this lab, students will:
1. Practice Basic commands on terminal
2. Develop a small program in C for reading/writing files

Basic Commands
• Clear the console: clear
• Changing working Directory: cd Desktop
cd Home
• List all files in directory: ls
• Copy all files of a directory within the current work directory: cp dir/*
• Copy a directory within the current work directory: cp -a tmp/dir1
• Look what these commands do
cp -a dir1 dir2
cp filename1 filename2

Compiling C and C++ Programs on the Terminal:

For C++:
Command: g++ source_files… -o output_file

For C:
Command: gcc source_files… -o outputfiles

Example:
gcc main.c lib.c –o run.exe

Passing Command Line Arguments to a C/C++ Program

 Command line argument is a parameter supplied to the program when it is invoked.
Command line argument is an important concept in C/C++ programming. It is mostly
used when you need to control your program from outside. Command line arguments
are passed to the main() method.

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 To pass command line arguments, we typically define main() with two arguments: first
argument counts the number of arguments on the command line and the second is a
pointer array which holds pointers of type char which points to the arguments passed
to the program. The syntax to define the main method is int main (int argc, char
*argv[]).
 Here, argc variable will hold the number of arguments pass to the program while the
argv will contain pointers to those variables. argv[0] holds the name of the program
while argv[1] to argv[argc] hold the arguments.
 Command-line arguments are given after the name of the program in command-line
shell of Operating Systems. Each argument separated by a space. If a space is included in
the argument, then it is written in “”.

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In Lab Tasks
Question 1: (1 marks)
See the usage of the following commands online. Also, run them on the terminal.
1. pwd
2. ls
3. cd
4. cp
5. mkdir & rmdir
6. man
7. sudo
8. apt-get

Question 2: (2 marks)
a. Create a file named main.c and write a code to print “Welcome to BSBS Operating
System Lab Course” on terminal.
b. main.c file contains the main function receiving command-line arguments.
c. You will pass the name of Course via these arguments.

Question 3: (3 marks)
 Write a program that takes multiple numbers from the user through command line
arguments.
 Print the sum and average of these numbers on the terminal.

Question 4: (4 marks)
 Write a program to copy numbers from one file to another.
 Create a function removeNonAlphabets(char * inputFileName, char * outputFileName)
in C.
 This function reads the content of input file and writes only the numbers to the output
file.
 The names of input and output files are passed through command line arguments.
 You can write any alphabets and numbers in the input file.

Note: You can use any mechanism for file-handling, in this task.

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