[cs615asa] Welcome to CS615, Spring 2016

Mon Jan 25 21:45:20 EST 2016

Hello everyone! Thank you for the warm welcome, professor!

Is the pre-class questionnaire for the first class up-to-date or we need to
wait for you to notify us about the same.

Looking forward to the class next week (hopefully).

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Jan Schaumann <jschauma at stevens.edu> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Welcome to the Spring 2016 Semester edition of CS615 "Aspects of System
> Administration".
>
> System Administrators need to be able to read a lot of documentation and
> text.  By "read", we don't mean "skim quickly and tweet about it", but
> rather: "actually read and understand".  This email will be your first
> exercise in this critical skill.
>
> As you hopefully have seen, this semester's first class will not take
> place today, as Stevens cancelled classes due to the snow.  We will --
> weather permitting -- meet for our first class next week.  In the mean
> time, I thought it might be useful to send out an initial email with
> some meta information so that we can minimize the time spent on
> administrative stuff in class.
>
> You may have noticed that this class does not have a "Canvas" or
> "Moodle" online thingy; instead, it has a lovingly hand-crafted,
> artisanal, locally produced, old-fashioned course website:
> https://www.cs.stevens.edu/~jschauma/615/
>
> This page has all the information about the class you should need.
> Please do read it carefully.  Lecture slides and homework assignments
> listed there are from the previous year and will be updated throughout
> the semester.
>
>
> Our primary method of communication about anything relating to this
> class will be (aside from good old in-class face-to-face exchanges)
> email.  Specifically: this mailing list.
>
> If you have questions, please send them to this mailing list.  (If you
> send it to me alone, chances are I will tell you to resend the same mail
> to the mailing list.)  If you see a question on the mailing list to
> which you think you know the answer, please respond on the mailing
> list.  Being able to efficiently communicating via email is a crucial
> skill -- you should practice it!  Often times just describing your
> problem to somebody else helps you find the solution[1].
>
> There is also a class Twitter account: https://twitter.com/cs615asa
> I will occastionally post (hopefully) interesting or amusing links
> relating to the general topic of System Administration there.  You are
> not required to follow this account or read anything posted there ("no,
> this will not be on the test"), but you may still find it of interest.
>
>
> The area of System Administration is very wide; we cannot cover in
> sufficient detail every single aspect.  As we go through the semester,
> we will follow the syllabus as outlined on the course website and each
> class will cover the basics of each topic.  There is no required course
> book, but a few recommended texts are listed on the website.  I may
> also share documents or texts as required reading on this list.
>
> You should feel encouraged to read up on each topic via the referenced
> reading materials and independent study.  Please share any interesting
> links or articles you come across with the class on this mailing list.
>
>
> Each class will have a pre-class questionnaire, asking you a few basic
> questions about the topic at hand.  This will not be graded -- there are
> no right or wrong answers, but responding is mandatory and not doing so
> will affect your grade.  I will not remind you to fill these out each
> week; please remind yourself.
>
> I very much encourage you to revisit the questionnaire after each class
> to see if your understanding has improved and what you may have learned.
>
>
> There will be a few graded homework assignments; some of them will be
> individual work, and some may be group assignments.  All of the
> assignments will require you to write up documentation how you solved
> the problem, as writing clear technical documentation is another
> important skill to hone.  I know that English is not the first language
> for many of you: please use a spell-checker and carefully re-read your
> documents before submission.  The same holds for your emails, by the
> way.  How you present yourself in a text medium often speaks volumes
> about the level of care and attention you might give to other issues.
> There are a few hints at [2].
>
>
> Any and all work for the homework submissions must be done by you.  You
> are always welcome to ask questions or to discuss solutions or different
> approaches, to work together on common problems, but you may not submit
> work not done by yourself.  You must not copy and paste solutions from
> other students, from previous semesters, from the internet, from your
> grandma, or from anywhere else and pretend that you did the work
> yourself.  If you do, you will receive and F and the incident will be
> reported to the Dean of Academics.
>
>
> All work for this class will be done exclusively using command-line
> tools on Unix systems.  If you are not comfortable operating on the
> command-line, then this class is not for you and I recommend that you
> drop it.  All work will be done and graded on linux-lab.cs.stevens.edu,
> on which you should already have an account.  (If you do not, now would
> be a very good time to get it.[2]  You will need it for your first
> assignment.)
>
> We will be using Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in this class.
> You are not expected to be familiar with EC2, but, consistent with the
> above, all interactions with EC2 will be done using the command-line
> utilities available on linux-lab.cs.stevens.edu.
>
> Amazon offers a free tier of services for new subscribers[4].  In
> addition (and/or if you already have an AWS account and have used the
> free tier), you can apply for $35 worth of free credits via AWS
> Educate[5][6].  As this is a limited amount, it is important that you
> remember to terminate any running resources after you are finished with
> your assignments.  You are responsible for any costs incurred beyond
> this amount, even if they resulted out of an error or negligence on your
> part.
>
>
> System Administration requires a lot of self-directed learning, critical
> reading, experimentation and initiative.  You will get the most out of
> this class if you follow the examples from each lecture well beyond the
> homework assignments, which primarily exist because I have to give you a
> grade at the end of the semester.  What you take away from this class
> and what you ultimately learn is entirely up to you.
>
>
> If you have managed to read (actually read!) this far: congratulations,
> you're off to a good start.  I will send out another email with our
> first assignments in a little bit.
>
>
> I look forward to an interesting semester -- see you all in class next
> week.  (Unless it snows some more, I suppose.)
>
> -Jan
>
>
> [1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/rubber-duck-problem-solving/
> [2] https://www.netmeister.org/blog/the-art-of-plain-text.html
> [3] https://web.stevens.edu/itwiki/w/index.php/Linux_Lab
> [4] https://aws.amazon.com/free/
> [5] https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/
> [6] https://www.awseducate.com/Application?apptype=student
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>

-- 
Thanks,
Sneha
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