CSC8306 -- Systems Administration

Introduction

Strange though it might seem, not everyone has been seduced with the joys of linux and still want to use windows. However, you might still wish to provide them with a Unix-u-like environment which they can use.

In this practical, we will investigate the cygwin system. Cygwin gives you much of the power of Linux but under windows.

Installing Cygwin

Now that you have been doing the sysadmin course for a good time, you should be more than capable of doing this for yourself.

Find and install a recent version of Cygwin on your windows machine.

Answers these questions while you are waiting for the installation to complete. Give a short (100 word) history of Cygwin. Give a short (100 word) description of how cygwin works. How is cygwin different from vmware?

Using Cygwin

Following the installation of Cygwin, you should be able to open a bash shell on your windows machine.

Cygwin has a package management system much like Linux, although it is nowhere as functional as the synaptic or apt. You may need to use this package management system.

Accessing the world

Cygwin has many of the communication abilities that linux has. Try accessing linux.cs.ncl.ac.uk with ssh as you did in "Connecting"; try some of the commands from "Protecting". Do these all work?

Describe anything that you find different using Cygwin from Ubuntu.

Backing up with Cygwin

Cygwin has full access to your windows file system. It can even use UNC file names which Windows uses to define network file systems.

Try the following commands, replacing the specific locations with appropriate ones for your student account. For me, this works... cd //tower6/home34/npl25 You will need to replace the path with details from your student account. Go to "My Computer", find "H:" and you should see the values there. This should give you full access to your h-drive directly. It's possible to access h-drive from linux as well (using the SAMBA packages which use the windows filesharing protocols), but ssh is more general purpose, which is why we used this.

Earlier, you wrote a backup script for saving your important files. This is all very well, but you probably store most of your important files on your windows systems. Using cygwin, you should now be able to write a backup script for your really important stuff. Include your backup script in your log book. For bonus points, try and work out if you can get the backup script to physically switch your windows machine off after completion.