Re: [tlug] Classes

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Sun, 27 May 2012 20:25:41 +0900
Nick Bikkal <ipod.bikkal@example.com> wrote:

> Fwiw, I have 3 slide rules & have succeeded in reaching 1st
> base w/ Linux. I now want to break it apart, reassemble it, etc.
> That one will be tough but a fun challenge...& I have no idea where
> yo start. :)

Oh.. depends on what you think is fun to learn :-)

There are different things:

* Shell tools and scripting.
  bash, sed, awk and all those other little tools that are commonly refered
  as file-utils, text-utils, core-utils etc. They do the ground work for
  nearly everything in your system that is not coded directly in c.

* A good way to understand the philosophy behind a system is to see how it
  boots. Read up on how a boot loader works, how the kernel gets loaded and
  how the kernel runs its first program... and from there how all the services
  are started. Then build with that knowledge your own usb boot stick.

* Oh.. and here is a challange for you: If you have still a floppy drive around
  (an USB should work as well), try to build a boot floppy with a linux
  kernel and a root file system. But do not use any boot loader.
  Hint: use a 2.0 or a 2.2 kernel. Anything after 2.4 is too big to fit on a
  floppy together with a root filesystem.
  Hint2: One tool you will need is knl.

* Networking is a big and very diverse field of things to know. It starts
  from simple IPv4 basics, with addresses, networks, routing, etc continues
  with IPv6, TCP, UDP,... and how all these network protocols work.
  Try once to talk to a IRC server using telnet.

* Filesystems: Well.. even bigger than networking, and a lot less documented.
  To understand ext2, read up on the FFS (fast file system) paper by.. uh..
  don't remember and i'm too lazy to look it up :-)
  Ext3 with journaling is just a little modification of that. Ext4 adds a bit
  more complications. But the ext family is not so different from each other
  and you should be able to understand all of them pretty quickly. IIRC there
  was a series on file systems on one of the IBM hosted documentation sites.

* X11: Old. Outdated. But still the thing behind all graphics on Linux.
  You should get an understanding on how X11 works in principle. What an
  X server is and why it is called that way. A bit of c knowledge is good
  to get your hands dirty with writing simple X11 clients.

etc pp

And when you are finished with that list, come back and ask again ;-)

			Attila Kinali



-- 
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?