Difference between revisions of "Installing from WW2.4 Ubuntu9.04 LiveDVD"
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Place the installation DVD in your DVD/CD drive and reboot your computer from the DVD drive. You may have to press <code><F12></code> during the boot process to bring up a boot menu which will allow you to select booting from the DVD. Or you many have to edit the BIOS to select the DVD as the first boot device. |
Place the installation DVD in your DVD/CD drive and reboot your computer from the DVD drive. You may have to press <code><F12></code> during the boot process to bring up a boot menu which will allow you to select booting from the DVD. Or you many have to edit the BIOS to select the DVD as the first boot device. |
||
− | # |
+ | # Just hit <code><Enter></code> or type <code>live</code> and then <code><Enter></code> |
# Log in as "ubuntu" with the password "admin" |
# Log in as "ubuntu" with the password "admin" |
||
# Open Firefox and access the URL: http://localhost/webwork2 . The admin course has two users "admin" and "fedora" as professors with passwords "admin" and "admin". myTestCourse has the same two users as professors and in addition practice (guest) users and one student user "jsmith" with password "jsmith". With the exception of jsmith, every password on the system is set to "admin" |
# Open Firefox and access the URL: http://localhost/webwork2 . The admin course has two users "admin" and "fedora" as professors with passwords "admin" and "admin". myTestCourse has the same two users as professors and in addition practice (guest) users and one student user "jsmith" with password "jsmith". With the exception of jsmith, every password on the system is set to "admin" |
Revision as of 21:35, 17 July 2009
These instructions cover the installation of the Ubuntu Linux 9.04 operating system and WeBWorK 2.4 using the WeBWorK live DVD
Contents
Installing from the WW2.4_Ubuntu9.04_LiveDVD
Overview
After installing from the WeBWorK Live DVD which only requires a few steps, you will have a full fledged Ubuntu 9.04 system with WeBWorK, Apache2, lighttpd, MySQL, etc. installed and configured. If your network uses DHCP, networking will be automatically configured for your system. If it uses static IP addresses, you will have to configure networking (see below). Also it is imperative that you CHANGE THE PASSWORDS for the OS users root
and ubuntu
(which has sudo privileges), for the MySQL users root
and webwork_write
, and for the WeBWorK users admin
and ubuntu
which have professor privileges (see below).
If you try this, I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc.
There are more detailed instructions for Ubuntu 9.04 and WeBWorK 2.4 at Installation_Manual_for_2.4_on_Ubuntu_9.04
Download the iso image
- Go to http://devel.webwork.rochester.edu/icons/WW2.4_Ubuntu9.04_LiveDVD.iso and download
WW2.4_Ubuntu9.04_LiveDVD.iso
(it is a 1.1 GB file). - http://devel.webwork.rochester.edu/icons/WW2.4_Ubuntu9.04_LiveDVD.iso.md5 gives
MD5 (WW2.4_Ubuntu9.04_LiveDVD.iso) = 51cd159b4efaf94ed8035623e57843c1
- Verify the MD5 checksum of your downloaded file and then burn it to a DVD (the file is too large to be burned to a CD).
Running directly from the Live DVD without installing
You can run WeBWorK directly from the Live DVD without installing anything on your computer.
Place the installation DVD in your DVD/CD drive and reboot your computer from the DVD drive. You may have to press <F12>
during the boot process to bring up a boot menu which will allow you to select booting from the DVD. Or you many have to edit the BIOS to select the DVD as the first boot device.
- Just hit
<Enter>
or typelive
and then<Enter>
- Log in as "ubuntu" with the password "admin"
- Open Firefox and access the URL: http://localhost/webwork2 . The admin course has two users "admin" and "fedora" as professors with passwords "admin" and "admin". myTestCourse has the same two users as professors and in addition practice (guest) users and one student user "jsmith" with password "jsmith". With the exception of jsmith, every password on the system is set to "admin"
- Look through the instructions in Installation_Manual_for_2.4_on_Ubuntu_9.04 for testing WeBWorK. Note that all the installation steps have already been done for you except as noted below.
Install WeBWorK from the WeBWorK Live DVD
Place the installation DVD in your DVD/CD drive and reboot your computer from the DVD drive. You may have to press <F12>
during the boot process to bring up a boot menu which will allow you to select booting from the DVD. Or you many have to edit the BIOS to select the DVD as the first boot device.
