Contents

• Logistics
• General Notes
  • Available Resources
  • Formatting
  • File paths
  • Use the manual
  • Compiling programs
• Taking the test
  • Fork and clone
  • Submission
    • Feedback

Logistics

You may start the midterm at any time between 8am and 11:59pm Wednesday, March 26, 2014. You will have 60 minutes to complete the test from the time of the initial fork.

General Notes

Available Resources

Like other assignments you may use any online or offline resources available to you (open note/open book). Unlike other assignments you may not work together or aid each other in the completion of this exam.

Formatting

When asked to type a command after verifying the command works as expected in your terminal, type the command after the ‘$’ for the corresponding question. Ensure that there is a blank line immediately before and after the command. e.g.

$ od -c <somefile.txt

When asked for a free-form response, write your response after the ‘>’ character for the given question. If your response spans multiple lines, prepend each line with an additional ‘>’ character. Be sure to leave an empty line before and after your response. e.g.

> this is a
> multiline
> free-form
> response

In both command and free-form cases there may be additional white space before the ‘$’ or ‘>’ character:

1. When placed after numbered items
 
        $ od -c <somefile.txt

2. The '>' may be indented like this

    > this is a
    > multiline
    > free-form 
    > response

3. Yet another question...

In general, just start your answer to the right of the prompt character ‘$’ or ‘>’, depending on the question. Questions that do not have a prompt character don’t require a written answer, just perform the action described. For example

1. create a new directory named `output`

2. Run a command that will copy the file `files/afile.txt` to a
   file named `output/afile.txt`, type that command here:

   $

Question 1 asks you to perform an action, run the command necessary to create a directory named output, but you don’t need to write the command in the README file. Question 2 asks you to run a command AND write the command that you ran after the $ prompt.

File paths

All relative paths, unless otherwise noted, are relative to the base directory of the cloned midterm. e.g. if you clone the repository to /home/rflowers/ece2524/midterm and the README file refers to files/afile.txt then the full path to that file would be /home/rflowers/ece2524/midterm/files/afile.txt

Use the manual

Remember to use the man command to view information for a particular command. If a question asks for something that sounds complicated it’s likely there is a command line option that makes the task simple. I will be sure to word the question in such a way that it contains a search phrase you can use to quickly find the command line option in the man page, so be comfortable searching a man page for a particular phrase (press, ‘/’, then type the search phrase and press ‘Enter’. Pressing ‘n’ will cycle to the next occurrence of the phrase, while ‘N’ will cycle to the previous occurrence).

Compiling programs

You do not need to know about Makefiles, however, I will include one for the programming section which will allow you to run the command make to compile the source file into working program that you can test. You should still know the commands to compile an object file and link it to create a working program yourself if asked.

Taking the test

Fork and clone

The test is started once you fork the midterm repository:

$ ssh git@ece2524.ece.vt.edu fork midterm cvl_username/midterm

replace cvl_username with your own username.

Clone a local copy of your forked midterm:

$ git clone git@ece2524.ece.vt.edu:<cvl_username>/midterm.git ~/ece2524/midterm

Note that ~/ece2524/midterm is the destination path for the clone. If this directory already exists for some reason you will get an error telling you that, in that case, just clone to a different directory name, it doesn’t matter what you call it as long as you know what it is.

Change your working directory to the cloned midterm repo, open the file README.md in you favorite text editor. You will edit this file to include your answers to the questions asked.

$ cd  ~/ece2524/midterm

Submission

The test is submitted when you run git push to push any changes you made to the repository. Be sure to add and commit any modified files, including the README.md file itself before doing the final push.

Feedback

Unlike the past couple programming assignments, detailed tests will not run at the time of submission. The response from the ‘git push’ command will contain the time elapsed since you forked the midterm as well as a list of commits you made since then. Here is an example response for the user rflowers

$ git push
Counting objects: 5, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 372 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
0 hours, 2 minutes, 12 seconds since fork
Commits received:
<rflowers@local> finish part 1
To git@ece2524.ece.vt.edu:rflowers/midterm.git
   2792135..0804d6e  master -> master

If you see the message

Warning: no commits since fork.

this means that you are pushing an unmodified midterm fork.

You can verify what you submitted by cloning a copy into a new location:

$ git clone git@ece2524.ece.vt.edu:cvl_username/midterm.git ~/verify/midterm
$ cd ~/verify/midterm
$ git log

check that the README.md contains all your answers and check that the source code for the programming part contains all your modifications.