LPI 101

Module 0: Introduction

Introduction

● LPI
● LPIC-1
● Linux+
● Certification
● LPI 101
● Timetable
● Skytap

Linux Professional Institute (LPI)

“The Linux Professional Institute Inc. (LPI) is a non-profit

organization that provides vendor-independent professional
certification for Linux system administrators and
programmers.

The Linux Professional Institute Certifications (LPIC)

provide a qualification that can be used to indicate that
someone is competent at a certain level.”
LPI Courses

● Linux Essentials

● LPIC-1

● LPIC-2

● LPIC-3

LPIC-1
● Earned by passing two exams
○ LPI-101
○ LPI-102
● Focuses on general usage of core system
and utilities
○ Later courses focus much more specialised
applications, network services etc.
● Holders of LPIC-1 are eligible to skip the entry level
Suse Linux Enterprise (SCA) exam and certify directly
at SCE level

Linux+

● Earned by passing two exams

○ LX0-103
○ LX0-104
● The exam objectives for Linux+ are the
same as those for LPI
● Candidates who achieve Linux+ certification
are eligible to apply for LPIC-1
Linux Training Programmes

LPI 101

● This course will address the objectives for

the LPI 101 Exam
● The LPI courses are not specific to any
Linux distribution, but this course will focus
mostly on CentOS for examples and
exercises
○ Some tasks will use Ubuntu

Updated LPI Objectives

● The LPI objectives are updated every few years

● The current objectives are version 4
● Version 5 is in beta and will launch later this year.
○ The changes are listed on the page
https://wiki.lpi.org/wiki/LPIC-1_Summary_Version_4.0_To_5.0
● This course will cover both the current and future
objectives.
○ New objectives are noted in green
○ Objectives for removal are marked in red
Timetable

Monday Command Line Tools & Working with Files

Tuesday Filesystems & Permissions

Wednesday System Boot, Software & File Management

Thursday Hardware & Performance

Friday Virtualization
Install Lab
Certification Review
Q&A

Materials

● Slides will be provided for

each session
● Recommended Manual
○ CompTIA Linux+ Powered by
Linux Professional Institute
Study Guide: Exam LX0-103
and Exam LX0-104 , 3rd
Edition

Skytap

● A cloud based lab environment is provided

for the duration of the course
● A unique URL will be provided for each
student
 LPI 101
Module 1: Command Line Tools & Working with
Files

Module Objectives

● 103.1 Work on the command line

● 103.4 Use streams, pipes and redirects
● 103.2 Process text streams using filters
● 103.3 Perform basic file management
● 103.7 Search text files using regular expressions

Module 1

103.1 Work on the

command line
Bash Shell

Shell Environment

● env
● echo
● export
● set
● unset

Shell Environment

[andrew@pc ~]$ echo $PATH

/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/b
in:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/home/andrew/
bin
Shell Environment
[andrew@pc ~]$ echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'
/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin
/usr/local/bin
/bin
/usr/bin
/usr/local/sbin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/home/andrew/bin

Shell Environment type ~= which

[andrew@pc ~]$ type bash
bash is /bin/bash

[andrew@pc ~]$ which bash

/bin/bash

Shell Environment

[andrew@pc ~]$ export CLASS=lpi101

[andrew@pc ~]$ echo $CLASS
lpi101
[andrew@pc ~]$ unset CLASS
[andrew@pc ~]$ echo $CLASS

[andrew@pc ~]$
Shell Environment

● cd
● pwd

Commands

command [options]

command [options] file

command [options] sourcefile destinationfile

Files
[andrew@pc ~]$ ls -l example.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 andrew andrew 0 Nov 18 22:03 example.txt

[andrew@pc ~]$ ls -l ./example.txt

-rw-rw-r--. 1 andrew andrew 0 Nov 18 22:03 ./example.txt

[andrew@pc ~]$ ls -l ~/example.txt

-rw-rw-r--. 1 andrew andrew 0 Nov 18 22:03 /home/andrew/example.txt

[andrew@pc ~]$ ls -l /home/andrew/example.txt

-rw-rw-r--. 1 andrew andrew 0 Nov 18 22:03 /home/andrew/example.txt
Filenames

Never Use: *, ?, /, \, “

Best Practice:
● Use lowercase only
● Avoid spaces
● Use dashes (-), underscores (_) and dots (.)

