CS 241 ISA Duties

This page describes important tasks CS 241 ISAs must do throughout the term. The focus of this page is mostly on tasks that require technical knowledge or step-by-step instructions (rather than e.g. "set up a meeting with the course instructor").

"Beginning of Term" Tasks

Access The Course Account

Ensure you are able to access the course account. There are detailed instructions at CourseAccountSshKeyAccess.

In summary, you need to generate an SSH key pair, which consists of a public key and a private key, and then the public key must be copied to the /u/cs241/.ssh/authorized_keys file in the course account. The copying of the public key is usually done automatically, but if the automated system is not working then your ISC or someone else with course account access can copy it into the file manually. Once it has been copied, you can use the private key to access the course account through SSH.

Test The Course Email Account

We will be using Connect for the course email account. See AccessingCourseConnectEmail for information about how to access it.

Make sure that you check the course email account regularly. The ISC and instructors may send important information to this account. Students will also sometimes contact this account instead of posting on Piazza.

Update The Course Webpage

All the files for the course webpage are stored in /u/cs241/public_html. Changes you make to files in public_html will be reflected immediately on the course webpage.

The previous ISA might do some of the tasks below for you, but not all.

• Update all term-specific content. Be careful here as it's easy to miss things. Look for mentions of the previous term and change them. Check all the links and make sure they are updated for the term (e.g., if the website links to Learn or Piazza, make sure it's the current term's Learn or Piazza site).
• Update the list of course personnel (instructors, ISAs, IAs, etc.)
• Comment out the assignment links (except maybe Assignment 1, if the plan is to release it right at the start of the term).
• On each individual assignment page, update the due dates and change any references to the previous term.
• Comment out any linked resources that are term-specific or related to future assignments.

Additionally, make sure permissions are set correctly. To make a folder or file accessible on the web, use chmod o+r filename. To make it inaccessible, use chmod o-r filename.

Generally the assignment folders are made inaccessible at the start of the term, so students cannot peek at future assignments. However, some instructors may ask for them to be accessible throughout the term for convenience.

Update The Google Calendar

There is a Google Calendar on the course website that shows course schedule information (lecture times, due dates, office hours, etc.)

The calendar is on the Google account cs241uwaterloo@gmail.com. Ask your ISC for the password.

Use repeating events for things like lectures and office hours to make it easier to set them up, but make sure the events stop repeating before the exam period so students don't get confused.

Set Up Marmoset

Before you can do any of the following setup, the current term's offering of CS 241 must be added to Marmoset and the build servers must be set up (normally done by CSCF) and your ISC must give you instructor privileges on Marmoset. If you have instructor privileges, you will be presented with three accounts to select from when you log in instead of the usual single account: "userid", "userid-student", and "userid-canonical". Select "userid" (the other two are for special purposes). Then click the offering of CS 241 corresponding to the current term, and click the "Instructor View" link near the top of the page. Instructor View mode allows you to access the administrative functions of Marmoset.

Giving Students Access To Marmoset

In Instructor View, click the link "Register students or groups for this course using a CSV file" and follow the instructions to generate and upload a classlist CSV.

The classlist will change frequently for the first few weeks of the term. You should repeat this process regularly until the classlist stabilizes to ensure every student enrolled in the course has access to Marmoset. The CSV upload tool will not create duplicate students, so you can just reupload the whole list every time.

You may need to give an individual student who is not in the classlist access to Marmoset (e.g. a student on the waiting list who is not officially in the course yet). In this case click "Register one student for this course using a web interface". Fill out their information.

You may also need to give instructors or TAs access to Marmoset. For this, use the link "Register an Instructor or TA for this course using a web interface" and fill out their information.

Setting Up Marmoset Projects

Each assignment problem in CS 241 gets its own Marmoset project. Here is how to create a project:

1. Click "create new project" from Instructor View.
2. For the "project number" and "project title", enter the assignment problem name (e.g. A2P7, A10P4, A5Bonus). It's important that they both use this format, because some of the scripts written for the course read from the project number, and others read from project title.
3. Enter the due date (using 24-hour time, e.g., 17:00:00 for 5 PM) for the corresponding assignment in the "on-time deadline" field. For the "late deadline", read the course outline or ask an instructor/ISC about the late policy for the term, and fill out the field accordingly. Generally the late deadline would be set to the time when the secret test results should become visible to students.
4. For the URL, either use a link to the assignment page (e.g. https://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs241/a1/) or simply leave it blank.
5. The "description" can be left blank.
6. For the "stack trace policy", select "the entire stack trace for Java or full output printed to stdout for C". This is in bold because it is not the default setting, and it is important. Students may not be able to see information about release tests if this is set improperly.
7. Set the number of release tests to reveal, number of release tokens, and release token regeneration time based on the policies in the course outline or the instructors' preferences. If you are not given any guidance on this, a safe option is to look at what was used last term. Note that the "create project" interface only allows certain values for release token count and regeneration time, but other values are valid. If you need to use other values, create the project with any values, then use "update project". The update interface allows arbitrary values.
8. Most other options should be left at their default settings, unless you are told otherwise. The late penalty options should not be used to implement a late penalty (this is generally done within MarmSql, or with another script after downloading the marks with MarmSql). For the "canonical class account", you might want to change this to "youruserid-canonical" (if it is not the default) since you are the one creating the projects, but it doesn't really matter which canonical account is used.

