WeBWorK Main Forum

Amazon EC2 Webwork public image at latest version? What remaining installation steps needed from docs for other install methods?

Amazon EC2 Webwork public image at latest version? What remaining installation steps needed from docs for other install methods?

by Christian Seberino -
Number of replies: 4
The public Amazon EC2 image is a great idea and I commend whoever made it.
Combined with the free 1 year micro EC2 instances that Amazon offers, hopefully it will lead to many more people trying out and using Webwork.

I was wondering about a few minor things....

Is Amazon EC2 Webwork public image at the latest version? Which version?

Also, what remaining installation steps needed?  I saw docs for installing Webwork from various other means and didn't know what of those install steps
I needed to do for the AWS EC2 Webwork public image.

Thanks!

Chris
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Amazon EC2 Webwork public image at latest version? What remaining installation steps needed from docs for other install methods?

by Christian Seberino -
I just noticed where it says it is ver2.5.1.1 and appears to be working
without any config needed so I guess that answers my questions.

One suggestion...it wasn't clear how to set the password for the main admin and wwadmin didn't work.

I used the following:

newpassword admin admin new_password
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Amazon EC2 Webwork public image at latest version? What remaining installation steps needed from docs for other install methods?

by Hedley Pinsent -
I am glad you are trying it; two things:

a) (the) 2.5.1.1 - maybe it is not the same as the image I used (also 2.5.1.1), but it probably is. ... special instructions
b) I am not sure how free it is going to be.

I will post about "b" seperately - different graphic to upload.

... are there any special instructions; here is a previous post.
======================================================================================

Uploaded files do not unpack in the "out of the box" version of the community-amazon-cloud (EC2) image.

The fix is to ssh into the thing and to repeat the "Setting Permissions" section found in the various standard documentations.
I put sudo in front of many of the statements [after copy and paste] to get them to work; however using sudo alone - password ????

The last thing I did was to restart apache.

I plan to use the service to backup my work. After the 6 cents a minute starts I will turn it on only when I need it.

hp

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv From "Installation Manual for 2.5 on Ubuntu 12.04" vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Setting Permissions

The PG installation directory and files should be owned by wwadmin and not writable by other users:

$ cd /opt/webwork/pg
$ chmod -R u+rwX,go+rX .

Most WeBWorK directories and files should also be owned by wwadmin and not writable by other users:

$ cd /opt/webwork/webwork2
$ chmod -R u+rwX,go+rX .

Certain data directories need to be writable by the web server. These are DATA, courses, htdocs/tmp, logs, and tmp. It is convenient to give WeBWorK administrators access to these directories as well, so they can perform administrative tasks such as removing temporary files, creating and editing courses from the command line, managing logs, and so on. We will create a new group called wwdata, containing both the WeBWorK administrators and the web server. Run the commands

$ sudo addgroup wwdata
<wwadmin password>
$ sudo adduser wwadmin wwdata

If there are other users who will also be administering WeBWorK files, now is a good time to add them. To do this

Select System Settings, User Accounts
Click the "Unlock" icon and enter the <wwadmin password>
Click the "+" icon and create the new account
And remember to add the new account to the wwdata group as above.

Now add the Apache2 webserver (which runs as www-data) to the wwdata group:

$ sudo adduser www-data wwdata

You can check that this succeeded in a terminal window by entering

$ id wwadmin

and then you should see wwdata listed under groups. Also

$ id www-data

should show wwdata listed under groups. Now we make the WeBWorK directories that need to be writable by the web server have wwdata as their group. The following are rather long commands; you might want to copy them and paste them into your terminal window rather than typing them.

$ su
Password: <root password>
# cd /opt/webwork/webwork2/
# chgrp -R wwdata DATA ../courses htdocs/tmp logs tmp
# chmod -R g+w DATA ../courses htdocs/tmp logs tmp
# find DATA/ ../courses/ htdocs/tmp logs/ tmp/ -type d -a ! \( -name .svn -prune \) -exec chmod g+s {} \;
# exit
$

Attachment screenShot.png
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Amazon EC2 Webwork public image at latest version? What remaining installation steps needed from docs for other install methods?

by Hedley Pinsent -

They waived the $0.02 for 232,250 I/O requests.
They waived it because it was such a small amount of money?

Does this mean that, with no students, a little bit of setup will cause the consumption of the free allocation of input/outputs. (2,000,000 I/Os)

I am sure the offer is made in all sincerity believing the offer substantial enough to offset the time and effort made "trying it out". Perhaps the kind of usage involved in an online homework system is radically different from the requirements of a small business??

Keep us posted.


hp
Attachment AmazonBill.png
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Amazon EC2 Webwork public image at latest version? What remaining installation steps needed from docs for other install methods?

by Michael Gage -
David Gage setup the EC2 facility at WeBWorK::Raleigh in March 2013 (http://michaelgage.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-webwork-raleigh-code-camp-march-7.html) and Anneke Bart created instructions at http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Amazon_Cloud which have been fleshed out by Hedley Pinsent below and in previous posts.

Another version of creating a server quickly, this on your own desktop machine for development purposes, is described at: https://github.com/openwebwork/WeBWorK_Vagrant.  This was work that David did at WeBWorK::Vancouver in June 2013: http://michaelgage.blogspot.com/2013/07/webworkvancouver-june-27-30-2013.html

Notice that you don't need to stay with the default version 2.5.1. As with any server you can switch to a more recent version such as  2.6 or 2.7 following the directions at  http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Github.  For the most part you are simply grabbing the newest version of the WeBWork and PG code although on occasion you will need to add a CPAN module or two.  

I hope that someone will find time later this semester to create a newer EC2 instance so that one can boot up the most recent WW server almost immediately.

-- Mike