Midterm-Info

General Info

  • Midterm exam on Tuesday, February 24th during class time

  • In normal lecture room (AQ 3182)

  • 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. Instructor may require University's Health Care Provider Statement. We will handle exception on a case-by-case basis.

  • CAL students watch for CAL instructions for the exam.

  • 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

  • The exam contains two parts: main midterm questions, Quiz 3 (A8) questions. Both parts are in the same exam sheet. Both of them need to be finished within the time limit. The grades for two parts are separate.

  • Lecture content on slides #0-Welcome through #6-Virtual Memory inclusive convered. #7-Threads and further lectures not covered.

  • Quiz 3 questions have the same format as previous quizzes: 6 multiple-choice questions.

  • 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.

  • Textbook material not covered in lecture is not testable; textbook/references may give better understanding of topics we did cover.

    • Assignments A0-A8.

    • Labs 1-5.

  • 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!