Repeat this for every assignment problem. There is currently no automatic or fast way of doing this; you may wish to spread out the project creation over the term if doing it all at once is too mind-numbing.

Projects that are due at the same time will appear in alphabetical order. Sometimes you may want to adjust this order (for example, if problem called "A9Bonus" appears at the wrong place relative to the other A9 problems). You can do this by changing the "seconds" in the project deadline. For example, a project due at 17:00:01 will appear higher in the list than a project due at 17:00:00, but the seconds won't be visible to students.

Uploading Test Setups And Canonical Solutions

After creating the projects, you need to upload and activate the test scripts for each assignment problem.

1. Log in to the course account, then from there type ssh cs241t@linux.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca to log in to the cs241t account. This special account is where Marmoset tests are executed and where the test setups are stored.
2. From the home directory, type mkstubs. This creates "stubs" for each of the Marmoset test setups in /u/cs241t/assignments and stores them in /u/cs241t/stubs. (See MarmosetSummary for more information about how these "stubs" are used.)
3. Follow the instructions on MountingCourseAccountOnCampus but mount the cs241t account instead of cs241. Alternatively, download all the stubs to your personal computer.
4. Go to the "Utilities" page for the project you want. Find the "Upload new test setup" form and navigate to the folder containing the stubs. Look for a file called aXpY.test.zip, where "aXpY" is the assignment name (e.g. a4p2).
5. After the test setup is uploaded, upload the canonical solution via the "Project submission via jar file for canonical account" form. The canonical solution is also stored in /u/cs241/stubs as aXpY.sol.zip.
6. Once both the test setup and canonical solution are uploaded, the canonical solution will be run against the test setup to check for correctness. If the test fails, try running mkstubs again to regenerate all the stubs, then upload the test setup and canonical solution again. If it still fails, there could be an error in the test scripts or the solution.
7. Once the test passes, click "assign points" to assign marks to each test case. If the correct point values are not automatically filled in, consult the instructor(s) or look at the previous term's Marmoset instance.
8. After assigning marks, the test setup will be active, though the project will not be visible to students until you click the "Make visible" button. Verify that the test setup works correctly before you click this button, since you cannot (easily) make a project invisible after it has been made visible.

Repeat this for every assignment problem. There is currently no automatic or fast way of doing this.

Set Up Piazza

1. Go to http://piazza.com and log in under your own credentials - userid@uwaterloo.ca.
2. Create a new CS 241 class for the current term. The previous term's ISA or the current term's instructor may have done this already. If not, the process should be fairly straightforward. When asked whether you want to enroll as a student, TA, or professor, you can select "professor" (not sure what the differences are between professor or and TA accounts, but the latter might have less privileges).
3. Modify the class settings by clicking "Manage Class" on the top bar. You can probably leave most of the settings at their defaults, but look through to see if there is anything that you think needs changing. It is recommended that you disable anonymous posting; if disabled, then students will still be able to be anonymous to classmates but not to instructors. It is easier to help students if you know their name since you can look up their assignment submissions on Marmoset.
4. Enroll the instructor(s) and your ISC. There is a form for this on the class settings page; just copy and paste their emails in. Your ISC may also ask you to enroll the TAs.
5. Enroll the students. As with the instructor(s) and the ISC, there is a form for this on the class settings page that allows you to copy and paste the student's emails in. You can get a list of enrolled student user IDs with the odyssey classlist command (use the -h option for help with this command) and use this to generate a list of "@uwaterloo.ca" emails.

The classlist will change frequently for the first few weeks of the term. You should repeat the last step (enrolling students) regularly until the classlist stabilizes to ensure every student enrolled in the course has access to Piazza. The form for enrolling students is smart enough to figure out which email addresses are already enrolled and avoid creating duplicate students.

Some students might use an alternate email address for Piazza instead of their "@uwaterloo.ca" email address. If these students are having trouble logging in, direct these students to https://piazza.com/account_settings and ask them to add their @uwaterloo.ca email (with 8 character user ID) under "Other Emails". This will link both emails to one account and they should be able to log in.

Activate Crontab Tasks (If Needed)

The Unix tool cron allows tasks to be scheduled and automatically executed at certain times. The tasks and the times at which they will be executed are defined by a "crontab" (cron table) file. Each user has a personal crontab they can edit.

Not only does each user have a personal crontab, but each server has its own set of crontabs for each user. Thus you won't be able to access the course crontab if you are on the wrong server. To check where the crontab is located, look at the last line of the crontab-backtup file in the course account home directory. Then, log in to that specific server to edit the crontab.

If the crontab-backup file doesn't have this location information, or the location is wrong, you might have to check each individual server to find the crontab, or recreate it if it was somehow lost. Make sure add the proper location information when you update or recreate the crontab to make things easier for future course staff!

The CS 241 crontab currently contains the following tasks:

• Clean up data for the office hour booking system.
• Update the scoreboard for the compiler optimization contest.
• Update the page that shows the "last modified" time for the course notes.
• Save a daily backup of the CS 241 crontab in /u/cs241/crontab-backup in case the original is lost or overwritten.

