Automatic configuration of workstations in Cisco academy laboratory

My thesis is focused on the subject of working with distant stations connected with the laboratory control of Cisco academy. Station operations, i.e. laboratory control, have been carried in the environment of the Linux operating systems. The first part of the thesis includes a description of the laboratory, its network architecture and software equipment. Also, the VMware tool is described here. VMware tool is intended for virtualization of computer stations, where the virtual station is created. In this virtual station another operating system may be run. The problems of the command interpreter, its function and possibilities are described here too. Main attention is devoted to the Bash command interpreter and to the creation of the scripts. There are descriptions of the basic tools intended for the network communication with the distant stations. Among the most important parts belong the protected communication, the production of the autentization keys as well as the tool for data recording on more stations at the same time. The description of the access rights to the files and directories is included too. The target of this thesis was to create the scripts in the Bash programming language. The scripts are focused on working with the laboratory stations. They are the sublayers of the common project for this laboratory control. They were developed for the cooperation with the the web interface and MySQL database, created by Bc. Zdeněk Hrabal. The Scripts are intended for the finding information about the stations and virtual systems, and also for the recording images and configuration files of the virtual systems at the distant stations. Recording files and directories is enabled too. The other scripts deal with the erasing and changing of the rights of the particular files and directories. Setting commads with the super-user competence is used at this place. The scripts for the switching on and off the laboratory workstations were created too. To solve the problem described above I chose to develope more scripts. Each of them subserves the particular part of the task. The form of the input and output data of the scripts was select with the reference to the cooperation with the web interface and database. The data are implemented by the form of the input and output files. The output information and the process of the carried operations are displayed through the web interface. The scripts together with the web interface are placed and run from the school server adela.utko.feec.vutbr.cz. In the thesis the settings of the access privileges for the current directories and the files of virtual systems and scripts are presented too