Lab · Linux and Red Hat (RHCSA to RHCE)

Lab: client folders for a CA firm

Labbeginner· about 1.5 hours· 5 steps

The brief

A chartered accountant (CA) firm in Pune keeps each client's GST and income-tax papers in folders on a Linux server. You build the folder tree, write client details with redirection, edit a file in vim after taking a backup, and make a GSTIN list with grep.

Why it matters

Junior admins and support staff spend much of their day in exactly these commands: making folders, copying and backing up files, editing config in vim and searching with grep. A small office server in India is usually looked after by one person who does all of this from the shell.

Skills you practise

cat and whoami
mkdir -p and brace expansion
find and sort
echo with > and >>
cp and vim
grep -r, grep -v and pipes

You need

A RHEL 9 virtual machine (free Red Hat Developer subscription) or Rocky Linux 9 / AlmaLinux 9
A normal (non-root) user account on the VM to log in with

What you will have at the end

A ~/clients folder tree for two clients, their GST details files with a backup, and ~/gstin-list.txt, plus commands.sh listing every command you ran.

How it is marked (rubric, 100 points)

Folders and files are rightEvery check passes: six folders, two details files with two lines each, the backup and the edited Status line.	40
Clean GSTIN listgstin-list.txt has one line per client, sorted, and no line from a .bak file.	25
Safe habitsYou worked as a normal user and took the backup before editing.	15
Commands written downcommands.sh lists every command in order, with a short comment where a command was not obvious.	20

0/5 steps done

Step 1 of 5

Check your lab machine

You are logged in as a normal user on a RHEL 9 family system.

Before any lab, check which system you are on and who you are. /etc/redhat-release names the release; whoami prints your user name. Work as a normal user, not root: a typing mistake as root can delete the whole system. RHEL 9, Rocky Linux 9 and AlmaLinux 9 all behave the same for this course.

$ cat /etc/redhat-release; whoami
Rocky Linux release 9.4 (Blue Onyx)
student

The ; runs the second command after the first.

Run this on your machine, then paste the output below

$ cat /etc/redhat-release; whoami

Your notes: commands.sh

Write down each command you ran. It goes into your project summary.