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Blake Thornton - Webwork 2 issues/questions

Blake Thornton - Webwork 2 issues/questions

by Arnold Pizer -
Number of replies: 0
inactiveTopicWebwork 2 issues/questions topic started 8/20/2004; 11:13:28 AM
last post 8/25/2004; 2:04:40 AM
userBlake Thornton - Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/20/2004; 11:13:28 AM (reads: 1615, responses: 7)
We recently upgraded to WW2. The interface is beautiful, but I'm having difficulty with many tasks that should be easy. Here are a bunch of them.

- When trying to download a hard copy of a set, I select a set number and click on "Generate Hardcopy" and I get a 404 not found error (and the page it is looking for is: http://webwork.wustl.edu/webwork2/Testing/hardcopy/) (the course name is testing and the set it was looking for was set4, but this isn't part of the URL)

- How do I edit the information on the right of each set, the Set Info (it is in file: /conf/snippets/setHeader.pg, but since this is "Set Info", it should be possible to edit for each set, or maybe even each course?) (The course info has a link to edit it, but I don't see this on the set info.)

- I have read the description of the problem libraries on the webwork FAQ, but I can't get it to work and I don't quite understand it. We have a bunch of webwork problems from the past from various courses with set definition files and pg files in set directories. I can link a subdirectory of the template directory to this directory (the "library directory"), but I suspect that the format of my library directory is not correct. How should this library directory be organized?

- In the older versions of webwork, I worked from the shell building and editing problem sets. Now, it appears I can do this from the web interface, but I don't understand all the file transfer options and what I am uploading. What are "Problem Template Files", and "Scoring Files"?? In addition, if I choose to "Update List" of the "problem template files" I get an error:

Error messages Failed to read directory /opt/webwork2/courses/Testing/templates/ Top: No such file or directory at /opt/webwork2/lib/WeBWorK/Utils.pm line 104. URI: /webwork2/Testing/instructor/files/

There isn't such a directory in my course directory.

- How do I change the various course variables, such as the instructor email (who the students send email to)? In old versions this was easy to change in the webworkCourse.ph file, but I don't see corresponding changes to make in this version of Webwork.

- There is this student permission level. Can someone describe what the different levels gives you permission to? (I understand course master is 10, but what are other levels?)

----------------


Thank you very much for any help! Blake

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userMichael Gage - Re: Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/20/2004; 12:02:17 PM (reads: 1825, responses: 0)
- How do I edit the information on the right of each set, the Set Info (it is in file: /conf/snippets/setHeader.pg, but since this is "Set Info", it should be possible to edit for each set, or maybe even each course?) (The course info has a link to edit it, but I don't see this on the set info.) This is a user interface bug. The default header can't be edited, since you don't want to change it, however you should be able to clone it. Here is the work around:

Copy /conf/snippets/setHeader.pg to the templates directory of your course Testing

From the "Hmwk sets editor" page check the testing course checkbox, the "edit selected sets" radio button and click the take action button. In the pop up buttons way to the right of the screen (you may have to scroll) you will see choices for the "setHeader" used when viewing problems on screen and the "hardcopy header" used when printing hardcopy. Set both of them to "setHeader.pg" -- that's the file that you just copied from /conf/snippets/setHeader.pg to Testing/templates/setHeader.pg. You may need to scroll down the list a bit. Do this for both "setHeader" and "hard copy header".

The lack of an ability to clone this file easily is in the buglist.

######################

The bug about Top has been fixed as of yesterday. In the directory /lib/WeBWorK/ContentGenerator/Instructor

type

cvs update FileXfer.pm

The current revision is 1.9

#######################

I can link a subdirectory of the template directory to this directory (the "library directory"), but I suspect that the format of my library directory is not correct. How should this library directory be organized? No particular organization is assumed, other than the files appear to lie under the templates directory. Linking from within hte template directory to your directory should work fine. Make sure the webserver can read your library directory.

In WeBWorK 2 all "sets" and "assignments" are stored in the webwork database. The text files (set.def, classlist.lst ) are simply used for importing or exporting data from WeBWorK. They are not consulted except when running import and export. If you want to store these files on your own work station rather than the webserver machine you can use the File Transfer page to upload or download them.

The "problem temp files" are the .pg files which define the problem. They and a few .txt files are are consulted while WeBWorK is running as are the scoring files when sending email. The scoring files are the same as in WW1.9 -- these files in the scoring/ directory are consulted when you email homework and exam grades to students.

