Modified 2018-08-27 by Josh Roy
Modified 2018-08-27 by Josh Roy
When you enter a command in a shell, it executes a program. These programs read
from a stream, known as “standard input” and write to two output streams,
“standard output” and “standard error”. When you print
in python, it writes
its output to standard output. In another language, such as C, you use other
functions, such as printf
to write to standard output.
In addition to writing to standard output, a program can read from standard
input. The program cat
, short for concatentate, reads from standard input
and writes the result to standard output.
Modified 2018-08-27 by Josh Roy
Write a python program that prints “Hello world” to standard output. Save
the program as hello1.py
and submit it.
Write a python program that prints “Hello world” to standard output using
sys.stdout
. Save the program as hello2.py
and submit it.
Write a bash script that prints “Hello World” to standard output. Save the
script as hello.sh
and submit it.
Modified 2018-08-27 by Josh Roy
Run cat
with no arguments. Why does cat
seem like it is hanging?
When you run cat
, type a message into your terminal, and press
Control-D
. Describe what cat
does. Make sure to include which streams
are being used, and for what purpose.
Write a python program my_cat.py
that reads a message from standard input
and prints to standard output, just as cat
does. Submit this file.
Modified 2018-09-30 by Stefanie Tellex
Pipes are used to redirect standard input, standard output, and standard error.
First, >
is used to redirect standard output to a file. For example, echo "Hello World" > test.txt
will write the string Hello World
to test.txt
.
Create files one.txt
, two.txt
and three.txt
that contain the strings
1
, 2
, and 3
, respectively using echo
and output redirect. Write the
commands you used to create these files in the corresponding section of
networking.pdf
.
By convention, almost all shell programs read input from standard input, and
write their output to standard output. Any error messages are printed to
standard error. You can chain shell programs together by using |
. For
example, the program ls
writes the contents of a directory to standard
output. The program sort
reads from standard input, sorts what
it reads, and writes the sorted content to standard output. So you can use
ls | sort
to print out a sorted directory list. Read the man page for sort
(man sort
) to learn how to sort in reverse order. What is the bash script (using |
) that prints the contents of a directory in reverse alphabetical order? Write the script in the corresponding section of networking.pdf
.
Use cat
, |
and echo
to print hello world.
Do not write to any files
and use both commands one time. Write your answer in networking.pdf
.
This is not the simplest way to print hello world. Can you suggest
a simpler way? (We asked you to do it the more complicated way to practice
with pipes.) Write your answer in networking.pdf
.
Write a python script that reads from standard input, sorts lines in reverse
alphabetical order, and prints the result. It should behave like sort -r
.
Submit your script in a file called my_reverse_sort.py
.
Modified 2018-08-27 by Josh Roy
In addition to standard input and standard output, there is a third stream, standard error. If there is an error in a chain of pipes, it will be printed to the terminal rather than buried in the input to the next program.
Recall that ls -a | sort > sorted.txt
puts all the names of files in
a directory sorted in alphabetical order into the file sorted.txt
. If you
modify the command to be ls -a -hippo | sort > sorted.txt
, what text is in
sorted.txt
, what is outputted as standard error, and why?
Create a python script that, in addition printing sorted inputs to standard
out, prints status reports to standard error. Use it to sort ls -a
instead
of sort
. Submit the file containing the script as my_sort_status.py
.
Modified 2018-10-01 by Sophie Yang
The command nc
is short for “netcat” and is similar to cat
but works over
network connections. It reads from standard input and writes its contents not
to standard output, but to a specified server. Write your answers in the
corresponding sections of networking.pdf
.
Point nc
to google.com as follows: nc www.google.com 80
When you first
connect, it will be silent. Then type any arbitrary text and press enter.
What is the error number?
Now type some valid http into nc: GET / HTTP/1.1
. What is the output?
Now use nc
to make a server. In one window, type nc -l 12345
. This
will cause nc
to listen on port 12345. In another terminal on the same
machine, type nc localhost 12345
. You can type a message in one window
and it will appear in the other window (and vice versa). This trick can be
very useful to test basic internet connectivity - if the client and server
can send packets at all. No answer is required for this question.
By convention, roscore
listens on port 11311. Try using nc
to connect to
port 11311 on a machine where roscore
is running, such as the Pi on your
drone. What protocol is roscore using to communicate?
Another useful tool is nmap
, which scans through a range of ports (and
optionally, through a range of IP addresses) and reports information. Run
nmap localhost
on your Pi. What ports are open? Look up each port and
submit what it does.
Run nmap with and without the nc -l 1234
command running from above. What
is the difference? Why?
Run nmap
with roscore
. Does nmap
report roscore
? Why or why
not? Use man nmap
to find command line options for nmap
that report the
ROS port 11311.
Portscan google.com. List each open port and its purpose.
Modified 2018-10-01 by Sophie Yang
So far, this assignment has required access to localhost
, the local machine
you are connected to, and google.com
.