At the beginning of the term, you may have to activate some of these tasks, as described below. To activate these tasks, log in the course account on the server where the crontab is stored. The command crontab -l will display the crontab, and crontab -e will open it in a text editor. The crontab should be documented, so it should be clear which lines correspond to the tasks you need to activate. Remove the "#" from the beginning of these lines to uncomment them, then save and exit.

The tasks you should activate at the beginning of the term are:Nothing really. All of the above tasks except the scoreboard should be activated already. (If they aren't, ask your ISC whether they should be.) The scoreboard does not get activated until later in the term.

Create Course Staff File For Current Term

Several scripts used by ISG-supported courses expect there to be a file in the home directory of the course account containing information about the course staff for the current term. A few things may not work as expected if this file isn't set up.

The file should be stored in /u/cs241 and should be named .coursestaff.XXXX, where XXXX is a number corresponding to the current term. The term number should be in the "MFCF format":

• The first two digits encode the current year, e.g. 12 for 2012.
• The last two digits encode the starting month of the term: 01 for January, 05 for May, or 09 for September.

For example, the file for Fall 2012 would be called .coursestaff.1209, and the file for Winter 2015 would be called .coursestaff.1501. The command termcode -m returns the number corresponding to the current term in this format.

The format of the course staff file is described at ClassListPerlModule, though it is not necessary to include the information about lectures, tutorials, labs, etc. as mentioned on that page. It should be easy to figure out what the file should contain by looking at examples from previous terms. Here is an example course staff file (where each "userid" should be replaced with the appropriate user ID of the course staff member).

userid:tutor::::
userid:isc::::
userid:instructor::::

Note the term "tutor" is used instead of ISA (a long time ago, ISAs were known as "Tutors").

You can check that this file is set up correctly by visiting the marks page on the CS 241 website. This page uses the course staff file to give staff access to a special interface for looking up student marks. Also, the page you get when lookup a student's marks uses the course staff file to display the ISC's name.

Manage Exception List For Current Term

The file .exceptionlist.XXXX, where XXXX is the MFCF format term number (as described in the Create Course Staff File For Current Term section), contains the user IDs of people who are not officially enrolled in the course, but need access to course content. Usually these are students who are on the waiting list for the course or something like that, but sometimes this file is also used for non-students, like CSCF staff who need access to certain course pages.

You may get emails from students saying they cannot access parts of the course website that are locked behind a user ID login (like course notes or the "view your marks" page) . After confirming with the ISC that the student should actually have access, you can add them to the file. The format is simply one 8-character Quest user ID (not student number) per line.

Note that this file is only used by some scripts and is does not give the student universal access to course systems. When you add a student to this file, you should also make sure they are added to Marmoset, Markus and Piazza.

Set Up The Slip Day System

CS241 currently offers students three "slip days" (24-hour extensions) they can use on assignments throughout the term. The slip day system is stored under ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions.

First, if the previous ISA has not done this already, delete all the files in the ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extension/tracker directory. These are slip day records from the previous term. If a student is retaking the course, you want to give them a fresh start in terms of slip days, so it's important to delete these files at the start of each term. Probably the safest way to do this is to go to ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions and run "rm -r tracker", followed by "mkdir tracker" to recreate the directory. (Going into the tracker directory and running "rm *" is not recommended, because if you are accidentally in the wrong directory, you will wipe out everything in that directory!)

Then, open the file ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extension/extensions_helper.py and follow the instructions in the comments. You will need to set certain variables to the appropriate values to initialize the slip day system.

The slip day web form is stored in the files request.cgi and confirm.cgi. You shouldn't need to touch these unless you want to change how the slip day system works, or fix a bug.

"During the Term" Tasks

Post Assignments

Posting assignments once they are ready to be released involves a number of steps.

1. Make sure the assignment page itself is accessible from a web browser. If not, you may have to run chmod o+r on the assignment page or assignment folder.
2. Make sure the assignment text itself is up to date and shows the correct term and due date.
3. On the course website Assignments page, add (or uncomment) the link to the assignment and make sure the due date is correct.
4. In the Additional Reference Material section, make sure any webpages that are relevant to the assignment are linked (e.g., for the assembler assignment, make sure the MIPS specification is linked).
5. Update the slip day system: open the file ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions/extensions_helper.py and change the variable that controls which assignments are available for slip day requests.
6. Make the Marmoset projects for the assignment visible to students (assuming they have been set up earlier).
7. Create a Piazza post announcing the release of the assignment, with (at minimum) the following information: A link to the assignment page, the due date of the assignment, and the topics covered by the assignment.

Make Secret Test Results Visible

Secret test results are usually made visible to students 3 days after the assignment deadline, that is, once all slip days for the assignment have passed.

You can set up the Marmoset projects so that secret tests automatically become visible 3 days after the deadline. Go to Marmoset and for each assignment problem, go to the Utilities page. Make sure the "late deadline" for the project is set 3 days after the "on-time deadline". If it's not, click the "Update this project" link and change it.

Then, under "Test-Outcome Visibility", select "Everything" and click "change post-deadline visibility of outcomes". This will make the secret test results visible to students as soon as the late deadline has passed. Prior to the late deadline, they remain invisible, even once this option is set to "Everything".

If students are complaining that the secret tests are not visible even after the 3 day period is over, this probably means you forgot to set "Test-Outcome Visibility" to "Everything".

