I am posting the report on the Workshop held at Fr. CRCE Bandra on the 12th and 13th of October, 2002.

The report was written by Harsh Busa.

The same will be put up on the db.ilug-bom.org.in website.

Philip

2 Days @ Fr CRCE: Linux Workshop

Report on Linux Workshop conducted at Fr. Conceciao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Bandra.

Speakers: (all from Ilug-bom) Dr. G. Nagarjuna Mr. Dinesh Shah Mr. Philip S Tellis Mr. Harsh Busa

Introduction:

In late September, Philip was approached by Professor Shubhangi Deshmukh, of Fr. CRCE, Bandra, to organise a workshop on linux for the students of their college. Further coordination was with Mr. Aliasgar Dahodwala, a final year BE student.

After a few discussions with Lug members, four persons volunteered to speak at the workshop.

The workshop was to be held across two days, the 12th and 13th of October, 2002.

The following schedule was drawn up with reference to topics suggested by the students, speaker expertise, and convenience of the speakers.

Day 1, Morning Session:

- Basic linux terminal commands - Harsh Busa - Loadable modules in the linux kernel - Philip - C Programming using Autotools - Philip - Short intro to perl - if time - Philip

Day 1, Afternoon session:

- Kernel compilation - Dinesh - Description of the /proc file system - Philip - Shell programming - Harsh

If time permits, add vi and emacs here.

Day 2, Morning Session:

- Distinction between *nix and non-unix - Nagarjun - Linux File Structure - Nagarjuna or Harsh - File manipulation in Linux - Harsh

Afternoon Session: - apache and samba configuration - Dinesh or Nagarjuna - configuring modem/sound/graphics/etc. - Dinesh or Nagarjuna

Day 1:

The first day started of nearly an hour late as the venue had to be shifted at the last moment from the Seminar Hall to a Classroom. In our opinion, this may have been a blessing as the classroom was smaller, and our voices could reach everyone without much straining.

The topics gave speakers a general impression that the participants had some kind of familiarity with linux. We were also informed that the college had recently conducted a linux worshop before it and use it regularly for lab purpose.

The opening poll suggested the otherwise. Except for a few final year and third year participants most were new to the concept of linux. This called for a prompt shift in focus, from Advanced Topics down to Creating Literacy and Awareness

Harsh started out the first session, trying to touch upon basic filesystem stucture and commands. The session lasted around 90 minutes.

Philip took over towards the end, introducing regular expressions using grep. [ed's note: my last regex lecture was 3 hours, this one was 30 minutes. I think they learnt much more this time.]

It was decided at this point to postpone, or maybe even omit the concept of modular kernels.

After the lunch break the session Shell Scripting was pushed up as it turned out that Philip's presentation on autotools was missing (specifically, the web directory in which the presentation was kept did not have read permissions).

Harsh took up basic bash programming covering variables, expressions, conditions and loop structures. This was followed by a few simple examples suggested by members of the audience.

Following this Philip took up the topic of AutoTools for writing C programs. We thought that it would be interesting to many, but without the slides, and with few people having been through the configure, make, make install process, it was too abstract for most. Some found it interesting but many seemed to be getting bored.

It was already about 4 in the evening so it was time to wind up theory and let people try out some stuff for themselves. The exercise had 4 shell scripts:

- Prime Numbers - Calculator - cp/mv/rm with more options / Interactive - Word Filter using grep.

The day was dispersed without Dinesh getting to speak about Kernel Compilation and Philip unable to cover /proc, Loadable Kernel modules and Perl.

Day 2:

The second day started of on a rather positive note it was only 15mins off the schedule. The session was already reorganised by Dr. Nagarjuna looking at the previous day's experince.

More time was given to speaking about Why Linux, its roots, the philosophy behind the free software foundation and what distinguishes POSIX ish OS from other OSes. This took around 90-100 mins and then before turning to the lab Dr. Nagarjuna gave a short preamble to EMACS which he then covered more extensively in the labs.

It was decided to cut out the File Manipulation topic since people were already using VI and it would leave little time for other topics.

Following the post lunch session Dinesh ran through the need for a customised kernel and then spoke about various aspects of selecting components for a custom kernel, various ways of compiling the kernel on shell and X both.

Following this Dr. Nagarjuna demonstrated a Debian installation and explained various aspects of its several steps including adding modules to the system with apt-get and then towards the end samba and apache configuration.

The speakers took some questions while the installion was going on.

By the end of everything people too tired even to ask questions and simply wanted to rush home.

Schedule:

Finally, the schedule of what actually happened.

Day 1, Morning Session:

- Linux File Structure - Harsh - Basic linux terminal commands - Harsh Busa - grep - Philip

Day 1, Afternoon session:

- Shell programming - Harsh - C Programming using Autotools - Philip - Lab

Day 2, Morning Session:

- Distinction between *nix and non-unix - Nagarjun - Philosphy of Opensource and Free S/W - Nagarjun

Afternoon Session:

- Kernel compilation - Dinesh - Installing a typical Debian System - Nagarjun - apache and samba configuration - Dinesh or Nagarjuna

Endnote:

The organisers and the staff, everyone was very hospitable and lunch also quite nice.

Though the sessions were interesting but quite randomly laid down topics and the vast spectrum of audience made it very difficult to satisfy everyone.

It would have been better if the topics were selected keeping the audience and time in mind. The sessions were too short to do complete justice to the topic yet too long for the audiance to digest everything. It would be better if students internally cover some initial awareness sessions themselves and then have special topics arranged on weekends with a very definite topic in mind.

Going by public demand often leads no one anywhere. If so many topics need to be covered well, then they should be spread over several days. or else simply have a separate beginner's workshop and then an advanced system admin or programming.