CSE 374 16wi :: Homework 0

Due: Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, at 23.00.

The purpose of this assignment is to be sure that you have your Linux environment set up for the quarter and that you can log in and execute shell commands. We recommend that you use either your account on the klaatu.cs.washington.edu machine or your own copy of the CSE Linux Virtual Machine. It is ok if you use another reasonably recent Linux system, but we will use the CSE systems to evaluate submitted work, and it is probably easiest to work there. You will need a 64-bit Linux system for some later assignments, but for now a 32-bit system will also work. See the Linux Resources page on the course web site for more information about how to get started.

  1. (Shell) You must be sure that your default shell is bash. Otherwise you will run into strange, baffling problems with shell scripts. Enter the command echo $SHELL. The response should be /bin/bash. If the shell name is different (csh, tcsh, or something else), use the appropriate commands on your system to change your login shell to bash. On many unix systems this can be done with the command chsh or ypchsh.

  2. (Commands) Open a shell window and enter the following commands. They should work without errors if typed exactly as shown. The script command will capture the terminal session and save it in a file named hw0.script in the current directory.
                  cd
                  cd Desktop
                  script hw0.script
                  whoami
                  echo $SHELL
                  pwd
                  uname -a
                  gcc --version -std=c11
                  exit
    Note: if the gcc command generates a warning that -std=c11 is not a recognized option, your C compiler and probably Linux version are too old, and you should use a more recent Linux system for this class.

  3. (Communications) Go the course discussion board and post a followup to the Welcome message (in the Homework 0 section) to introduce yourself, and to get gopost to automatically track new postings for you.
Turn-in Instructions: Use the turn-in drop box to submit the hw0.script file created in problem 1. The drop box will allow you to turn in your homework up to two days late, if you choose to use one or two of your late days, but you are strongly advised to save your late days for much later in the quarter when you may really want them. If you create the file on klaatu, you can use scp (winscp on windows) to transfer the file to your local machine so it can be submitted using the local web browser.