Upload Unofficial Marks

CS 241 has a page where students can view their unofficial marks. (These are referred to as "public marks" in many places. This does not imply the marks are public to everyone; students can only view their own marks.)

If an assignment does not have handmarking, you should add the marks for the assignment to this page once the results of Marmoset secret tests for the assignments are released. Otherwise, wait until the handmarking is done as well. You should also update this page after midterm marks are released.

Here is how you update this page:

1. Navigate to ~/marks/raw. If it is the start of the term, delete all the contents (they are probably left over from a past term). At any other time, when you need to download marks for an assignment, type marm_sql -v -m AX, where X is the assignment number.
2. When you need to upload MarkUs marks or Learn quiz results, download the corresponding CSV file and put it in ~/marks/raw. Note that these files need to have specific names or the script that creates the public marks file won't pick them up. For Markus, use the default name of the "Simple Report" which is something like A3_simple_report.csv. For Learn quizzes, name the file from Learn quizN-grades.raw.csv, where N is the quiz number, and then run the command ~/marks/bin/learn-process.bash quizN-grades.raw.csv. This should create a file called quizN-grades.csv that is formatted appropriately.
3. Edit ~/marks/bin/pubmarks.py to make sure the assignments and quizzes are set up correctly. The comments in the script should explain what to do. The assignments and quizzes whose marks are not released yet should be commented out.
4. Run ~/marks/bin/pubmarks.py to create a file called public-marks-preview.txt. You can check this file to make sure the marks look correct.
5. Rename the public-marks-preview.txt file to public-marks.txt. As soon as you do this, students will be able to see the marks on the webpage. You can go to the page yourself and enter a few student user IDs to double check the marks are displayed correctly.

Note that the script determines whether you are allowed to see students' marks by whether you are present in the course staff file ~/.coursestaff.[termcode], so if it isn't letting you view the public marks page make sure that file is set up correctly first.

Maintain The Slip Day System

Upon the release of each assignment, you will need to update ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions/extensions_helper.py to enable slip days for the assignment.

Before posting marks for an assignment, you will need to update ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions/extensions_helper.py to disable slip days for the assignment. Otherwise, a student might request a slip day after you have uploaded marks, and then complain that the slip day isn't reflected in the marks you uploaded.

You will occasionally get requests like this: "I used a slip day by accident and I want to revoke it", or "I forgot to use a slip day and now the form doesn't let me request one anymore". In that case, get the student's 8 character Quest user ID (the alphanumeric one, not the purely numeric one). Go to the ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions/tracker directory and open the file named after their user ID. It should have a format similar to this:

0:0:1:0:0:0:0:0

That is, the file format is just a sequence of numbers separated by colons. The first number is the count of slip days used on A1, the second number is the count of slip days used on A2, and so on. To revoke or add a slip day, just change the number for the corresponding assignment. You can verify you did it correctly by appending a parameter to the slip day form URL, like this: https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs241/cgi-bin/extension/request.cgi?user=theStudentsUserID. This trick lets you view what the slip day form looks like for a particular student (as long as you are a course staff member, i.e., you are listed in the ~/.coursestaff.[termcode] file).

When a student views the slip day form (even if they don't actually request a slip day), a file is created for them automatically under ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions/tracker. If the student has never viewed the slip day form before, you might have to manually create the file for them. Make sure the file you create has the correct number of numbers. It's not necessarily the same as the number of assignments, since sometimes slip days are not allowed for the final assignment. Look at another student's file to confirm how many numbers there should be.

Run Moss To Check For Plagiarism

Your ISC will ask you to run Moss (plagiarism checking system for code) on some of the assignment problems. The exact set of assignment problems used can vary slightly from term to term. Once you know which assignment problem you will be running Moss on, see RunningMoss for details on the process.

Set Up And Close Down Midterm Remarking Form

(This section only applies if there is a midterm.)

After the midterm marks are released, you should set up the form that lets students submit midterm remarking requests. After the deadline for remarking requests, you should disable the form (unfortunately it needs to be disabled manually).

On the course account, navigate to ~/public_html/cgi-bin/midterm_remarking and open the requests.cgi file. Change the "deadline" variable to the deadline for the term. Once you want to open the form, change the "beforeDeadline" variable to true. Now students should be able to submit requests. The link to the form should be commented out somewhere on the course website's index.html page; uncomment it to make it available to students. If you want to change the text shown on the form page, look near the bottom of the requests.cgi script.

Note that students can break the form if they put certain things in the "Page" field - for example if they write "Page 2/16" instead of just "2". Keep this in mind if students are getting errors after you open the form.

When it's time to close the form, simply set "beforeDeadline" to false.

The remark request data is stored in ~/public_html/cgi-bin/midterm_remarking/data, grouped by page number. If page number grouping is not ideal for handling the remark requests, there is a script called group-by-students.bash in the midterm_remarking folder which will group the requests by student and store them in a folder called "students". This script is slow to run (since for each student, it searches the entire request list to find that student's requests) but it should only need to be run once.

Activate Bonus Scoreboard Once Optimization Bonus Is Available

The automatically updating scoreboard for the compiler optimization bonus problem is handled by the CS 241 crontab (see the Activate Crontab Tasks section above) and the make_scoreboard script.