Most commonly, the base station and robot are connected over TCP/IP to the same
local network. Then you can look up your machine’s IP address (ifconfig
in
Unix; other ways in other OSes), and your robot’s IP address, and connect them.
How can you find your robot’s IP address? Well it’s a chicken-and-egg problem.
If you knew the IP address, you can connect to the robot and run ifconfig
and
find the IP address, but you don’t know the IP address.
What to do? There are several solutions. Write the answers to the following
questions in networking.pdf
.
Brainstorm how you can solve the chicken-and-egg program to connect to your robot. List three different solutions.
How does the internet work? A computer typically uses the DHCP protocol to request an IP address from a server that manages the local network. At your house, it’s likely to be your cable modem or home router. At Brown, CIS manages the routers that keep the network up. Once you have an IP address, you are on the internet.
There are serious security concerns with giving direct access to the internet, without filtering connections. People could serve SPAM, or they could get hacked by bad actors who would use the connection to serve SPAM. It’s safer to not give people public IP addresses and most organizations don’t. There aren’t a lot of them either - one of the things you pay your home ISP for is a public IP address, and you usually only get one.
To try out DHCP, connect to Brown, Brown_Guest, and RLAB. Report back your
IP address each time using your operating system. Then connect again. Do you
get the same address or a different address? List the IP Addresses for each
network, and whether or not you get the same address when re-connecting to
each network in networking.pdf
.
You can also selectively open a connection to the public internet on many
routers using port forwarding. This can be configured on the router; most
routers offer a web-based API to configure these kinds of remappings. You
can say port 11311
on the public side maps to a particular IP address and
port on the private side, for example.
Under a typical NAT setting, the robot and the base station will typically both connect to the router via DHCP to obtain an IP address. Their IP address will be in the 192.168.*.* range, or the 10.*.*.* range, both by convention used for private local networks. The router’s public IP address will be whatever it is, and both machines will have internet access through NAT. However neither machine will be a server to the public internet. But that’s okay - they only need to be servers to each other. So they can listen on ports and server request using their local (192.168 or 10.0.0.*) IP addresses.
Connect to the Brown_Guest, RLAB, and Brown networks. For each network,
answer the following questions in networking.pdf
.
3.1. What IP address do you have on each network?
3.2. What is the router’s IP?
3.3. What ports are open on the router?
3.4. Use nmap
to identify the machines on each network. How many are
there?
Modified 2018-10-01 by Sophie Yang
But what about if there is no public internet connection? What if you want to
fly your drone in the wilderness? Well, there does exist cellular modems and
sattellite connections, but you can also tell your drone to act as a Wifi
Hotspot. It can create a network and run a DHCP server. You can configure this
on your drone using the file /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
. Then you can connect
your laptop’s base station using the SSID and passphrase specified in that
file, and connect to the drone.
Alternatively you can set up your laptop as the Wifi base station and configure the drone to connect to its network. The details will vary depending on your laptop OS and settings.
Your Pi is configured to be a Wireless AP Master by default. Connect to it with your base station.
Which machine is acting as the DHCP server?
What is the Pi’s IP address? What is yours?
What is the ping time between you and the Pi when you are close to the Pi
How far away can you get from the Pi before it starts disconnecting?
What is the ping time when you are far away from the Pi?
Modified 2018-10-01 by Sophie Yang
GNU/Linux uses environment variables to store configuration information about
a variety of things. You can use env
to view the environment variables in
your shell on the Rasberry Pi. In bash (and most shells), environment variables
are local to your bash session, so they are often set in configuration files
that are run every time your shell starts, such as .bashrc
.
Log into your Rasperry Pi. Use X=3
to set the value of an environment
variable named X
to the value 3
. Use echo $X` to display the variable.
Note that you must prepend `$
to the variable name when reading it, but not
when setting it.
Log into your drone again in a separate SSH session. Use echo $X
to see
the value of the environment variable X
. What happens? Does this work? Why
or why not?
Use env
to see all the environment variables set in your shell. Pick one.
Research the one that you picked. Describe 1) What program sets the
environment variable and 2) What the variable controls. For example, the
EDITOR
environment variable is set in the .bashrc
file when you log in.
Start screen in one of your SSH sessions. Our setup.sh
script sets the
ROS_MASTER_URI and ROS_HOSTNAME or ROS_IP environment variables in your
session. In a second SSH session in which you have not run screen (so just
after you log in), assess the value of the environment variables. Are they
set to the correct values? What is setting ROS_MASTER_URI? What is setting
ROS_IP or ROS_HOSTNAME? How did you figure this out? (You might find the
grep
command useful. Use man grep
to find out how to use it.)
Modified 2018-10-01 by Sophie Yang
When you are done, use this link to create your Networking Github Repo. Commit and push the relevant files (networking.pdf, and any scripts you wrote throughout the assignment) to this Github Repo before the deadline.