Hands-on Introduction to Linux Commands and Shell Scripting (Coursera)

Offered by IBM,
Hands-on Introduction to Linux Commands and Shell Scripting (Coursera)

This mini-course provides a practical introduction to commonly used Linux / UNIX shell commands and teaches you basics of Bash shell scripting to automate a variety of tasks. The course includes both video-based lectures as well as hands-on labs to practice and apply what you learn. You will have no-charge access to a virtual Linux server that you can access through your web browser, so you don't need to download and install anything to perform the labs.

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In this course you will work with general purpose commands like id, date, uname, ps, top, echo, man; directory manageent commands such as pwd, cd, mkdir, rmdir, find, df; file management commands like cat, wget, more, head, tail, cp, mv, touch, tar, zip, unzip; access control command chmod; text processing commands - wc, grep, tr; as well as networking commands - hostname, ping, ifconfig and curl.
You will create simple to more advanced shell scripts that involve Metacharacters, Quoting, Variables, Command substitution, I/O Redirection, Pipes & Filters, and Command line arguments. You will also schedule cron jobs using crontab.
This course is ideal for data engineers, data scientists, software developers, and cloud practitioners who want to get familiar with frequently used commands on Linux, MacOS and other Unix-like operating systems as well as get started with creating shell scripts.
Completing this course will count towards your learning in any of the following programs:

What You Will Learn

  • Define what a shell is and recall common shell commands
  • Outline what a script is and describe the ‘shebang’ interpreter directive
  • Describe and use pipes and filters
  • Schedule cron jobs with crontab and understand the cron syntax

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Introduction to Linux Commands and Shell Scripting
In this module, you will learn about the attributes of Linux commands and shell scripting. You will discover the different Linux commands and their outputs, Bash scripting, and how to schedule jobs using crontab. You will learn how to work with filters, pipes, and variables.

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