Installation

minor glitches with Ubuntu 11.10 Server and WeBWorK 2.4.9

minor glitches with Ubuntu 11.10 Server and WeBWorK 2.4.9

by Dick Lane -
Number of replies: 2
I am considering using Ubuntu 12.04 Server LTS (after it appears in April and) when I rebuild my production server next summer.  As an experiment, I installed Ubuntu 11.10 Server (from CD) on my development machine and did a complete installation of WeBWorK (revision 7120 for webwork2 and pg, 2636 for NPL).  (I kept fairly detailed notes and could post them.  OTOH, I may redo this installation in a few days, with some changes to order of operations, and might defer sending notes if/until that happens.)

I encountered two glitches during this install (adapting
http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Installing_from_WW2.4.9_Ubuntu10.04.2LTS_Vanilla_LiveDVD )
and later had a slightly strange finish to "sudo aptitude safe-upgrade".

1)  During the install,  libgd-gd2-perl  had a conflict interrupting use of aptitude to install 33 items in a single go --- I chose to clarify that by installing those items one-at-a-time.

2)  After the installation finished, check_modules.pl flagged Locale::Maketext::Lexicon as missing, so I went back to CPAN to get it.

3)  Several days later, response from "sudo aptitude safe-upgrade" showed the WeBWorK server being started three times before Localize.pm and WebworkWebservice brought things to a close.

I have attached a text file combining (since this forum allows only one attachment per message)
a)  details about (1), the conflict involving  libgd-gd2-perl
b) last part of feedback from (3), about "aptitude safe-upgrade"
c)  contents of webwork.apache2-config
In reply to Dick Lane

Re: minor glitches with Ubuntu 11.10 Server and WeBWorK 2.4.9

by Jason Aubrey -
Hi Dick,

The libgd-gd2 issue might be worth tracking down because it's an important component of webwork. From a little poking around, it looks like there are two variants of both the C library and the perl wrapper:

libgd2/libgd-gd2-perl
libgd2-noxpm/libgd-gd2-perl-noxpm

I don't think xpm support is needed in webwork, but maybe I'm wrong. Anybody know for sure?

However, libgd2/libgd-gd2-perl appear to be in the main ubuntu repository, while libgd2-noxpm/libgd-gd2-perl-noxpm appear to be in the extended universe repository. See:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/perl/

So, I don't understand why you had libgd2-noxpm on a fresh install.

I guess my questions are (a) which one comes by default on ubuntu and (b) do we need xpm support or is libgd2-noxpm sufficient?

Jason
In reply to Jason Aubrey

Re: minor glitches with Ubuntu 11.10 Server and WeBWorK 2.4.9

by Dick Lane -
Hi Jason,

Since I'm planning to expand the use of dynamic graphics in my problems, I agree that libgd-gd2 is "an important component". (I would like to know a way to increase font size for a label in a graph: http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2623)

I suspect libgd2-noxpm was used for a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 Server because Xwindows is not part of the default configuration of an Ubuntu server. I did find a discussion "-xpm or -noxpm" from 2006-2007 at http://forum.soft32.com/linux2/xpm-noxpm-ftopict232577.html

FWIW: the only optional modules I chose during this setup were OpenSSH and LAMP.

dick