Introduction to Linux

1. Introduction to Linux

Linux (Linux 2017) is a Unix-like system. It started as an experimental kernel for the Intel x86 based PCs by Linus Torvalds in 1991. Subsequently, it was developed by a group of people world-wide. A big milestone of Linux occurred in the late 90s when it combined with GNU (Stallman 2017) by incorporating many GNU software, such as the GCC compiler, GNU Emacs editor and bash, etc. which greatly facilitated the further development of Linux. Not long after that, Linux implemented the TCP/IP suite to access the Internet and ported X11 (X-windows) to support GUI, making it a complete OS.

Linux includes many features of other Unix systems. In some sense, it represents a union of the most popular Unix systems. To a large extent, Linux is POSIX compliant. Linux has been ported to many hardware architectures, such as Motorola, SPARC and ARM, etc. The predominate Linux platform is still the Intel x86 based PCs, including both desktops and laptops, which are widely available. Also, Linux is free and easy to install, which makes it popular with computer science students.

2. Linux Versions

The development of Linux kernel is under the strict supervision of the Linux kernel development group. All Linux kernels are the same except for different release versions. However, depending on distributions, Linux has many different versions, which may differ in distribution packages, user interface and service functions. The following lists some of the most popular versions of Linux distributions.

2.1. Debian Linux

Debian is a Linux distribution that emphasizes on free software. It supports many hardware platforms. Debian distributions use the .deb package format and the dpkg package manager and its front ends.

2.2. Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian. Ubuntu is designed to have regular releases, a consistent user experience and commercial support on both desktops and servers. Ubuntu Linux has several official distributions. These Ubuntu variants simply install a set of packages different from the original Ubuntu. Since they draw additional packages and updates from the same repositories as Ubuntu, the same set of software is available in all of them.

2.3. Linux Mint

Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Debian and Ubuntu. According to Linux Mint, it strives to be a “modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use”. Linux Mint provides full out-of-the-box multimedia support by including some proprietary software, and it comes bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. For this reason, it was welcomed by many beginner Linux users.

2.4. RPM-Based Linux

Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux were the original major distributions that used the RPM file format, which is still used in several package management systems. Both Red Hat and SUSE Linux divided into commercial and community-supported distributions. For example, Red Hat Linux provides a community-supported distribution sponsored by Red Hat called Fedora, and a commercially supported distribution called Red Hat Enterprise Linux, whereas SUSE divided into openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise

2.5. Slackware Linux

Slackware Linux is known as a highly customizable distribution that stresses on ease of maintenance and reliability over cutting-edge software and automated tools. Slackware Linux is considered as a distribution for advanced Linux users. It allows users to choose Linux system components to install and configure the installed system, allowing them to learn the inner workings of the Linux operating system.

3. Linux Hardware Platforms

Linux was originally designed for the Intel x86 based PCs. Earlier versions of Linux run on Intel x86 based PCs in 32-bit protected mode. It is now available in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes. In addition to the Intel x86, Linux has bee ported to many other computer architectures, which include MC6800 of Motorola, MIP, SPARC, PowerPC and recently ARM. But the predominant hardware platform of Linux is still the Intel x86 based PCs, although ARM based Linux for embedded systems are gaining popularity rapidly.

4. Linux on Virtual Machines

Presently, most Intel x86 based PCs are equipped with Microsoft Windows, e.g. Windows 7, 8 or 10, as the default operating system. It is fairly easy to install Linux alongside Windows on the same PC and use dual-boot to boot up either Windows or Linux when the PC starts. However, most users are reluctant to do so due to either technical difficulty or preference to stay in the Windows environment. A common practice is to install and run Linux on a virtual machine inside the Windows host. In the following, we shall show how to install and run Linux on virtual machines inside the Microsoft Windows 10.

4.1. VirtualBox

VirtualBox (VirtualBox 2017) is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product of Oracle. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts. It supports a large number of guest operating systems, including Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10) and Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.x and 4.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD. To install virtualBox on Windows 10, follow these steps.

  • Download VirtualBox.

At the VirtualBox website, http://download.virtualbox.org, you will find links to VirtualBox binaries and its source code. For Windows hosts, the VirtualBox binary is

VirtualBox-5.1.12-112440-win.exe

In addition, you should also download the

VirtualBox 5.1.12 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack

which provides support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 devices, VirtualBox RDP, disk encryption, NVMe and PXE boot for Intel cards.

  • Install VirtualBox

After downloading the VirtualBox-5.1.12-112440-win.exe file, double click on the file name to run it, which will install the VirtualBox VM under Windows 10. It also creates an Oracle VM VirtualBox icon on the desktop.

  •  Create a VirtualBox Virtual Machine

Start up the VirtualBox. An initial VM window will appear, as shown in Fig. 1.1.

Choose the New button to create a new VM with 1024 MB memory and a virtual disk of 12GB.

  • Install Ubuntu 14.04 to VirtualBox VM

Insert the Ubuntu 14.04 install DVD to a DVD drive. Start up the VM, which will boot up from the DVD to install Ubuntu 14.04 to the VM.

  •  Adjust Display Size

For some unknown reason, when Ubuntu first starts up, the screen size will be stuck at the 640 x 480 resolution. To change the display resolution, open a terminal and enter the command line xdiagnose. On the X Diagnostic settings window, enable all the options under Debug, which consist of

Extra graphic debug message

Display boot messages

Enable automatic crash bug reporting

Although none of these options seems to be related to the screen resolution, it does change the resolution to 1024 x 768 for a normal Ubuntu display screen. Figure 1.2 shows the screen of Ubuntu on the VirtualBox VM.

