The bsubmit program is a commandline program and it's only available on an ITS Unix machines (such as nunki.usc.edu or aludra.usc.edu). Everyone has a shell account (i.e., an account that you can run a Unix "shell", meaning that it has a commandline user interface) on nunki.usc.edu. In order to run the bsubmit program, you must ssh into your account on nunki.usc.edu and run the program there. nunki.usc.edu runs the Solaris operating system which is a type of Unix system, so you need to be familiar with some basic Unix commands.

The current time at the submission server at merlot.usc.edu is 25Apr2024-04:17:00 (refresh this page to see the current time).

You should use your USC accounts and preferably work on the Solaris machines via ssh for testing. The final (submitted) program must run on nunki.usc.edu because we are going to test it in that environment. (Please note that since Lecture 1, I have announced that there are other options.) But you should not do there the whole program development, as nunki.usc.edu is a general purpose server - under heavy use from many students.

1. Create a gzip compressed .tar file containing all the source files needed to compile your programming assignment. Do not add .o files, executables, or core files to the .tar file. Please note that including .o files, executables, or core files will result in an automatic deduction of as much as 10% of the points allocated to the corresponding programming assignment. For example, if your programming assignment (with Makefile, README, some .c and some .h files) resides in a directory named, for example, pa1 in your home directory, this must be done by (if your source code filename extensions are not .c and .h, you should replace .c and .h by what you want to submit):

       % cd ~/pa1
       % tar cvf pa1.tar Makefile *README* *.c* *.h*
       % gzip pa1.tar

   Please note that the 2nd commandline argument of the tar command above is the output filename of the tar command. So, if you omit pa1.tar above, you may accidentally replace one of your files with the output of the tar command. So, please make sure that the first commandline argument is cvf and the 2nd commandline argument is pa1.tar.

   If for some reason you cannot run the commands above and decide to use another method, you must inform the instructor through e-mail as soon as you submit your assignment. Also, you will be doing this at your own risk!

   If you submit through e-mail, please note that it can take a lot of time for the e-mail to get delivered to the instructor's mailbox. Depending on your e-mail client and your service provider, an e-mail can take anywhere from seconds to hours before it is delivered. Unless you know your e-mail server well, it's probably a good idea to submit early this way. Also, since the header of e-mail messages can be spoofed easily, the only timestamp the instructor can use (in order to be fair to all) in an e-mail submission is the time the e-mail arrived into the instructor's mailbox.

   It is recommended that you extract the .tar.gz file you created to a temporary directory somewhere else, and try compiling and running your code there. This will provide some assurance that your programming assignment submission will work at grading time. Please see the verify your submission section below.

2. Submit the .tar.gz file you created, use the bsubmit executable in the ~csci551b/bin directory on nunki.usc.edu (or any Solaris machine which you can find ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit). The syntax is:

       ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload -email YOURLOGIN@usc.edu -event event_id -file submission_file

   where YOURLOGIN is your login ID at nunki.usc.edu, event_id is the event ID assigned to the corresponding assignment (see the Submission section in the specification of each assignment to see what event_id you must use), and submission_file is pa#.tar.gz (where "#" is the corresponding programming assignment number).

3. Check the output of the bsubmit program carefully. It should tell you:
   • where a copy of your submission is stored (with a ".dat" file name extension)
   • where the upload ticket is store (with a ".bti" file name extension)
   • at what time did the server received your submission

   We will use the timestamp of the submission which we grade to determine if you get extra credit for early submission or get penalty for late submission.

   By default, these files are stored in:

       ~/.bistro/tickets/$evid

   where $evid is the event_id for the corresponding event. It's a good idea to open the upload ticket file with a text editor and look it over. One obvious thing to look for is the "file_size" of your submission. If the file size is too small (e.g., less than 100 bytes), the submission file (i.e., pa#.tar.gz) probably does not contain the right files.

The bsubmit program can be used multiple times for a given assignment. By default, we will grade your last submission. Therefore, a later submission is considered to supersede previous submissions. If you would like us to grade an earlier submission instead of the last on time submission, you need to send e-mail to the instructor within 12 hours after deadline.

    % cd ~/pa1
    % mkdir xyzzy
    % cd xyzzy
    % gunzip -c ../pa1.tar.gz > pa1.tar
    % tar xvf pa1.tar
    % [ follow the steps in the grading guidelines to build the executable ]
    % [ follow the grading guidelines and re-run all your tests to make sure that they all work ]
    % [ make sure your README file is perfect and contains no "?" in required sections ]
    % [ check against the "minus points" section of the grading guidelines to make sure that you won't get any deduction ]
    % cd ..
    % rm -rf xyzzy

1. If the gunzip command failed, the pa1.tar.gz file your've submitted is not properly gzipped.
2. If the tar command failed, the pa1.tar.gz file your've submitted is not properly created.
3. If the make command failed, you probably forgot to include something in your submission. Please remember that if this does not work, you may lose quite a few points.
4. If any of the above failure occurs, you must recreate your submission and submit again and verify again.