Midterm Info

General Info

  • Midterm exam on Monday, February 10th during class time
  • In normal lecture room (SYRE 1002)
  • You will have ~100 minutes to complete the exam. Timing can be tight.
  • You may not be able to write exam if you arrive more than 30 minutes late.
  • If sick, please email instructor and stay home. In most cases no doctor's note is required. Instructor may require University's Health Care Provider Statement, but don't get one unless requested.
  • Sample midterm from Fall 2023. Use for an idea about content; however, created by another instructor!
  • Students must attain an overall passing grade on the weighted average of exams (quizzes/midterms/final) in the course in order to obtain a clear pass (C- or better).

Material

  • Lecture content on slides #0-Welcome through #5-Memory Management inclusive.
    • You should memorize the common syscalls we have used such as fork(), waitpid(), exec(). Don't need to memorize header files.
    • More complicated ones (like sigaction() and its struct) would be given to you.
    • Previous sections included section #6-Virtual Memory in the exam material. That will not be testable on our midterm.
  • Textbook material not covered in lecture is not testable; textbook/references may give better understanding of topics we did cover.
  • Assignments A0-A8.
  • Labs 1-4.
  • Focus is likely to swing a little towards lecture material, but it's all testable.

Resources in Exam

  • No aids permitted, such as: calculators, textbooks, dictionaries, cell-phones, smart-watches, pocket-gnome, poll-the-audience, or ask-a-friend.
  • I will be happy to explain non-technical terms.

Possible Question Types

  • Multiple choice. Warning: These tend to be challenging questions!
  • Short answer.
  • Write, understand, and explain systems programming in C such as done in lecture, in labs, or on assignments.
    • May have to write C code; length of code will be more like a function.
  • Exam is written on paper: no computers.

Exam Directions

  • Find a seat with an exam.
    • Do not sit near your friends or study-mates: they think like you do!
    • If you like to look around, then sit at the front.
  • Take out:
    • Your Student ID
    • Writing tools: pens, pencils, eraser, whiteout...
    • Water bottle, cookies...
  • Put everything else at the front of the room.
    • Cell phones and smart-watches off and at front. Not for checking time.
  • Fill out the front of the exam.
  • Any academic dishonesty may lead to a grade of 0 for the entire exam.
    • Touching a cell phone / smart-watch during the exam will be considered academic dishonesty.
  • Communicate only with a TA or the instructor.
    • Do not look around room at other students.
    • When thinking, look up, not around the room.
  • Cover your paper as much as reasonably possible.
  • You have 100 minutes once told to begin.
  • You may not leave the exam during the first 30 minutes, or the last ~10 minutes.

Good luck!

Midterm Info