First select Install WeBWorK Live DVD
, the third option, and then hit <Enter>
. After the system loads you will be presented with a series of 7 steps. .
- On the first install panel hit
Forward
to proceed with English as the selected language - Select a city in your time zone and hit
Forward
- Hit
Forward
to accept the default keyboard layout - Next comes the
Partition disks
pages. You should be able to accept the defaults unless you want separate partitions for various directories. You might want to look at the Partition disks section in Installation_Manual_for_2.4_on_Ubuntu_9.04 which gives more information on this - The next panel asks "Who are you?". We will fill in this information but actually it will not be used. The real information is contained in the WeBWorK Live DVD. We will just repeat it here so you don't get confused
- Enter
Ubuntu
for "What is your name?" - Enter
ubuntu
for "What name do you want to use to log in?" - Enter
admin
twice for the password - Enter
WeBWorK-DVD
for the name of the computer - You can change all of these things after the installation takes place. Especially you should change the password
- Then hit
Forward
to continue
- Enter
- If the
Migrate Documents and Settings
page appears just hitForward
to continue without importing anything - Finally hit
Forward
on the Ready to install page to begin the installation. TheAdvanced...
button on this page gives you options on installing the boot loader but you almost certainly want to use the defaults
Now sit back and relax while the installation takes place. Some of the steps (especially around 94%) can take a long time. Please be patient. When your finally see "Installation complete" hit Restart now
.
Boot your server
- Remove the WeBWorK Live DVD and press
<Enter>
to continue - Hit
<Enter>
to select the default boot option or just wait for it to boot - Log in as "ubuntu" with the password "admin" (more on accounts and passwords below). "ubuntu" has sudo privileges. The "root" account also has password "admin" but you can not log in as "root" on the log in page (you can
su
to "root" in a terminal window). - You can open Firefox and access the URL: http://localhost/webwork2 . The admin course has two users "admin" and "ubuntu" as professors with passwords "admin" and "admin". myTestCourse has the same two users as professors and in addition practice (guest) users and one student user "jsmith" with password "jsmith". With the exception of jsmith, every password on the system is set to "admin"
- If your network uses DHCP, networking will be automatically configured for your system and you should be able to access the web with Firefox. If not, see below.
- Look through the instructions in Installation_Manual_for_2.4_on_Ubuntu_9.04 for testing WeBWorK. Note that all the installation steps have already been done for you except as noted below.
Passwords
It is imperative that you CHANGE THE PASSWORDS for the OS users root and ubuntu (which has sudo privileges) and also for the WeBWorK users admin and ubuntu which have professor privileges both in the admin course and in the myTestCourse. Otherwise anyone can connect to your server and pretty easily gain root access.
To change the root password open a terminal window by clicking Applications
, Accessories
and then Terminal
. Enter
$ su Password: admin # passwd Enter new UNIX password:<new root password>
Retype new UNIX password:<new root password>
passwd: password update successfully # exit $
Do not forget the <new root password>
that you just entered. Now change the password for ubuntu.
$ passwd Changing passwd for ubuntu: (current) UNIX password: admin Enter new UNIX password:<new ubuntu password>
Retype new UNIX password:<new ubuntu password>
passwd: password update successfully $
And as we said above Do not forget the <new ubuntu password>
that you just entered.
To change the passwords for the WeBWorK users admin and ubuntu, log into the WeBWorK courses admin (http://localhost/webwork2/admin) and myTestCourse (http://localhost/webwork2/myTestCourse) and change the passwords from admin to something more secure.
Setting up networking using a static IP address
The server is set to accept only www (http) and secure telnet and file transfer (ssh) connections. Here we give directions for setting up an ethernet connection if you are using a static IP address. If your network is set up using DHCP you can skip this section.
- Select
System
,Preferences
,Network Connections
- Select
Auto etho
and clickEdit...
- Enter
<ubuntu password>
and clickAuthenticate
- Select
IPv4 Settings
- Next to
Method:
and scroll down and selectManual
. - Click
Add
and then enter your servers IP address, Netmask (usually 255.255.255.0 but possibly 255.255.0.0) and Gateway address (often the same as the IP address with the last number replaced by 1). Important: After entering a number hit the<Enter>
key so that the change is recorded. - Next enter the IP address(es) of your DNS server(s)separated by spaces. You need to enter at least one DNS server
- Finally enter the search domain
Hosts
You can check these settings by running the commands
$ hostname --fqdn
and
$ hostname
The first should respond with the fully qualified domain name and the second with just your_server_name
.