Shell Environment

● history
● ~/.bash_history

● Tab Completion

Documentation

● man
● info
● /usr/share/doc
Man Categories

1 User Programs ls(1), cp(1), mv(1)

2 System calls provided by the Kernel open(2), poll(2), wait(2)

3 Library Calls cos(3), strlen(3),

4 Device files sd(4), fd(4), lp(4)

5 File formats crontab(5), fstab(5), inittab(5)

6 Games sol(6), four-in-a-row(6), gnome-chess(6)

7 Miscellaneous man(7), regex(7), signal(7)

8 Admin Programs fsck(8), shutdown(8), yum(8)

Online Documentation

● serverfault.com etc.
● Vendor Documentation
● The Linux Documentation Project (tldp.org)
● Google

uname (1)
uname - print system information, eg,

[andrew@pc ~]$ uname

Linux

[andrew@pc ~]$ uname -a

Linux pc.example.com 4.2.3-200.fc22.x86_64 #1 SMP
Thu Oct 8 03:23:55 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64
GNU/Linux
Module 1

Exercise 1

Review: Objective 103.1

● Use single shell commands and one line command
sequences to perform basic tasks on the command line.
● Use and modify the shell environment including
defining, referencing and exporting environment
variables.
● Use and edit command history.
● Invoke commands inside and outside the defined path.

Review: Objective 103.1

● bash ● set
● echo ● unset
● env ● man
● export ● uname
● pwd ● history
● type ● .bash_history
● which ● Quoting
Module 1

103.4 Use streams, pipes

and redirects

Streams

Stream File Descriptor Description

stdin 0 Standard Input

stdout 1 Standard Output

stderr 2 Standard Error (Output)

Redirection Operators

Operator Effect

> Redirect stdout. Overwrite any existing file.

>> Append stdout to a file

2> Redirect stderr. Overwrite any existing file.

2>> Append stderr to a file

&> Redirect both streams. Overwrite any existing file.

&>> Append both streams to a file (introduced in Bash 4)

< Use the contents of a file as stdin

Redirection Operators

[andrew@pc ~]$ echo $PATH > path.txt

[andrew@pc ~]$ cat path.txt

/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/b
in:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/home/andrew/
bin

Pipes

While redirection operators work with files,

pipes allow for the output of a command to be
used as the input to the next, eg

ls /home | grep ‘*.txt’

cat /etc/hosts | sort

tee (1)

tee - read from standard input and write to

standard output and files, eg,

ls /home | tee homes.txt

 xargs (1)

xargs - build and execute command lines from

standard input

xargs [options] [command [initial-arguments]]

Command Substitution
Command substitution allows the output of a
command to replace the command itself.

Command substitution occurs when a command is enclosed as:

$(command)
or

`command`

Escape Characters

Character Description

\ Interpret next character as its ASCII equivalent

“...” Interpret all characters between the quotes as ASCII characters

except: $ ` \

‘...’ Interpret all characters between the quotes as ASCII

characters
Review: Objective 103.4

● Redirecting standard input, standard output and standard error.

● Pipe the output of one command to the input of another command.
● Use the output of one command as arguments to another
command.
● Send output to both stdout and a file.

