** Using WeBWorK **

I'm having an installation problem with WWK2: the URL /webwork2_course_files doesn't work (in particular hardcopy generation --> 404 Not Found). The problem seems to be due to the following line of webwork.apache-config:

AliasMatch $webwork_courses_url/([^/]*)/(.*) $webwork_courses_dir/$1/html/$2

If I replace this line with

Alias /webwork2_course_files /var/www/webwork2/webwork-modperl/courses/

and put a symlink tmp --> html/tmp in my course files, then hardcopy generation DOES work.

Also if I try instead

Alias $webwork_courses_ur $webwork_courses_dir

I get an error message

mod_perl: Alias takes two arguments, a fakename and a realname

when I start up httpd as well as 404 Not Found errors with /webwork2_course_files

Also I couldn't figure out what the WWK2 UI is for assigning a paperHeader.pg file for hardcopy generation.

TIA, Zig

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Thanks, Mark

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# Provide access to course-specific resources.
# 
AliasMatch $webwork_courses_url/([^/]*)/(.*) $webwork_courses_dir/$1/html/$2
<Directory $webwork_courses_dir/*/html>
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from all
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>

The $1 reference should be to a course name myCourseName while $2 will have the remainder of the url.

The goal is to redirect urls addressed to myCourseName/... to the appropriate myCourseName/html/... directory and subdirectories. (One doesn't want all of the myCourseName directory to be available for inspection from the web!! )

One of the subdirectories is typically tmp with subdirectories tmp/hardcopy, tmp/gif, tmp/png, tmp/html . Pictures, equations or external html documents are saved to these locations and the browser is directed to pick them up at those locations.

Failure to get hardcopy could be caused by having a mismatch between the location where the hardcopy is generated and the url for this location. It can also be caused by incorrect permissions on the directory -- either permissions defined in the browser or permissions defined by unix. You should be able to trouble shoot this by putting a test.html file in the various directories by hand and trying to reach them from the web. The locations and urls are defined in global.conf.

While defining a unix alias will work around the problem, it really shouldn't be necessary unless AliasMatch doesn't function on your version of Apache. If AliasMatch doesn't work we'd like to know about it on the bulletin board so that we tell those using those installations that they will need to use a workaround.

Hope this helps.

--Mike

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I am using Apache 1.3.33, Modperl 1.29 on Fedora Core 2. If I use Zig's solution, I am able to see the test.html files. If I use the lines above, I am not able to see the test.html files that I have created.

Thanks, Mark

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