Lectures & Reading

Weeks 1-2: Shell Foundations and Scripting Paradigms

• [08.25 - 08.27] (1) Introduction to the course (2) Unix/Linux CLI: navigation, pipes, redirection, composability, and permissions    [ slides | slides ]

  • Reading: Learning the Shell from Shotts, W. 2024. The Linux Command Line.

Labor Day (No Class)

• [09.03] Bash scripting fundamentals: variables, conditionals, loops, exit codes, functions, arguments, stdin/stdout/stderr    [ slides ]

  • Reading: Writing Shell Scripts (1 - 5) from Shotts, W. 2024. The Linux Command Line.

• [09.08] Version control: git essentials (init, commit, branch, merge, remote) and collaborative scripting

  • Assignment 1 available

Weeks 3-5: Python for System Scripting

• [09.10] Python scripting essentials: (sys, os, subprocess) and file operations (pathlib, shutil, glob patterns, batch processing)

• [09.15] Environment management: virtual environments (venv), dependency isolation

• [09.17] Error handling and logging: exceptions, logging module, crash reports

  • Assignment 1 deadline

• [09.22] EXAM I (covers the first four weeks, up to and including the lecture on Sep 17)

• [09.24] Testing Python scripts: pytest fundamentals

Weeks 6-8: Applied Pattern Matching and Data Wrangling

• [09.29] Regular expressions: POSIX and PCRE patterns, grep and egrep

• [10.01] Stream editing with sed: substitutions, transformations, and in-place edits

  • Assignment 2 available

• [10.06] Text and field processing with awk: reports and data extraction

• [10.08] Python text tools: re module, named groups, and CSV/JSON processing with pandas

Fall Break (No Class)

• [10.15] EXAM II (covers the first four weeks, up to and including the lecture on Oct 8)

• [10.20] Integrated workflow: combining Shell and Python for log parsing

Weeks 9-11: Practical System Automation (a sysadmin case study)

• [10.22] System monitoring: psutil, process trees

• [10.27] Log analysis: extraction patterns, anomaly detection scripts

  • Assignment 2 deadline

• [10.29] Scheduling and Automation: cron jobs, systemd timers

• [11.03] Backup scripts: compression, incremental backups, integrity checks

  • Assignment 3 available

• [11.05]  Security scripting: permission audits and user management

• [11.10]  Resource optimization scripts

Weeks 12-13: Scripting for the Web (a web app case study)

• [11.12] Web interactions: data collection with Beautiful Soup

• [11.17] Web automation with Selenium

  • Assignment 3 deadline

• [11.19] API interactions and requests

• [11.24] Demonstration & Discussion: an API-powered alert system (e.g., weather/data monitor)

Week 14-15: Cloud and Cross-Platform Automation

• [12.01] Cross-platform challenges: (1) Windows PowerShell and WSL Integration; (2) Differences in path handling (Bash vs. PowerShell)

!! THANKSGIVING !!

• [12.03] Automated reporting systems

  1. PDF/HTML reports with Python (Jinja2, pdfkit)

  2. Email alerts with smtplib