Review: Objective 103.4

● Redirection Operators
● tee
● xargs

Module 1

103.2 Process text

streams using filters
Text Processing

● less
● more
● cat

Text Processing

● head
● tail
■ -f, follow
■ -n, number of lines
■ -n +X, start at line number X

wc (1)

wc - print newline, word, and byte counts for each file

[andrew@pc ~]$ wc /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

198 772 7174 /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

Lines Words Bytes

wc (1)
[andrew@pc ~]$ wc -l /usr/share/doc/systemd/README
198 /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

[andrew@pc ~]$ wc -w /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

772 /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

[andrew@pc ~]$ wc -c /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

7174 /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

sed (1)

sed - stream editor for filtering and transforming

text, eg,

sed ‘s/old/new/’ example.txt

sed -i ‘s/old/new/’ example.txt

sed ‘/old/d’ example.txt

awk (1)

awk - pattern scanning and processing

language, eg,

awk ‘{print $2, $1}’ example.txt

ifconfig | awk '/inet/ {print $2}'
tr (1)

tr - translate or delete characters, eg,

echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'

tr ‘[:upper:]’ ‘[:lower:]’
tr -d ‘\n’

sort (1)

sort - sort lines of text files

■ -f, Ignore Case
■ -n, Numeric
■ -h, Human Numeric Sort
■ -r, Reverse

uniq (1)

uniq - report or omit repeated lines

■ -c, count
■ -d, only print duplicates
■ -u, only print unique lines
Checksums

[andrew@pc ~]$ md5sum /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

bf28afcb8b8cac317448c77424441cce /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

[andrew@pc ~]$ sha1sum /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

9e8de8acb143aa1d93d05ff2c27fa85cefcb673d /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

[andrew@pc ~]$ sha256sum /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

1bdc511b64e4074a3721ed9a6900d51cd34eb6a26a548642aad9cf499db9b4e5 /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

[andrew@pc ~]$ sha512sum /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

b81ad86f3ae24bd473d3626399383da45cbd80ec3f23a2c0838e388d5bd7182737155f83e7de26fd1ba9daab7a53614489c84bfb137903f9fbc55b0a9c5876b0 /usr/share/doc/systemd/README

■ -c, count
■ -d, only print duplicates
■ -u, only print unique lines
Text Processing
● tac: cat in reverse
● nl: number lines of files
● od: dump files in octal and other formats
● paste: merge lines of files
● split: split a file into pieces
● cut: remove sections from each line of files
● expand: convert tabs to spaces
● unexpand: convert spaces to tabs
● fmt: simple optimal text formatter
● join: join lines of two files on a common field
● pr: convert text files for printing

Exercise 2
Review: Objective 103.2

Send text files and output streams through text utility

filters to modify the output using standard UNIX
commands found in the GNU textutils package.

Review: Objective 103.2

● cat ● nl ● split
● cut ● od ● tail
● expand ● paste ● tr
● fmt ● pr ● unexpand
● head ● sed ● uniq
● join ● sort ● wc
● less

Module 1

103.3 Perform basic file

management
File Management

● ls
■ -l, List
■ -ld, List Directory
■ -la, List all (show hidden)

● file

Filename Expansion - Globbing

ls *.txt

ls ???.txt
ls [abc].txt
ls [a-z].txt

ls {a,z}.txt

find (1)

find - search for files in a directory hierarchy

■ -iname, Name (case insensitive)
■ -user, User
■ -type
○ f, File
○ d, Directory
find (1)

examples:

find /home/andrew -iname “*.txt”

find / -user jim
find / -mtime 0

File Management

● touch
● mkdir
■ mkdir -p (make all directories on path)

File Management
● cp
■ cp -a (archive)

● mv
● rm
■ rm -rf (recursive, force)

● rmdir
File Compression

● gzip, gunzip
● bzip2, bunzip2
● xz, unxz
● zcat, bzcat, xzcat etc.
○ zmore, zless, zgrep etc.

tar (1)

tar - an archiving utility, eg,

tar -cvvf archive.tar /directory

tar -czvvf archive.tar.gz /directory

tar -xf archive.tar

dd (1)

dd - convert and copy a file, eg,

dd if=centos.iso of=/dev/sdb

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda count=1024

bs=1024
 Exercise 3

Review: Objective 103.3

● Copy, move and remove files and directories individually.