Navigate to /u/cs241/bin and open the file make_scoreboard. There should be instructions in the comments of the script telling you which variables to change and how.

Once this file is properly updated, open the crontab and uncomment the line that calls the make_scoreboard script and updates the scoreboard. If the line isn't there for some reason, add it:

*/5 * * * * /bin/bash -c "/u/cs241/bin/make_scoreboard > /dev/null"

The scoreboard should start updating every 5 minutes once you do this. Activate the crontab task that backs up the crontab as well, if it isn't activated already.

Deal With Quiz Issues

(This section only applies if there are quizzes in the current term.)

There are two kinds of issues related to quizzes:

A student attempted but forgot to submit a quiz, in which case you can submit a quiz on behalf of the student:
1. Click the drop-down arrow by the quiz name and choose "Grade".
2. Go to the "Attempts" tab. Click "Show Search Options". Under "Restrict to" select "Attempts In Progress". Click the magnifying glass (NOT the "Apply" button, which won't do anything).
3. Now you should see a list of students who didn't submit. To submit on a student's behalf, click the little icon that shows two people and an arrow. It will open their quiz attempt and you can submit it. (If you click the "attempt 1", link, rather than this icon, you can view the quiz attempt but submitting doesn't seem to work.)

A student misses a quiz but still wants to attempt it for practice, in which case you can give the student special access to the quiz:
1. Click the quiz name to open the "Edit Quiz" interface. Go to the "Restrictions" tab.
2. Click "Add Users to Special Access" near the bottom.
3. Select the user you want to add.
4. Change the quiz "End Date" (not the "Due Date") to something like 24 hours or 48 hours ahead, to give the student time to attempt the quiz. Then click Add Special Access.

"End of Term" Tasks

Fill In The Marks Spreadsheet

The official CS 241 marks spreadsheet, used to compute final grades, is stored under /u/cs241/marks. It should be named something like TERM_CS241_Grades.xls, e.g. F12_CS241_Grades.xls. A template spreadsheet should be stored under the /u/cs241/marks folder; if not, ask your ISC for the template. To open it, you should log on to one of the office Macs and follow the instructions on MountingCourseAccountOnCampus so you can browse the files on the course account through Finder. Then double-click the file to open it in Excel.

Alternatively, you can download it and use an Excel-compatible spreadsheet program on your own computer. You should not use a cloud-based tool like Google Sheets, as if your account gets compromised, the grades could be leaked.

You don't need to update the official CS 241 marks spreadsheet throughout the term. However, at end of the term you will need to do each of the following tasks:

• Transfer the student information from the classlist file into the spreadsheet.
• Transfer the assignment and midterm marks from the public-marks.txt file into the spreadsheet.
• Enter the final exam marks in the spreadsheet.

Importing The Classlist And Assignment/Midterm Marks

If you are using Excel through your office computer (after mounting the course account), these first two tasks may already be done for you - there is a feature in Excel called "Get External Data" for automatically importing data from external files. The spreadsheet might be set up to use this feature and import the classlist automatically.

If the "Get External Data" feature is not enabled or not working, it is not necessary to use it - just manually copy the data from the classlist in into the "classlist" sheet and from public-marks.txt into the "public-marks" sheet. The "Get External Data" feature was more useful when the marks spreadsheet needed to be updated throughout the term rather than just at the end of the term. The Outdated Information section contains instructions for setting up "Get External Data" if you really want or need to use it.

Once all the information has been imported successfully, check the main worksheet; it should now contain students' names and assignment marks (and midterm marks if they have been added to public-marks.txt).

Entering Final Exam Marks

After the final exam marking is complete, you can download a CSV file containing all the marks from Crowdmark (assuming Crowdmark is being used in the course in the current term).

Open the "Final" worksheet in the main spreadsheet, and modify the existing question numbers and mark values to reflect the current term's final exam. Then transfer the data from the Crowdmark CSV into the main spreadsheet. This may require some editing of the Crowdmark CSV file to make the formats match up.

Once you have entered the marks in the "Final" worksheet, they should also appear on the main worksheet. When assignment, midterm and final exam marks are all added, the final grades should be calculated and shown in the corresponding column. Make sure the final grades on the main worksheet are correct, since these marks are the ones that will eventually be submitted to the Registrar's Office!

Archive Course Material

At the end of each term, course-related files are stored in /u/cs241/archives under a directory named after the corresponding term number.

The/u/cs241/archives/archive.sh script will do most of the archiving for you. Run it with the current termcode as the argument (you can use the termcode command to get this code) and make sure there are no errors when copying.

The saved contents are things like, the main index page, the midterm and final folders, the assignment pages, the cgi-bin folder, the course outline, and the tutorial materials and solutions (you do not need to archive the whole public_html directory), the handin folder (particularly important to archive, since the Moss scripts (see RunningMoss) will look at archived student submissions from previous terms to catch students who plagiarize from people who have already taken the course), the make_scoreboard script, etc. You can look at the source of the script to see exactly what it archives.

The archive.sh script does not copy are the assignment testing scripts used by Marmoset (assignments folder on cs241t), so you should copy those yourself using scp.

The archive.sh script does not copy the LaTeX source for the tutorials or the midterm and final review sessions (unless the sources are stored under public_html for some reason). Make sure to archive these in case the next term's ISA wants to make adjustments to the tutorials.