The idea is to make it unnecessary for instructors to have unix access to the webserver. This is makes it much easier to host courses for other institutions on our machine. Essentially everything that needs to be done in a course can now be done through the web. Of course if you have unix access then you can use unix tools to upload and download files. There are a few scripts in the bin directory which can also be used -- possibly useful, once they are fleshed out, for an administrator who is handling many courses on one machine and wants to automate some procedures. Not intended for use by individual instructors. The unix tools are more flexible and powerful, but you need to make sure that the permissions of the files are suitable for use by the webserver.

Hope this helps.

--Mike

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userDavid K. Watson - Re: Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/21/2004; 1:30:54 PM (reads: 1806, responses: 0)
We also have the "page not found" error when trying to generate hardcopy of problem sets. I do not have a fix, but I can shed some extra light on the problem. The Apache error_log shows messages like the following for each time we try to generate hardcopy.

[Wed Jul 28 20:22:19 2004] [error] [client 68.36.210.13] File does not exist: /local/webwork2/courses//html/

Note in particular the // before the html/ .

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userMichael Gage - Re: Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/21/2004; 3:09:49 PM (reads: 1813, responses: 0)
The name of the course is missing (it's supposed to go between the two slashes)

For some reason the line in webwork.apache-config

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

is not properly picking up the name of the course (or apparently the lines after html)

Note the backslash before $1 and $2 .

What version of perl and apache are you running? I'm beginning to run out of ideas except trying to find out exactly what apache is doing with this line. It might be worth inserting this particular line by hand into the httpd.conf file (with the appropriate replacements for the variables) and see if it works then.

Let us know if you find something that works.

--Mike

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userBlake Thornton - Re: Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/21/2004; 3:33:36 PM (reads: 1805, responses: 0)
Here's the information on our server:

[root@webwork bin]# ./httpd -v

Server version: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) Server built: Aug 5 2004 14:18:19

[root@webwork bin]# perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.5 built for i686-linux

mod_perl-1.29

What are others using?

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userSam Hathaway - Re: Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/21/2004; 6:39:53 PM (reads: 1801, responses: 0)
Blake, David,

In order to better troubleshoot your problem, can you tell me what mod_perl hooks you have enabled? You can get this information by adding the following to your Apache configuration:

 

<Location /perl-status>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::Status
</Location>

Then visit http://yourserver/perl-status and take a look at the "hooks" link.

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userSteven Xiao - Re: Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/23/2004; 3:09:36 PM (reads: 1781, responses: 0)
Sam,

After changing the Apache configuration, we got the following output:

Embedded Perl version v5.8.5 for Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) mod_perl/1.29 process 3853, running since Mon Aug 23 13:42:24 2004 PerlRequire'd Files

Perl Configuration Compiled Registry Scripts Environment ISA Tree Symbol Table Dump Loaded Modules Enabled mod_perl Hooks Inheritance Tree Signal Handlers

If I click the "Enabled mod_perl Hooks" link, I got

PerlAccessHandler Enabled PerlAuthenHandler Enabled PerlAuthzHandler Enabled PerlChildExitHandler Enabled PerlChildInitHandler Enabled PerlCleanupHandler Enabled PerlConnectionApi Enabled PerlDirectiveHandlers Enabled PerlDispatchHandler Enabled PerlFileApi Enabled PerlFixupHandler Enabled PerlHandler Enabled PerlHeaderParserHandler Enabled PerlInitHandler Enabled PerlLogApi Enabled PerlLogHandler Enabled PerlMethodHandlers Enabled PerlPostReadRequestHandler Enabled PerlRestartHandler Enabled PerlSSI Enabled PerlSections Enabled PerlServerApi Enabled PerlStackedHandlers Enabled PerlTableApi Enabled PerlTransHandler Enabled PerlTypeHandler Enabled PerlUriApi Enabled PerlUtilApi Enabled

It looks like everything was enabled.

If you need any more information, you may get it from http://webwork.wustl.edu/perl-status.

During the weekend, I found that the version I downloaded from sourceforge.net is a little different from the CVS version. So, this morning, I downloaded the CVS version and installed. I still got similar problem: When I tried to download a hardcopy, I got

The requested URL /webwork2_course_files/Testing/tmp/hardcopy/Testing.admin.set4.pdf was not found on this server.

error message in the browser while in the apache error message log file, I got

File does not exist: /opt/webwork2/courses//html/

Does anyone else also use apache 1.3.31 and mod-perl 1.29 ?

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userLars Jensen - Re: Webwork 2 issues/questions  blueArrow
8/25/2004; 2:04:40 AM (reads: 1779, responses: 0)
Hi Blake and Steven,

These are the exact same versions of Apache and mod-perl we're running.

Lars.

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