Electronic Submission Guidelines - <? print $course_and

Electronic Submission Guidelines -

This page contains information about electronic submission for homework assignments and term paper. Starting this semester, we will be using a new submission software called bsubmit. It behaves very differently from the old submit program that you are used to. Please read more about bsubmit below.

Check the server time at the submission server.

Platform for Programming Assignments

You should use your USC accounts and preferably work on the Solaris machines in the ISD computer rooms for testing. The final (submitted) program must run on nunki.usc.edu because we are going to test it in that environment. But you should not do there the whole program development, as nunki is a general purpose server - under heavyuse from many students.

Languages for Programming Assignments

You can use either C or C++ for your programming assignments. Files must be named as follows ...

Language	Type	Allowed Extensions
C or C++	Headers	.h
C	Source	.c
C++	Source	.C,.cc,.cpp

Compilation for Programming Assignments

You must have a Makefile for your program even in the case of single file submission. Please read the information on Makefile very carefully because it may have great affect your homework scores. So, make sure you verify your submission before you submit!

README File for Programming Assignments

You must include a README file to comment on anything pertinent to someone trying to run/grade your programming assignments. If you have nothing to say in your README file, please state that the file is left blank intentionally.

On Time Submission

Late submissions will receive a score of zero. Due to clock skews, submissions will be accepted a few minutes after the specified deadlines. If your submission is more than 15 minutes late according to the machine time at the server, your submission will be considered late. No exceptions.

Submission

When you are ready to submit it for grading, you must:

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 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 hw1 in your home directory, this must be done by: % cd ~/hw1 % tar cvf hw1.tar Makefile README *.c *.h README % gzip hw1.tar

If for some reason you cannot run the commands above and decide to use another method, you must inform the TA and the instructor through e-mail as soon as you submit your assignment.
For homework and term paper assignments, the only acceptable formats are ASCII text, PDF, Postscript, and HTML. All other formats will receive a score of zero. If you are planning to submit PDF, Postscript, or HTML files, please make sure in advance that your machine is capable of generating files in the format you want and that you are familiar with the procedure.
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 homework submission will work at grading time. Please see the verify your submission section below.

Submit the .tar.gz file you created, use the bsubmit executable in the ~csci551b/bin directory on nunki.usc.edu. (It's not a typo, it really is in ~csci551b.) The syntax is:

    ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit config -set email=you@yourdomain
    ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload -event event_id -file submission_file

Please note that this bsubmit submission software is new and behaves very differently from the old submit program you are used to.

The first line above is to configure the submission software for the e-mail address where you will receive notifications from the sever.

The event_id for each assignment is different:

Assignment	Due	event_id
Homework #1	11:45PM (firm)
Homework #2	11:45PM (firm)
Homework #3	11:45PM (firm)
Homework #4	11:45PM (firm)
Homework #5	11:45PM (firm)
Term Paper	11:45PM (firm)

Therefore, you should submit the programming assignments by doing:

    % ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload \
          -event  \
          -file hw1.tar.gz
    % ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload \
          -event  \
          -file hw2.tar.gz
    % ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload \
          -event  \
          -file hw3.pdf
    % ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload \
          -event  \
          -file hw4.tar.gz
    % ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload \
          -event  \
          -file hw5.pdf
    % ~csci551b/bin/bsubmit upload \
          -event  \
          -file termpaper.pdf

respectively.

Check the output of the bsubmit program carefully. It should tell you:
- where a copy of your submission is stored,
- where the upload ticket is stored,
- where the receipt is stored,
- and at what time did the server received your submission.

Please also check the output and make sure that you have submitted to the correct event.

The bsubmit program can be used multiple times for a given assignment. A later (on time) 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 grader, the TA, and the instructor within 12 hours after deadline.

Verify Your Submission

After you submitted hw1.tar.gz, you should verify what you've submitted can be compiled as is. Let's say your hw1.tar.gz is in your ~/hw1 directory. Do the following on nunki.usc.edu: % cd ~/hw1 % mkdir xyzzy % cd xyzzy % gunzip -c ../hw1.tar.gz > hw1.tar % tar xvf hw1.tar % make % cd .. % rm -rf xyzzy
Before you run the mkdir command, make sure you don't have the xyzzy directory. If you do, delete it. A few things to note:

If the gunzip command failed, the hw1.tar.gz file your've submitted is not properly gzipped.
If the tar command failed, the hw1.tar.gz file your've submitted is not properly created.
If the make command failed, you probably forgot to include something in your submission. Please remember that if this does not work, you will receive a score of zero.
If any of the above failure occurs, you must recreate your submission and submit again and verify again.