You should download annotations and rubric criteria from Markus for each assignment and put them in the markus_files folder. The archive.sh script creates this folder, but does not automatically put the annotations and rubrics in it.

Finally, copy any other files that have changed significantly from the previous term or are specific to the current term, and are not already copied by the archive.sh script.

You should empty the contents of the following directories once you have confirmed that everything is archived properly:

• handin/ EXCEPT the base, external, and moss-bin folders
• markus/ EXCEPT the bin folder
• public_html/cgi-bin/midterm_remarking/data/
• public_html/cgi-bin/studentCard/cards/

Deactivate Crontab Tasks

See the Activate Crontab Tasks section for an explanation of what the crontab is and how to edit it.

Deactivate crontab tasks that should not continue running after the term ends. An example is the scoreboard updating task. Which tasks need to be deactivated will depend on which tasks were used during the term.

To deactivate a task, add a # character at the start of the corresponding line to comment the line out.

Clean Up Website

Complete as many of the tasks in the Update The Course Webpage section as you can. This is not strictly necessary but it will reduce the next ISA's workload a bit.

Clean Up The Slip Day System

Delete the contents of the ~/public_html/cgi-bin/extensions/tracker directory (as described in the Set Up The Slip Day System section).

Delete Or Remove Confidential Information

When the term ends, you should do the following to ensure that the next ISA is not able to access any confidential information.

• Delete all emails from the course email account. Delete emails from the inbox as well as the sent mail folders. It is best to do this at the very end of the term once you are no longer checking or using the course email account. At this time you should also disable any email forwarding functionality you have set up.
• Delete the marks spreadsheet and public-marks.txt file once final grades have been submitted. Also empty the ~/marks/raw folder.
• If you have any papers with confidential information, put them in boxes for shredding. You might not have anything to shred now that midterms are handled using Crowdmark rather than kept in the ISA's office.

Update the TWiki

• If any information you read on the TWiki during this term was inaccurate or out of date, update it.
• If any of the explanations of how to do certain tasks were unclear, rewrite them.
• If there are any tasks requiring technical knowledge that you had to do throughout the term, and they aren't documented on this page, add them.
• If you think of a better way to organize the CS 241 section of the TWiki than having most of the information on this giant page, reorganize it.
• If the assignments changed in any way since the previous term (e.g., number of questions changed, number of marks per question changed, new test cases were added) you will probably need to update the mark values on CompSci241MarmMarks.
• If you made any changes or extensions to MarmSql or the Moss scripts, update those pages with the information and upload the new versions.
• If you wrote any new scripts or tools for future ISAs to use, create a new TWiki page explaining what they are and how to use them.
• If you think of anything else that should be on this list of things to update, add it.

Outdated Information

This section is for information from previous terms that is no longer relevant or correct due to changes in the course.

Updating The Classlist When CS 241E Is Running

CS 241E (enriched version) and CS 241R (regular version, that is, this course) used to have a combined classlist. They seem to have separate classlists now. Here are instructions for working with the combined classlist in case they ever get merged again for some reason.

The .classlist file contains the students from both the regular and enriched version of the ourse. If CS 241E is currently running this term, you will need to run the script ./parse_classlist.bash on a regular basis until the classlist stabilizes. This script makes the files .classlist_241e and .classlist_241r. You will need to upload .classlist_241r instead of the .classlist file so that the CS 241E students will not have access to the CS 241R Marmoset, Piazza, and Markus.

Adding An Access Code For Piazza

In some terms, Piazza has been protected with an "access code" to prevent students who are not enrolled from viewing it. This probably isn't necessary but if you are requested to add one by an instructor or your ISC, instructions are below.

In "Manage Class", under "Class Information" there should be an "Access Code" option you can click on to add the access code. If there is no such option, you may need to email team@piazza.com asking them to make it available.

Old Method Of Updating Bonus Scoreboard Script

The automatically updating scoreboard for the compiler optimization bonus problem is handled by the CS 241 crontab (see the Activate Crontab Tasks section above) and the make_scoreboard script.

In the past, this script needed to be updated every term by manually editing some giant SQL queries. Now updating it is much simpler - you just change a few variables at the top of the file. Here are the old instructions for updating the script.

1. Navigate to /u/cs241/bin and open the file make_scoreboard.
2. Find the "project PK" for the A10Bonus Marmoset project. You can find this by clicking the "view" link for the A10Bonus project and looking at the URL; it will look something like https://marmoset.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/view/instructor/project.jsp?projectPK=1000. Take this number and search through the make_scoreboard script for all occurrences of "project_pk" and update the corresponding value.
3. The structure of the make_scoreboard script looks something like a sequence of commands of the form make sc 'giant SQL query' X, where X is some file path. Look for the queries where X is private/a10bonus, a10bonus_ontime, and a10bonus_topten. These correspond to updating the "ontime" scoreboard. Within the corresponding SQL query, change the date and time in submission_timestamp < [date/time]= part to the deadline of A10 for the current term.
4. For the command make sc 'giant SQL query' private/a10bonus_topten, change the submission_timestamp < [date/time]= to some time after the final exam.
5. If you intend to submit some stuff to the A10Bonus problem with your user account, add the condition AND NOT students.campus_uid LIKE "userid" to each SQL query (where "userid" is your user ID). This will ensure your submissions do not show up on the scoreboard.

