Ubuntu Linux Fundamentals - A Practical Approach to Learning

Learn to install the latest Ubuntu on your laptop using Oracle VM VirtualBox or VMware Workstation, download the Ubuntu image, install the virtualization software, and create a new virtual machine.

Create an Ubuntu Linux template and install the OS in a virtual machine, configuring ISO image, hardware, boot order, and bridged networking for host access.

Install Ubuntu from a guided setup, choose updates and software, erase disk for a fresh install, create a user, and configure region and keyboard layout.

Complete a ubuntu lab setup by restarting after installation, adjusting boot order, installing essential packages (vim, build-essential, linux-headers), and mounting the VirtualBox guest additions.

Run the vbox Linux editions dot run file, fix permissions to executable, and start the guest edition installation. Reboot to enable full screen and drag-and-drop between Windows and Ubuntu.

Set up Ubuntu in a virtual machine, enable bidirectional clipboard and drag-and-drop, achieve full-screen mode, install essential packages, and use the guest additions CD to finalize the setup.

Explore the Linux filesystem hierarchy with root at the top of an inverted tree, covering /boot, /dev, /etc, /home, /root, /run, /tmp, and /var, plus symbolic links /bin→/usr/bin and /lib→/usr/lib.

Learn to distinguish absolute and relative paths, identify files from the root or current directory, and list directory contents.

Navigate the file system using absolute and relative paths, practice pwd, ls, and cd commands, and learn how to create and view files with touch and cat.

Explore linux redirections and the three channels: standard input, standard output, and standard error. Learn to redirect stdout, stderr, and input to files or other commands.

Practice session on standard input and output redirections in Linux, showing how to redirect output to a file, append, redirect input from a file, and redirect errors to a file.

Learn how to use the tee command to send standard input to both standard output and files, with pipeline syntax and practical examples of output redirection.

Practice session demonstrates using the Linux tee command to log output to a file while displaying it in the terminal, with ifconfig on Ubuntu and basic redirecting and -a appending.

Explore pipes in Linux, a technique that connects two or more commands so output of one becomes the input of the next, using the pipe symbol to form a pipeline.

Explore the cut command for text processing in linux, extracting specific columns by byte, character, or field using delimiters and the -d and -f options to standard output.

Explore awk, a powerful Linux text processing tool used as a filter to scan lines, split fields, compare patterns, and perform actions on matching text.

Learn practical awk commands to print file contents, add line numbers, select columns like $1 and $NF, and filter lines by patterns and numeric conditions.

Master grep and egrep to search text files using regular expressions and print matching lines. Learn their syntax, options, and how extended regex (egrep) differs from basic grep.

Explore grep and egrep in ubuntu practice, learning case-insensitive and exact searches with -i and -n, count with -c, and digit-focused multi-pattern matching with -e or egrep.

Learn how the sort and uniq text processing commands in Linux sort lines, optionally in reverse order with -r, and remove adjacent duplicates while counting occurrences.

Learn to sort text with unix commands, including case-aware and numeric sorts, sort by column with -k, and remove duplicates with uniq and related options.

Learn that wc stands for word count. It counts lines, words, bytes, and characters in a file using its syntax and a practical example.

Explore wc command in Ubuntu through a hands-on lab, counting lines, words, and bytes across files, piping results, and using options like -l, -w, -c, or --version and man wc.

Compare files with diff and cmp on Ubuntu Linux. Diff shows line-by-line differences with add, change, and delete signals, while cmp checks byte-by-byte and reports the first difference.

Explore how to compare files with diff and cmp on Ubuntu, identify identical files, and interpret differences in lines and bytes with practical editing examples.

Explore how to split large Linux files into smaller pieces using the split command and how to combine them with cat, enabling efficient uploads and reliable recovery of original files.

Engage in a practice lab on splitting and merging Linux files, using split -l 1000 and split -b 100k, then cat to reconstruct and verify the original file.

Learn how tar creates archives and combines files into tarballs, then compress with gzip to reduce size, and decompress with gunzip while preserving permissions and timestamps.

Master tar for creating archives with tar -c -v -f, listing with tar -t, and extracting with tar -xvf, while comparing gzip and zip compression and using gunzip to decompress.

Learn how the truncate command in Linux shrinks or extends a file's size without deleting the file or altering permissions, using -s options and redirection.

Engage in a hands-on lab on the truncate command in Ubuntu Linux, learning to clear files, truncate to a specific size, extend or reduce size, while preserving permissions.

Master practical network configuration on Ubuntu, including checking the current IP address, setting static or dynamic IP via Netplan, and adjusting hostname with hostnamectl.

Learn curl, a command line tool for transferring data over http, smtp, and ftp, including downloading files and debugging. Learn ping, which uses icmp to test connectivity and latency.

Learn to use the hostname command to view and set the system name, and perform dns lookups with nslookup and dig to retrieve ip addresses and mx records.

Practice lab session covers hostname and ip lookup commands in Ubuntu, showing how to display and change the system hostname. It also introduces nslookup and dig for dns queries.

Track the path of a packet with traceroute in Linux, revealing each hop and the route to a destination host. Learn how traceroute aids network troubleshooting, hops, and latency.

Conduct a practice lab on traceroute in Ubuntu by installing traceroute, running traceroute to a destination, and interpreting hops, packet loss (asterisks), and default three packets per hop.

This practice lab demonstrates enabling ssh on ubuntu with open ssh server on server and client, generating rsa keys with ssh-keygen, copying the public key via ssh-copy-id for passwordless login.

Master rsync remote synchronization with delta transfer, copying only changes for fast mirroring and incremental backups, and learn its syntax for local or remote transfers with source and destination.

Practice lab demonstrates using rsync to synchronize directories locally and remotely, preserving links and attributes, showing delta transfer and how to copy only new or modified files.

Create a local apt repository server on Ubuntu using Apache and apt-mirror to sync packages for offline updates in internet-restricted environments.

Explore aptX, a command line based tool for dealing with packages on ubuntu-based systems, and learn how to install, remove, upgrade, and search packages while comparing dpkg and rpm tooling.

Practice the Ubuntu apt workflow in a lab session by installing, updating, upgrading, and purging packages, inspecting dependencies, and using apt search, depends, and help with a Vsftpd example.

Explore the Linux boot process from BIOS post to master boot record check, GRUB2 in /boot loads the kernel and initramfs, then systemd mounts the root and starts services.

Explore run levels and systemd targets in Linux, showing how systemd maps legacy run labels to targets, and covers rescue, multi-user, graphical, reboot, and emergency modes.

Practice listing and switching Linux run targets using systemctl, view the default target, observe Runlevel 5, and toggle between graphical.target and multi-user.target while inspecting target files.