Note that if your server can not find its fully qualified domain name, certain tools (such as the Synaptic Package Manager) will not start.
Now restart Apache
$su <root password> # apache2ctl graceful # exit $
and test your server by connecting to "http://localhost/" and/or connecting to your server from a browser on a remote machine. You should see the page It works! indicating that Apache is running.
You can check Apache's status by connecting to "http://localhost/server-status" using a browser on your machine.
Further test Apache by connecting to
"http://localhost/server-info" using a browser on your machine and you will see a page listing various
information about Apache. In particular under Server Settings
you should see
Server Version: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_apreq2-20051231/2.6.0 mod_perl/2.0.3 Perl/v5.8.8
Global Configuration
Most WeBWorK configuration is done in the file /opt/webwork2/conf/global.conf
. This file provides system-wide configuration settings, and defaults for course settings. Any setting in this file can be overridden in the course.conf
file for a particular course. To override a setting for a course, just put the new setting (using the same syntax as is in global.conf
) in the course.conf
file.
There are several options that must be set for WeBWorK to work with your system. The rest of the file consists of customization options. Now edit global.conf
$su <root password> # cd /opt/webwork/webwork2/conf # gedit global.conf
WeBWorK uses the DateTime module. DateTime is supposed to be able to determine the local timezone itself without you having to enter it but this often fails so it is best to just set it here. For is a list of timezones recognized by DateTime go to
http://search.cpan.org/dist/DateTime-TimeZone/ . These timezones are more refined than standard timezone usage in that they include switches to daylight savings time (e.g. some parts of a time zone may make the switch and others may not). For example if your server is in the eastern US, on the list you will see DateTime::TimeZone::America::New_York
and you should replace $siteDefaults{timezone} = "";
by $siteDefaults{timezone} = "America/New_York";
- Search for
$siteDefaults{timezone} = "America/New_York";
and enter your local timezone if it's different.
WeBWorK sends mail in three instances. The PG system sends mail to report answers to questionnaires and free-response problems. The mail merge module is used to send mail to course participants, i.e. to report scores. The feedback module allows participants to send mail to course instructors.
To send mail, WeBWorK needs the address of an SMTP server. Normally you will use the address of your school's SMTP server. If the local machine is running an SMTP server, use localhost
. IMPORTANT: Our instructions above did not install an SMTP server so you will have to install and configue one if you do not use your school's SMTP server. When connecting to the SMTP server, WeBWorK must also send an email address representing the sender of the email (this has nothing to do with the From
address on the mail message). Edit the lines
$mail{smtpServer} = 'mail.yourschool.edu'; $mail{smtpSender} = 'webwork@yourserver.yourschool.edu';
entering the appropriate information.
If you want WeBWorK questionnaires or similar things from different courses to be mailed to a central person or persons (e.g. the WeBWorK administrator), edit the lines
$mail{allowedRecipients} = [ #'prof1@yourserver.yourdomain.edu', #'prof2@yourserver.yourdomain.edu', ];
appropriately removing the #
and using the professor(s) actual email address(es). In order to have professors from individual courses receive such email, this
should be set in course.conf to the addresses of professors of each course.
Finally we have to replace localhost
in two places by your server's fully qualified domain name, something like your_server_name.department.school.edu
. Search for
$webworkURLs{htdocs_temp} = 'http://localhost:81/wwtmp';
and replace this by
$webworkURLs{htdocs_temp} = 'http://your_server_name.department.school.edu:81/wwtmp';
Then search for
$courseURLs{html_temp} = "http://localhost:81/wwtmp/$courseName";
and replace this by
$courseURLs{html_temp} = "http://your_server_name.department.school.edu:81/wwtmp/$courseName";
Now save the file and Quit.
File and Directory Locations
This installation of WeBWorK and Ubuntu follows the instructions given in Installation_Manual_for_2.4_on_Ubuntu_8.04 implementing Optional A and B but not C. You can look there to find the locations of the WeBWorK files. All system files are in their standard Ubuntu locations.
Connect to WeBWorK through an encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with an https: URL
If you want student and professors to connect to WeBWorK through an encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with an https: URL follow the instructions in Installation_Manual_for_2.4_on_Ubuntu_8.04#Implement_Optional_C_.28SSL.29. The main thing one has to do is to generate a self-signed certificate which is something you have to "sign" yourself with you server's fully qualified domain name.