Using "Get External Data" With The Marks Spreadsheet

In the past, the CS 241 marks spreadsheet was set up to import the classlist and assignment marks automatically so it would stay up to date throughout the term. (It might still be set up to do this or it might have been broken at some point.) This is not really necessary anymore since the marks spreadsheet is usually just updated once at the end of the term. If you want to use external data imports, here are instructions for setting them up.

Open the marks spreadsheet. If you get a security warning notifying you that "data connections have been disabled" (or something similar), there should be a button on the warning that lets you re-enable the data connections; you must do this or the external data imports will not work. Now navigate to the "public-marks" worksheet. If the external data imports were already set up in a previous term, then hopefully you should see all the public-marks.txt data in this sheet. If the data is not there, or outdated data is displayed, try clicking "Refresh" under the "External Data Sources" section of the "Data" tab. If this doesn't fix the problem, you need to set up the external data import again. There are instructions for doing this in the spreadsheet, as well as below.

1. Go to Insert > Name > Define. If "public-marks" is a defined name, delete it. Then delete all the data in this sheet (if any).
2. Highlight cell A1 then go to Data > Get External Data > Import Text File and import the file /u/cs241/marks/public-marks.txt. When asked which delimiters to use, choose "Comma".
3. Right click anywhere in the imported data and select "Data Range Properties". Make sure "Save query definition" and "Refresh data on file open" are checked, and "Prompt for file name on refresh" and "Remove external data from worksheet before saving" are unchecked.

Now navigate to the "classlist" worksheet. Again, the classlist data may already be in this sheet, or you may have to set up the external data import again. The instructions for setting up the import are below:

1. Go to Insert > Name > Define. If "classlist" is a defined name, delete it. Then delete everything to the left of column P, if there is any data there.
2. If so, highlight cell A1 then go to Data > Get External Data > Import Text File and import the file /u/cs241/classlist.txt. When asked which delimiters to use, choose "Other" and type a colon.
3. Right click anywhere in the imported data and select "Data Range Properties". Make sure "Save query definition" and "Refresh data on file open" are checked, and "Prompt for file name on refresh" and "Remove external data from worksheet before saving" are unchecked.

Check Permissions On CS 241 Tools

This section is obsolete because the current version of the course doesn't require changing permissions on any tools throughout the term. Also, the list of tools may be out of date at this point. Check https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs241/tools/ instead. The original text of this section is below.

Log in to the course account and navigate to /u/cs241/pub. This "public" folder contains tools such as cs241.binasm and mips.twoints that students must use throughout the term. However, we do not want all of the tools to be available at the very start of the term (for example, if cs241.binasm was available at the start then students could use it to do Assignment 1 very easily). To ensure students do not have access to particular tools, you need to check that the previous term's ISA reset the file permissions correctly (and set them yourself if they did not).

You can check the permissions on a file (or directory) in Unix by typing ls -l filename. It will display something like this:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 cs241 cs241 389 Sep 13  2011 filename

The leftmost part of the output (the sequence of dashes and letters) is a representation of the file permissions. If you do not know how to read Unix file permissions, you can find explanations online. The last three characters of this permission string are particularly important, since they define what permissions are available to "others" (that is, all users aside from the owner of the file and users in the "CS 241" group). For example, the last three characters of the permission string for filename are r-x, which means that every user has permission to read and execute filename, but does not have permission to write to the file.

In general, the "others" permissions on files and directories under /u/cs241/pub should be set as follows:

• If students should be allowed to freely browse the files in a directory, the directory should have r-x permissions. Otherwise, it should probably have --- permissions.
• If students are allowed to execute a program or script, it should have r-x permissions. For the Java classes under /u/cs241/pub/classes, it seems to be sufficient to use r-- permissions. If students should not be allowed to execute the program, it should have --- permissions.

Use the chmod command to add or remove permissions. You can find guides for using this command online. The variations you will probably use most often are chmod o-rx file (remove read and execute permissions for "others" from file) and chmod o+rx file (add read and execute permissions for "others" to file).

Most of the tools students will use are accessed through the wrappers under /u/cs241/pub/wrappers. These wrappers check if a particular Java class is readable or program is executable, and if not, display an informative error message to the students. Some other tools are in /u/cs241/pub/bin. Here is a list of all the tools that are currently relevant in the course, with paths are given relative to /u/cs241/pub:

