<< CosmoTeaching

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Conditions of virtual machine for exams

This page is intended for inclusion in course pages.

Starting in 2025, the exam will be conducted on a computer running a Debian GNU/Linux operating system with no internet connection. This computer will have a server with the statistically same set of exercises as you have available during the semester.

• differences wrt exercises
  • stronger prerequisite relation between exercises - you must do the easier exercises before being allowed to try the harder ones
  • more severe scoring system: instead of
  • no internet acccess
  • no access to hand calculators, mobile phones, laptops, or other private computers (mobile phone use OK if you are taking a break away from your screen)
  • fresh shell account - no access to personal notes or scripts; the lecture pdfs will be available in your account
  • you will have the usual FOSS tools: emacs, vim, bash, less, grep, awk, sed, octave, python, numpy, scipy, maxima, gcc, gfortran
  • you will have these files in your guest shell account with md5sums:
    • 47e54ad34928b502b86046f3fda15ddf cosmdist-0.3.12-3ea40c1.tar.gz
    • 757b6cef51acfbd24e5b8d6fcfd2a0c7 Cosmology_30h_lecture.pdf
    • 200b400f0704b6dfb04fef366f98f266 gr_140407.pdf
    • 15b0cb0a9dbc4508277f5513a94290e6 sr_240412.pdf
    • 5a053da1fed410dda159fe7c7a077f72 SI_math_constants
  • physics/astro/maths constants: exact: metre-to-second conversion (p129) 1 s = 299792458 m; 1 AU = 149597870700 m; approximate: π 3.14159265359 - these are given in the file SI_math_constants
  • you will need to show the examiner the "My Score" page when you are satisfied with your grade and ready to have your score written to usosweb.

An example of the software versions is the following, though the actual versions may be more recent:

$ dpkg -l |awk '{print $1,$2,$3}' |grep -E " (octave|maxima|python3(|-numpy|-scipy)|emacs|vim-tiny|xpdf|evince|gcc|gfortran) "
ii emacs 1:28.2+1-15+deb12u4
ii evince 43.1-2+b1
ii gcc 4:12.2.0-3
ii gfortran 4:12.2.0-3
ii maxima 5.46.0-11
ii octave 7.3.0-2
ii python3 3.11.2-1+b1
ii python3-numpy 1:1.24.2-1+deb12u1
ii python3-scipy 1.10.1-2
ii vim-tiny 2:9.0.1378-2+deb12u2
ii xpdf 3.04+git20220601-1+b2

-- BoudRoukema - 15 Apr 2025