  • . Test C programming under Ubuntu

Ubuntu 14.04 has the gcc package installed. After installing Ubuntu, the user may create C source files, compile them and run the C programs. If the user needs emacs, install it by

sudo apt-get install emacs

Emacs provides an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for text-edit, compile C programs and run the resulting binary executables under GDB. We shall cover and demonstrate the emacs IDE in Chap. 2.

4.2. VMware

VMware is another popular VM for x86 based PCs. The full versions of VMware, which include VM servers, are not free, but VMware Workstation Players, which are sufficient for simple VM tasks, are free.

  • . Install VMware Player on Windows 10

The reader may get VMware Workstation Player from VMware’s download site. After downloading, double click on the file name to run it, which will install VMware and create a VMware Workstation icon on the Desktop. Click on the icon to start up the VMware VM, which displays a VMware VM window, as shown in Fig. 1.3.

  • . Install Ubuntu 15.10 on VMware VM

To install Ubuntu 15.10 on the VMware VM, follow the following steps.

    1. Download Ubuntu 15.10 install DVD image; burn it to a DVD disc.
    2. Download Vmware Workstation Player 12 exe file for Windows 10.
    3. Install Vmware Player.
    4. Start up Vmware Player

Choose: Create a new virtual machine;

Choose: Installer disc: DVD RW Drive (D:)

=> insert the installer disc until it is ready to install Then, enter Next

Choose: Linux

Version: ubuntu

Virtual machine name: change to a suitable name, e.g. ubuntu

Vmware will create a VM with 20GB disk size, 1GB memory, etc.

Choose Finish to finish creating the new VM

Next Screen: Choose: play virtual machine to start the VM.

The VM will boot from the Ubuntu install DVD to install Ubuntu.

    1. Run C Program under Ubuntu Linux

Figure 1.4 shows the startup screen of Ubuntu and running a C program under Ubuntu.

4.3. Dual Boot Slackware and Ubuntu Linux

It seems that free VMware Player only supports 32-bit VMs. The install steps are identical to above except the installer disc is the Slackware14.2 install DVD. After installing both Slackware 14.2 and Ubuntu 15.10, set up LILO to boot up either system when the VM starts up. If the reader installs Slackware first followed by installing Ubuntu, Ubuntu will recognize Slackware and configure GRUB for dual boot. The following figure shows the dual-boot menu of LILO (Fig. 1.5).

5. Use Linux

5.1. Linux kernel image

In a typical Linux system, Linux kernel images are in the /boot directory. Bootable Linux kernel images are named as

vmlinuz-generic-VERSION_NUMBER

initrd as the initial ramdisk image for the Linux kernel.

A bootable Linux kernel image is composed of three pieces:

| BOOT | SETUP | linux kernel |

BOOT is a 512-byte booter for booting early versions of Linux from floppy disk images. It is no longer used for Linux booting but it contains some parameters for SETUP to use. SETUP is a piece of 16-bit and 32-bit assembly code, which provides transition from the 16-bit mode to 32-bit protected mode during booting. Linux kernel is the actual kernel image of Linux. It is in compressed form but it has a piece of decompressing code at beginning, which decompresses the Linux kernel image and relocates it to high memory.

5.2. Linux Booters

The Linux kernel can be booted up by several different boot-loaders. The most popular Linux boot­loaders are GRUB and LILO. Alternatively, the HD booter of (Wang 2015) can also be used to boot up Linux.

5.3. Linux Booting

During booting, the Linux boot-loader first locates the Linux kernel image (file). Then it loads

BOOT+SETUP to 0x90000 in real mode memory

Linux kernel to 1MB in high memory.

For generic Linux kernel images, it also loads an initial ramdisk image, initrd, to high memory. Then it transfers control to run SETUP code at 0 x 902000, which starts up the Linux kernel. When the Linux kernel first starts up, it runs on initrd as a temporary root file system. The Linux kernel executes a sh script, which directs the kernel to load the needed modules for the real root device. When the real root device is activated and ready, the kernel abandons the initial ramdisk and mounts the real root device as the root file system, thus completing a two-phase booting of the Linux kernel.

5.4. Linux Run-levels

The Linux kernel starts up in the single user mode. It mimics the run-levels of System V Unix to run in multi-user mode. Then it creates and run the INIT process P1, which creates the various daemon processes and also terminal processes for users to login. Then the INIT process waits for any child process to terminate.

5.5. Login Process

Each login process opens three file streams, stdin for input, stdout for output and stderr for error output, on its terminal. Then it waits for users to login. On Linux systems using X-windows as user interface, the X-window server usually acts as an interface for users to login. After a user login, the (pseudo) terminals belong to the user by default.

5.6. Command Executions

After login, the user process typically executes the command interpreter sh, which prompts the user for commands to execute. Some special commands, such as cd (change directory), exit, logout, &, are performed by sh directly. Non-special commands are usually executable files. For a non-special command, sh forks a child process and waits for the child to terminate. The child process changes its execution image to the file and executes the new image. When the child process terminates, it wakes up the parent sh, which prompts for another command, etc. In addition to simple commands, sh also supports I/O redirections and compound commands connected by pipes. In addition to built-in commands, the user may develop programs, compile-link them into binary executable files and run the programs as commands.

Source: Wang K.C. (2018), Systems Programming in Unix/Linux, Springer; 1st ed. 2018 edition.

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