• wrappers/cs241.wordasm: Limited assembler students use for Assignment 1. Calls Java class classes/cs241/wordasm.class.
• wrappers/cs241.binasm: Standard assembler students use for most of the course. Calls Java class classes/cs241/binasm.class.
• wrappers/cs241.linkasm: Linking assembler used late in the course. Calls Java class classes/cs241/linkasm.class.
• wrappers/cs241.DFA: DFA recognizer used in Assignment 4. Calls Java class classes/cs241/DFA.class.
• wrappers/cs241.cfgcheck: Tool for checking validity of the context-free grammar files used in Assignment 5. Calls Java class classes/cs241/CFGCheck.class.
• wrappers/cs241.cfgrl: Tool for converting the .cfg-r files from Assignment 6 to ordinary context-free grammar files. Calls executable bin/cfgrl.
• wrappers/cs241.slr: Tool for generating .lr1 files used by the parser written in Assignment 6. Calls Java class classes/jslr/Jslr.class.
• wrappers/cs241.merl: Tool for converting MERL files to plain MIPS files. Calls Java class classes/cs241/merl.class.
• bin/mips.array: MIPS simulator for running MIPS files with array input.
• bin/mips.twoints: MIPS simulator for running MIPS files with two integer parameters.
• bin/mips.stepper_twoints: Alternate version of mips.twoints with step-forward, step-back, and register and stack view, intended for debugging.
• bin/wlp4c: Reference implementation of the WLP4 compiler.
• bin/wlp4scan: Reference implementation of the WLP4 scanner.
• bin/wlp4parse: Reference implementation of the WLP4 parser.
• bin/wlp4icheck: Tool for checking the format of .wlp4i files (which represent WLP4 program parse trees).
• bin/cs241.linker: Linker used in conjunction with cs241.linkasm late in the course.
• bin/cs241.binview: Binary file viewer, used throughout the course for inspecting files.
• bin/marmoset_submit: Command line tool for submitting to Marmoset.

Here are the recommended guidelines for how the "others" permissions should be set at the start of the term. The previous ISA may have done this for you already but you should double check everything.

• All programs in "wrappers" should be readable and executable. To control access, change permissions on the programs or Java classes pointed to the by the wrappers.
• All programs in "bin" should be readable and executable.
• Under the classes folder:
  • Make sure cs241/wordasm.class is readable.
  • Make sure cs241/binasm.class and cs241/linkasm.class are not readable.
  • All other classes should be readable, there's really no reason to restrict their usage with the current setup of the course.

Give Students Access To CS 241 Tools For Each Assignment

This section is obsolete because the current version of the course doesn't require changing permissions on any tools throughout the term. The original text of this section is below.

Throughout the term, you should give students access to the tools they need to do the assignments.

With the current setup of the course, there is no need to disable permissions for most of the tools except the assemblers (binasm and linkasm). Therefore, there should be no need to enable permissions for most tools either; they should be enabled already. Nonetheless, here are the recommended guidelines for how the "others" permissions on the tools should be set throughout the term.

• Make sure ~/pub/classes/cs241/binasm.class and ~/pub/classes/cs241/linkasm.class are readable after Assignment 1 and before Assignment 2. (Most likely this is the only permission change you'll need to do.)
• Make sure ~/pub/classes/cs241/DFA.class is readable before Assignment 4.
• Make sure ~/pub/bin/wlp4c is readable and executable before Assignment 4.
• Make sure ~/pub/classes/cs241/CFGCheck.class is readable before Assignment 5.
• Make sure ~/pub/bin/wlp4scan is readable before Assignment 5.
• Make sure ~/pub/bin/cfgrl is readable and executable before Assignment 6.
• Make sure ~/pub/bin/wlp4parse is readable and executable before Assignment 6.
• Make sure ~/pub/classes/jslr/Jslr.class is readable before Assignment 6.
• Make sure ~/pub/bin/wlp4icheck is readable and executable before Assignment 7.
• Make sure ~/pub/bin/cs241.linker is readable and executable before Assignment 8.

Remove Access To CS 241 Tools

This section is obsolete because the current version of the course doesn't require changing permissions on any tools throughout the term. The original text of this section is below.

To ensure that students will not have access to tools that trivialize early assignments (like the assembler for A1) at the start of the next term, set the appropriate permissions on all the tools. See the Check Permissions on CS 241 Tools section for information about the tools; set them back to the recommended "start of term" state. You should wait until after the final exam to do this so students can still use the tools while they study.

This is not strictly necessary, since it can be done by the next term's ISA, but it will help the next term's ISA a bit if you do it in advance.

Give Students Access To Print And Allocation Libraries Once Code Generation Assignments Are Available

This section is obsolete because the current version of the course doesn't require special permissions to access these files. The original text of this section is below.

There are two MIPS assembly language libraries ( print.asm and alloc.asm) students must use in the code generation assigments. We only want students who are enrolled in the course to be able to access these. This is done through the use of a .htaccess file, which currently must be manually created each term. Note that this file also needs to have read permissions turned on for "others".

Navigate to /u/cs241/public_html/a8/lib, the directory where the print.asm and alloc.asm libraries are stored. There should be a script in there called mk_require.bash. Run this script and it will generate a file called require_list.txt, which consists of a bunch of lines of the form "require user userid" for each student in the classlist. Then open the hidden .htaccess file in a text editor and copy and paste the contents of require_list.txt into the .htaccess file (below the comment that says "student list from require_list.txt"). Students who are in the require_list.txt (which should be all students enrolled in the class) should now have access to the libraries. You can manually add yourself to the .htaccess file if you want to confirm that the authentication system is working.

Send Reminder Emails

This section was relevant for one term where we experimented with having required readings and sending reminder emails to students who did not do the reading or the related quiz.

Whenever a reading assignment is due, complied the grade and generate a list of students who do not reach minimum reading time and/or attempt the reading quiz. Store the list in /u/cs241/bin/readings. Then run the email-sending script by "python /u/cs241/bin/readings/reading_reminder". It will ask for the reading assignment number and the name of the file where you store the list and send emails accordingly. There is a README file in /u/cs241/bin/readings/. You can read/update it when necessary.