Cover letter
The following is the cover letter that was sent to each school in order
to provide passwords and account names. You should read through this
carefully in order to understand how to use your account.
April 19,1999
Dear High School Programming Contest Team Advisor,
Here is the information on the High School Programming Contest (HSPC).
Enclosed are:
1. A description of the take-home problem, plus source code listings
2. A diskette with source code for the take-home problem. Since the high
schools have switched to C++, we haven't translated it to Pascal. If
this is a problem for you, please let me know and I'll try to find
someone to do a translation.
3. Contest rules
4. Contest problems from previous years
5. Information about your accounts on our workstations
6. A map of the University of Utah campus
A few comments are in order:
1. The take-home problem is a relatively complex program. Students may need
help from a teacher to understand some of the details, and they may need help
during the debugging stage. This is fine, but we want them to make the
changes themselves. This exercise is intended to be a learning experience, as
well as a contest.
2. Your take-home problem must be received at the Department of Computer
Science by Friday, May 7, at 10:00 am. You may submit electronically to
hspc@cs.utah.edu before that time, or just bring a diskette to the contest.
Your submission should contain the source code (in a single file) plus a text
file describing your strategy. We will be recompiling your programs on a Unix
machine, so be sure to use standard C++ and avoid any unusual libraries (e.g.,
NO conio.h!!). For C++, try to restrict yourself to iostream.h, string.h (or
string), stdlib.h, and math.h. We will look through your code listing as part
of the judging process. If we run into problems, we may ask one of your team
members to answer questions to help us grade your program.
3. We have set up an account for each team on our Unix workstations. Your
students are welcome to practice with our software between now and the
contest. Information is included with this letter to help you log in and run
our compiler.
4. The schedule for the contest on May 7 is as follows:
8-10 am - check-in for teams, practice time
10:00 am - orientation / information session
10:30 am - practice problem entry/submission
11:30 am - contest starts
2:30 pm - contest ends
3:30 pm - awards
Lunch will be available for participants starting at noon.
5. The University students who are helping with the contest have volunteered
to be here Thursday afternoon and evening, and early Friday morning if any
teams would like to come in and practice on the workstations. Please let me
know when you will be here if you would like to take advantage of that offer.
If you come before 6:00 on Thursday, you'll have to use the meters along the
south side of the parking lot.
6. The contest will take place in room 224 of the Engineering and Mining
Classroom Building (EMCB), which is just south of the Merrill Engineering
Building (MEB). MEB is the most northerly building on the campus; it can be
recognized by the dark glass in all the windows. There is a large parking lot
north of MEB. You may park anywhere in the lot north of the first two double
rows, which are reserved for "A" permit holders. Just walk around the west
end of the building to EMCB. Since May 7 is Commencement Day, no parking
permits will be required.
7. The C++ that will be used during the contest is ANSII Standard, which means
that it contains the Standard Template Libraries. People will be available
during the contest to help you find the C++ libraries that you need.
8. The editor program that we use on out workstations is called "emacs". The
current version of emacs allows everything to be done with a mouse, so you
don't need to learn special keyboard commands. We'll have a practice session
before the contest and helpers will be present during the contest to take care
of any problems that the students may have.
9. As in previous years, we have a prearranged program for the team sponsors
while the students are involved in the contest. As usual, I would like to
talk to all of you about issues that are of mutual interest. The program will
include speakers and a tour. Lunch will be provided for all.
10. Your school's T-shirt design entry needs to be here by Monday, April 26.
If you wish to fax your entry to us, our number is 581-5843. A faxed copy is
sufficient for the judging.
11. Past history has indicated to us that our take-home problems aren't always
bug-free. We will keep you posted on this and any other announcements related
to the contest via our web page. Please check the following URL regularly:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/contest.html
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about any of this.
Our email address is hspc@cs.utah.edu, or you could leave a message with Sandy
Hiskey in the CS Office, 581-7023, and we'll get back to you as soon as
possible. We look forward to seeing you on Friday, May 7.
Computer Accounts in the College of Engineering Computer Lab
------------------------------------------------------------
This letter contains information about computer accounts for each high school
on our Unix workstations. This information is being provided so that teams
these accounts to help prepare for the contest and to test their programs more
efficiently. Note that the workstations belong to the University or Utah
College of Engineering. Use of these machines by University students will be
very heavy in the next two weeks as spring quarter comes to a close, so high
school students who plan on using them for the take-home problem must do so
remotely.
