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Quanlei - webwork on Mac os X 10.3.x

Quanlei - webwork on Mac os X 10.3.x

by Arnold Pizer -
Number of replies: 0
inactiveTopicwebwork on Mac os X 10.3.x topic started 2/12/2005; 1:08:59 AM
last post 2/15/2005; 7:34:22 PM
userQuanlei - webwork on Mac os X 10.3.x  blueArrow
2/12/2005; 1:08:59 AM (reads: 1283, responses: 4)
Is there somebody here who got webwork server work sucessfully on Mac os X 10.3.x ? Maybe I need your suggestion. Thanks a lot!

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userMichael Gage - Re: webwork on Mac os X 10.3.x  blueArrow
2/12/2005; 11:29:02 AM (reads: 1524, responses: 0)
Hi

I have webwork2 with apache 1.3.x server running on my Mac os X 10.2.8.

I don't think 10.3 would be any different. The hard part is getting the apache server up-to-date and getting all of the CPAN modules installed. The Apache::Request and the GD and DateTime modules were the ones that were not straightforward. I had to install them by hand (make, test, install). DateTime requires a number of other modules as well -- it's best to start by trying to install it using the CPAN module.The other modules could be installed using CPAN without any difficulties I recall.

I can't give detailed references, but here are some pointers that will help. Search the web as well. Once apache and the CPAN modules are installed the installation of webwork is pretty easy, and not really any different from any other unix installation.

A fairly complete list of perl modules is at:

http://devel.webwork.rochester.edu/twiki/bin/view/Webwork/InstallationManualV2pt1#Perl_modules

The journal of installing on the Mac ibook. http://devel.webwork.rochester.edu/twiki/bin/view/Webwork/MacInstall

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userDavide P. Cervone - Re: webwork on Mac os X 10.3.x  blueArrow
2/13/2005; 4:28:51 PM (reads: 1528, responses: 0)
one crucial step is to recompile the mod_perl extension to the apache server. The one that ships with the OS is broken (or at least was when I set mine up last summer). The error is pretty bad: the "print" command doesn't work properly in mod_perl scripts, so you won't see any output even when WeBWorK is installed and running properly.

I posted something about this earlier: see http://webhost.math.rochester.edu/webworkdocs/discuss/msgReader$3083 for more details.

Davide

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userQuanlei - Re: webwork on Mac os X 10.3.x  blueArrow
2/14/2005; 12:04:46 AM (reads: 1503, responses: 0)
Thanks a lot for the help!

I did get the webwork2.1 run on OSX 10.3.7 ( I could add courses and get problem library from cvs ). But after I updated the system to 10.3.8 days ago, everything did not work. (the page <http://localhost/webwork2> turned out to be a blank page ). So should I recompile the mod_perl everytime I update the system? (Actually it still could not work after I recompiled the mod_perl 1.29 again. I am not sure whether there are something missed)

And I am a little confused on the permission issues: it's said in the manual : "Assuming the web server runs as: www-data: sudo -u www-data addcourse ..." Can you tell me how to handle with it on OS X ?

Thanks again!

Quanlei

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userDavide P. Cervone - Re: webwork on Mac os X 10.3.x  blueArrow
2/15/2005; 7:34:22 PM (reads: 1515, responses: 0)
Quanlei:

I haven't updated to 10.3.8 yet (I don't like to make major updates during the term), so I don't know what issues might arise. After your question, I did download the update and looked through the files that it changes, and it updates Apache, mod_perl and perl (among other things). I don't know if they have fixed their mod_perl, so it is worth a try recompiling that. It seems that you did and it didn't help. Note, however, that since perl has been updated, you might want to recompile from a fresh copy of mod_perl. That is, unpack the mod_perl source into a fresh directry and make it from scratch. If you simply remake the copy in the directory you used before, it might not notice the new version of perl, and that might mean it has made decisions based on the old version. (If you must recompile in the same directory, then at least be sure to run "make clean" first, and rerun configure.)

To issue the addcourse command, run the Terminal program that is in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder, and then issue the 'sudo -u www-data addcourse' there. You may need to substitue soemthing else for 'www-data' depending on your configuration.

Davide

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