Last update: November 11, 2026

Table of Contents

Rules for the lab exam

• Each student will be assigned a machine in a lab room (students are not allowed to use their personal machines)
• No documents allowed
• No electronic devices allowed (including storage devices)
• Phones must be switched off and stored in the students’ bags, near the entrance of the exam room

If you have any question about the rules, please check with the teaching staff before the exam.

Scope of the lab exam

The exam may encompass all the conceptual and practical notions studied during the OS lab sessions throughout the semester, with a particular focus on the following topics: memory allocation (lab 2) and concurrent programming (labs 3, 4, 5, 6).

Technical environment for the lab exam

Operating system

The machines of the exam rooms will be set up with the same operating system as the one available for the usual lab sesions (We refer here to the machines of the lab rooms, not to the ebureau service).

Account

During the exam, the students will not use their usual account. Instead, each student will be provided with a temporary account.

Students will not have access to their personal (home) directories, nor to Moodle or other UGA services (email, gitlab, etc.).

Network access & documentation

During the exam, the network accesses will be filtered.

More specifically, in the context of this OS lab exam: all the network communications will be blocked (including both local and external communications), except the connections to a specific Git server (see details below).

Note that the Linux manual pages will only be available via a shell (using the man command). It will not be possible to use a web-based version.

Keyboards

By default, the keyboards of the machines in the exam rooms will be based on a French keyboard layout.

Nonetheless, in case you would like to use another type of keyboard/layout, we will try to provide with other options:

• We expect to have a small number of physical keyboards with a QWERTY (US or UK) layout. However, as the supplies will be very limited, we may not be able to fulfill all requests.
  • Please check the information sent by email
• You can also bring your own keyboard for the exam. Please note that we will only accept wired/USB keyboards for the exam. Wireless keyboards (e.g., bluetooth keyboards) will be refused. Please also note that we will not be able to provide support if your keyboard does not work as expected, so we recommend that you test your keyboard before the exam.
• Regardless of the physical keyboard that you use, you also welcome to change (via software) the keyboard layout of your environment. Please test your (software) keyboard settings prior to the exam.

Here is how to change the keyboard layout in your environment: [EXPLANATIONS WILL BE INSERTED HERE]

To make sure that we can try to find (and check) a solution for your request, please contact the teaching staff at least two days before this exam with you request on this matter.

Installed languages

The Linux environment that will be provided to you will support French and English languages:

• The default language will be French.
• To switch to English, please proceed as follows: [EXPLANATIONS WILL BE INSERTED HERE]

Installed packages

By default, the provided environment will feature the same list of applications (and corresponding settings) as the one used during the regular lab sessions.

If you would like to have additional applications (typically, additional text/code editors) and/or additional components (typically, extensions/plug-ins) please contact us ahead of time:

• Please check the information sent by email

Note that, due to various constraints, we cannot guarantee that all your requests/suggestions on this matter may be taken into account. So, as a fallback option, please make sure that you are at least familiar with one of the editors provided in the default environment.

Exam workflow

In the beginning of the exam, each student will be given instructions and credential to access a remote git repository (each student will have its own repository instance).

By cloning this git repository, you will obtain all the files required for the exam: exam document, provided code/skeleton files, etc.

During the exam, you can use your local git repository. Of course, you will have the possibility to use typical git commands (such as git commit).

At the end of the exam, you will have to perform a final git commit, followed by git push origin main to submit your work. This step is crucial (if you forget to do it, your work may get lost).