The login name for ______________________ High School is ____________.
The password for your account on cadegate is:______________.
The password for your account on the lab machines is:______________.
Here's how to log in:
1. Use your telnet program to connect to cadegate.eng.utah.edu
2. Log into cadegate with the login name and password given above for that
machine. Cadegate is a Hewlett-Packard machine running BSD Unix.
3. You should change your password on cadegate right after you log in for the
first time. To do this, simply type in "passwd ". (Replace
with the login name shown above.) It will ask for your old
password and then a new password. You will be asked to type in the new
password twice. Passwords must be 6-8 characters long and cannot be all
numbers or all letters. Note that changing your password on cadegate changes
it ONLY on cadegate.
4. Cadegate is a firewall machine and you shouldn't do anything on it. Once
you are logged into cadegate, you need to log into one of the Unix
workstations. Simply type in "telnet lab3-N", where N is an integer between 1
and 24. There are 24 lab machines available for your use; you can choose any
one of them. For example, if you choose machine 13, you would type "telnet
lab3-13".
Note that you must log into cadegate first, and then from cadegate you can log
into a lab machine. You will not be able to telnet directly from your
computer to the lab machines. They are behind a firewall and access is denied
to outside users.
5. After you type the telnet command on cadegate, you will see a login prompt
for the lab machine that you selected. You log into these machines the same
way that you did for cadegate, except the password is different. (It is also
shown above.) Please note that when you changed your password on cadegate,
that DID NOT change your password on the lab machines. You must use the
password that is printed above. The lab machines are Sun Microsystems
workstations, each with 4 CPU's and 512 MegaBytes of physical memory. Note
that there may be several people logged in at the same time. These machines
are designed to handle multiple concurrent users.
6. Once you are logged into a lab machine, you should change your password on
these machines. Changing your password on one of them will also change your
password on the other ones (they share login and password information). To
change your password there, type in "yppasswd ". It will ask
for the old password (the second one printed above) and then ask for a new
password. You will be asked to type in the new password twice.
We strongly recommend that you make this password DIFFERENT from the one that
you set on cadegate. The reason is to make it twice as hard for someone to
break into your account.
7. Now you are ready to start programming. When you are finished, you log out
by typing "logout". You will need to log out of the lab machine, and then log
out of cadegate.
8. When logging in the second time, you do not need to change your passwords.
Simply telnet to cadegate.eng.utah.edu, and then from there log into a lab
machine using the new passwords that you selected.
PLEASE NOTE:
The workstations are to be used ONLY for the contest and take-
home problem. ANY HIGH SCHOOL THAT ABUSES THEIR ACCOUNT WILL BE
DISQUALIFIED FROM THE CONTEST, AND LEGAL ACTION MAY BE TAKEN.
Things that are prohibited include email forging, Internet chat
programs, network attacks and breakin attempts, and any other use
that does not relate to the programming contest itself. ALL
USAGE OF THE UNIX WORKSTATIONS IS MONITORED.
You are welcome to use your Unix account to practice for the contest, but be
aware that all files that you generate will be removed the night before the
contest on May 6.
Other information that will be useful to you:
* The workstations have a variety of text editors available. Emacs is the
one you will be using, so you should become familiar with it. During the
programming contest, emacs will be setup to help you compile and debug
programs.
* The workstations have a variety of compilers, including g++ (GNU C++) and
pc (Pascal).
* The workstations are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
If your team has never used the Unix operating systems before, you may want to
go through a tutorial that can be found at:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~hamlet/teach.html
Select "Introduction to Unix" and go from there.
One thing not covered in the tutorial is how to use a compiler. You will be
using g++ or pc during the contest. The format of the command for compiling
your program is:
g++ -o
To execute the program that you just compiled, just type:
executable_file_name
These commands are entered on the command line of a shell window.
We have placed on the contest web site a copy of these instructions plus other
information about using this account. In particular, you'll find information
on how to use the compiler. In addition, up-to-date copies of the software
for the take-home problem will be there, plus any announcements about any
changes that have been made. The URL is:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/contest.html
Be sure to check the web page regularly for announcements. If you have other
questions, email them to hspc@cs.utah.edu. We look forward to seeing you on
Friday, May 7.