Com Sci 501
System Administration in Linux

Department of Computer Science
The University of Chicago

Ideas for Independent Projects

If you intend to do an independent project to earn an A, please submit a brief outline of the work (perhaps 2 pages), with an indication why it is interesting, by the end of the day on Thursday 13 November. Here are some ideas for choosing a project.

• Choose an interesting piece of software that is not available in a Debian package, and compile and install it on your Linux system. Look at the Linux Software Map for a number of software distributions that work under Linux. The Yahoo software index is another place to search. Install all source code, executable files, configuration files, documentation, and other supporting materials intelligently in your directory hierarchy. Keep a diary of your experience in the installation, and be prepared to discuss the issues in configuring the software. Depending on the software, and how well it is packaged for distribution this task can range from trivial to highly challenging. To merit the A, you must explain why the task was not trivial, and how you made important decisions and/or solved problems in porting the material. Depending on the software and your preferences, you might make the project interesting in several ways:
  • Choose software that requires interesting parameter settings in order to compile on your system.
  • Co-ordinate several separate distributions to create a suite of software for some interesting purpose, such as personal finances, desktop publishing, etc.
  • Create a good Debian package to install the software. Look at the Debian Devloper's Corner for instructions and standards.
• Discover and correct errors in a Debian package. These can be errors in the software itself, or in the installation scripts and dependencies. You are more likely to be able to solve the latter sorts of errors than the software errors. Send your corrections to the package maintainer, so they may be included in a later version.
• Write careful instructions for some installation task that was confusing. You may improve on existing documentation by covering a new topic, assimilating information from several documents into coherent instructions, or specializing complicated documents to cover particular configurations. Do not choose a documentation project unless you can write clearly.
• Do a thorough and robust job of customizing some highly flexible software, such as Xemacs, for a particular type of user.
• Write scripts to automate some interesting system administration tasks. Most, but not all, of the tasks that need automating have to do with multiuser systems. If you choose an automation project, you will need to demonstrate your scripts on some carefully chosen test cases.
• You may also propose a type of project that I haven't thought of.