Release notes for WeBWorK 2.7

Quick install

If you are already using the software from github.com/openwebwork then the upgrade is quite simple:

• Update webwork2

 cd /opt/webwork/webwork2 
 git branch
   * master 
    .... perhaps other branches
 git checkout master     # switch to master branch if you aren't there already 
                         # * indicates current branch
 git pull                # pull down software updates

• Move database.conf out of the way

 cd /opt/webwork/webwork2/conf
 mv database.conf  database.conf.save

• Update pg

 cd /opt/webwork/pg
 git branch
 git checkout master
 git pull

• Update library

 cd /opt/webwork/libraries/webwork-open-problem-library
 git pull 

• Run check_modules.pl and update CPAN modules if needed.
• Update library database

 cd /opt/webwork/webwork2/bin
 ./OPL-update           # update the database indexing the OPL

• Restart webserver.
• Go to admin course, click on the "upgrade courses" tab and update the course databases.

• Once you have checked that everything still works you might like to visit webwork2/conf/ and compare localOverrides.conf and localOverrides.conf.dist. There might be some new features that you will want to enable.

Revert to 2.6

 cd /opt/webwork/webwork2
 git checkout WeBWorK-2.6+
 cd /opt/webwork/pg
 git checkout PG-2.6+

• Restart your apache server
• This moves you back to the point just before release/2.7 was merged into the master branch

What could possibly go wrong?

• Everyone's environment is different, and everyone sometimes misses a step in the instructions so things might not always work the first time.
• Don't panic!
• On restarting the server you might get a (very long) error message saying something like: "HTML::Scrubber not found after looking in ......". This happens if a new CPAN module is used which is not immediately available on your system. This can be installed with

  sudo cpan HTML::Scrubber 

• If you have not updated for some time there might be several CPAN modules that need to be added.
• Perhaps things seem to work at first but then fail when trying to enter a problem set with some information about "missing fields in table". This usually indicates that your course has an out-of-date database. (This error will not happen with a freshly built course, only one that was built with a previous version of WW.)
  • Check that the file database.conf has been moved out of the way (see above) so that the new database.conf.dist file is used for accessing the database.
  • Sign into WeBWorK from the web and go to the admin page. The url will be something like:

 http://your.site.edu/webwork2/admin

• • Select the "upgrade courses" tab
  • Follow the instructions and upgrade the course that triggered the error (and any other courses that you expect to continue to use. You will be presented with a page where you can select which courses should be upgraded, followed by another page that informs you what database changes will be made, and then a page reporting the changes that have been made.
• If the database error is not resolved
  • Check that you have set the problemLibrary{version} to "2.5" in localOverrides.conf if you are now using the webwork-open-problem-library. (Version "2.0" corresponds to the old NationalProblemLibrary)
  • Check that you ran OPL-update to update the library database.