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CIS241

CIS241 - F2025 Midterm Study Guide

All material up to the midterm is valid for questions

  • In-class discussions/demos
  • Homeworks
  • In-class assignments
  • Slides

NOTE - THIS LIST WILL CHANGE UP TO NEXT WEEK GIVEN HOW FAR WE GET!

Things to know

  • You can bring a 1-page cheat sheet, front and back. You’ll need to turn it in with your exam, so if you want it back put your name on it.

  • The exam is hand-written - no devices allowed.

  • The exam will comprise a number of theory (what you understand) and practical (do a thing) types of questions.

    • For the practical questions, I’ll provide a reference guide on the back of the exam.
    • For example, if I ask you to count the number of lines in a file, you’d be provided with the wc command somewhere in the reference guide and a list of potentially relevant parameters.

Sample topics

Note - this is not comprehensive - anything is valid from the slides/assignments

  • Describe what a shell is and what it can be used for
  • What are the different (common) modes in vim and what are they used for
  • Describe how we know what type a file actually is
  • Describe what a Linux kernel actually does
  • What is a Linux distribution?
  • Why does Linux exist? Why don’t we just use Unix?
  • Describe the difference between absolute and relative paths, and be able to navigate to or work with a specified location (for both absolute and relative)
  • Describe the difference between bash commands in the shell and a bash script
  • Describe advantages and disadvantages of a Linux system
  • What are some common uses for a Linux system?
  • What is / in a Linux file system? Where do your personal files typically exist?
  • What is the difference between a terminal and a shell?
  • Describe the difference between cloning a repository with git using either the https: or git: protocols - why do one over the other?
  • Describe the differences between FTP, sFTP, scp, and rsync
  • Describe the purposes of a host file (hostname alias), SSH keys, and how to create them
  • Describe the purpose of SSH and why we SSH into EOS
  • What does echo $0 in the shell tell you?
  • What does echo $0 in a bash script tell you?
  • What can a manual (man page) be used for? How can you use it?
  • Describe and/or demonstrate redirecting, piping, and appending
  • Describe the differences between stdin and stdout and stderr
  • What does sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade do? Why can’t you do that on EOS?
  • When chaining commands, describe the difference between using ; vs &&. What happens if you use a single &?
  • Describe (and demonstrate) the difference between the various wildcard characters when looking for files (i.e., globbing)
    • For example, list all txt files in a directory, list all files that start with 7, etc.
  • Understand the purpose of wc, cut, and tr
  • What is the purpose of a tar archive? How do we compress it?
  • What is the purpose of git? Who created it and why?
  • What does it mean for a version control system to be distributed? Why is that important?
  • What is the difference between a local and remote repository for git?
  • Describe the different processes in git (staging, committing, pushing/pulling) - what does each step do?
  • Be able to describe branching, why we branch, etc.
  • Describe how you might resolve a merge conflict
  • How do we identify a particular commit?
  • Why do we avoid rewriting history in git?
  • Why do we always check the status (or pull) from a remote repository before working and always commit/push when we’re done working?
  • What does git stash do? Why would you use it?
  • Describe what the various forms of permissions do and do not allow for each of the three categories of user.
  • What is the purpose of the PATH environment variable. Why would you need to update it? How do you make that persist?
  • What is the purpose of the background and foreground for jobs? Why would you send a program to the background? How would you get it back to the foreground? How would you stop it?
  • What is the purpose of the init daemon?
  • Understand the relationship between parent and child processes.

Sample practical questions

Note - this is not comprehensive - anything is valid from the slides/assignments

  • Be able to:

    • Navigate to a directory (from a relative or absolute path)
    • Create a new directory
    • Create a new empty file
    • Write to a file directly from the terminal (no editors)
    • Append to a file directly from the terminal (no editors)
    • List the contents of a directory, potentially including hidden files, permissions, etc.
    • Pipe the output of one command into the input of another command
    • Save and quit in vim
    • Show me where you are on the filesystem
    • Delete files
    • Recursively delete files and folders, potentially folders with and without files inside them
    • Get the first and last lines from some form of input (stdout or file)
    • Count the number of lines, or bytes, or words, or all, of a file
    • Search for a particular string in a file, then count the number of unique occurrences of that string
    • Sort a file
    • Convert one character to another (or uppercase to lowercase or vice versa)
    • Parse a delimited file to grab a particular set of column or columns
    • Work with a local git repository (creating, staging, committing, branching)
    • Work with a remote git repository (creating, staging, committing, branching, pushing/pulling)
    • Set specified permissions on a file/directory, potentially recursively (I will tell you whether to use octal or character-based, so be comfortable with both)
    • Create aliases and make them persist
    • Create environment variables and make them persist
    • Output information to stdout and stderr
    • In vim, perform a search and replace for a specific string for all occurrences of the word
    • Transfer files to/from a remote server
    • List out your recent command history
    • Search through a file (or stdin) for a string
    • Be able to use the various commands from HW2 together (e.g., wc, cut, tr, head, tail…)
    • Be able to use the tar command to create a zipped archive using a compression method of my choosing (e.g., gz, bz2, xz).
      • Also, be able to extract it
    • Be able to resolve a merge conflict, given an example. For example, if I give you a diff within a file, what commands would you run to fix things?
    • Check processes, their state, and trace their history.
    • Kill processes given a PID and a particular kill signal
    • Send a job between the background and foreground
    • Be able to write a bash script and make it executable
    • Be able to write a bash script that can:
      • Handle arguments
      • Define variables
      • Use if statements/switch statements
      • Use loops