● Copy multiple files and directories recursively.
● Remove files and directories recursively.
● Use simple and advanced wildcard specifications in commands.
● Using find to locate and act on files based on type, size, or time.
● Usage of tar, cpio and dd.

Review: Objective 103.3

● cp ● rmdir ● file
● find ● touch ● gzip
● mkdir ● tar ● gunzip
● mv ● cpio ● bzip2
● ls ● dd ● bunzip2
● rm ● globbing ● xz
● unxz
Module 1

103.7 Search text files

using regular expressions

grep (1)

grep - print lines matching a pattern

■ -R, recursive
■ -i, Case Insensitive
■ -L, Show files that match
■ -c, Count matches
■ -q, Quiet

Extended Regular Expressions

● Use the -E option with grep (or egrep) to use the extended regular
expression syntax

Grep understands three different versions of regular expression syntax: “basic,” “extended” and “perl.”
In GNU grep, there is no difference in available functionality between basic and extended syntaxes.
In basic regular expressions the meta-characters ?, +, {, |, (, and ) lose their special meaning;
instead use the backslashed versions \?, \+, \{, \|, \(, and \).
Traditional egrep did not support the { meta-character, and some egrep implementations support \{
instead, so portable scripts should avoid { in grep -E patterns and should use [{] to match a literal {.
GNU grep -E attempts to support traditional usage by assuming that { is not special if it would be the
start of an invalid interval specification. For example, the command grep -E '{1' searches for the
two-character string {1 instead of reporting a syntax error in the regular expression. POSIX allows this
behavior as an extension, but portable scripts should avoid it.
Regular Expressions

● The fundamental building blocks are the regular

expressions that match a single character. Most
characters, including all letters and digits, are regular
expressions that match themselves. Any meta-character
with special meaning may be quoted by preceding it
with a backslash.

● The period . matches any single character.

Character Classes & Bracket Expressions

● A bracket expression is a list of characters enclosed

by [ and ]
● It matches any single character in that list
○ if the first character of the list is the caret ^ then it matches any
character not in the list.
● Within a bracket expression, a range expression
consists of two characters separated by a hyphen, eg,
○ [a-k]
○ [a-zA-z]
○ [0-9]

Character Classes & Bracket Expressions

● certain named classes of characters are predefined

within bracket expressions, as follows. [:alnum:],
[:alpha:], [:cntrl:], [:digit:],
[:graph:], [:lower:], [:print:],
[:punct:], [:space:], [:upper:],
and [:xdigit:].
Anchoring

● The caret ^ and the dollar sign $ are

meta-characters that respectively match the
empty string at the beginning and end of a
line.

Repetition

A regular expression may be followed by one of

several repetition operators:
● ? The preceding item is optional and matched at most once.
● * The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
● + The preceding item will be matched one or more times.
● {n} The preceding item is matched exactly n times.
● {n,} The preceding item is matched n or more times.
● {,m} The preceding item is matched at most m times.
● {n,m} The preceding item is matched at least n times, but not more than m
times.

Regular Expressions

● regexes
■ Bracket: [aeiou]
■ Range: [a-z]
■ Start: ^
■ End: $
■ Or: |
■ Repetition: ?, +
sed(1)

The same regex syntax can be used with sed,

sed 's/gr[ae]y/blue/'
sed 's/[[:digit:]]/X/'

Module 1

Exercise 4

Review: Objective 103.7

● Create simple regular expressions containing several notational

elements.
● Understand the differences between basic and extended regular
expressions.
● Understand the concepts of special characters, character classes,
quantifiers and anchors.
● Use regular expression tools to perform searches through a
filesystem or file content.
● Use regular expressions to delete, change and substitute text.
Review: Objective 103.7

● grep
● egrep
● fgrep
● sed
● regex(7)