Installation

upgraded Ubuntu

upgraded Ubuntu

by Chrissy Safranski -
Number of replies: 13
Sorry if this doesn't make a ton of sense - I'm posting for our administrator who doesn't have a forum account yet, and my vocabulary is lacking.  

We've been running an installation of WebWork 2.7 since January.  That was sucessfully upgraded to 2.9 at the end of June.  Then recently, there was some message that a part of Ubuntu, I forget which part, needed to be updated, so our administrator upgraded to the newest version of Ubuntu, 14 something.  

After that, Apache, Ubuntu and WebWork were not working together, and the WebWork webpage wouldn't load at all.  Our administrator read the wiki and got it fixed and working, but there seem to be a few lingering issues signalling that something isn't configured quite right, and we'd like any advice that you have.  

The most frequently occurring problem occurs when trying to edit a problem.  The buttons at the bottom, View, Update, New Version will appear different, in darker-filled boxes instead of light colored tabs, and clicking on them won't do anything.  Instead, the bottom of the browser shows: javascript:void(null);  Fortunately, because they look different than normal, we can see the problem before making edits that would be lost, and most of the time, reloading the page then makes it work as normal.  Sometimes we need to refresh the page more than once.  

Thank you for any ideas!
In reply to Chrissy Safranski

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Hedley Pinsent -
The big move from ubuntu 12.04 to ubuntu 14.04 is the move to a very, very different apache2.4 as opposed to apache 2.2.

Somewhere in the install you were probably asked if you wanted to clobber your existing apache2.conf. Your response may have made a difference.

Following is a screenshot of how it is all set up on a virgin Webwork installation; I will send you the corresponding apache2.conf in a followup post.

Note the link to the configuration file in the .../webwork2/conf directory. The apache 2.4 version comes with webwork 2.9 only; this deprecates many of the comments made on the "WIKI" regarding this issue.

more to follow
Attachment apache2.png
In reply to Chrissy Safranski

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Hedley Pinsent -
Now, if this fails, my idea would be to start over and regenerate the files/configuration files that would be the problem. I would leave the course files and the database untouched.

You can replace these directories using the relevant instructions found in:

http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Installation_Manual_for_2.8_on_Ubuntu_12.04#.U9AoHP64G1I

This would cover almost all the bases; there is also an issue with the newer version of Perl that comes with the 14.04; The best minds in the universe are currently working on this (there seems to be a fix that will get you through the day). Post again if you run into this.

more to follow
Attachment start_over.png
In reply to Hedley Pinsent

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Hedley Pinsent -
Upon looking at what is required, there does seem to be a lot to this.

anyway - call it a suggestion. - hp
Attachment replace.png
In reply to Hedley Pinsent

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Chrissy Safranski -
Thank you very much!  I will pass this on to him.

The problem with perl that you mentioned - is that the one on the other thread that occurs every so often when apache restarts?  Because we got that same error today, read the thread, restarted apache, and it went away.  So we're watching that with interest as well.  

Chrissy
In reply to Chrissy Safranski

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Hedley Pinsent -
Yes.
Some are just changing line 543

hp
Attachment Line543.png
In reply to Hedley Pinsent

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Chrissy Safranski -
This is from the administrator:

Thanks for the suggestions on fixing our problems with WeBWorK 2.9 after an upgrade to Ubuntu 14.07 resulted in apache2 not even starting.  After manually installing the CPAN Perl modules as shown in http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Installation_Manual_for_2.9_on_Ubuntu_14.04#.U9EOA0Ayl2B and fixing a few other things, I was able to get apache2 and WeBWorK to run.  Two lingering problems are noticeable:

 

1)  Every once in a while after a restart of apache2, WeBWorK will no longer display problems.  Another restart of apache2 typically fixes  this.  I saw this problem addressed in the forums, and it appears that a fix will be forthcoming, so I am not currently concerned about this.

 

2) Often JavaScript will not run when using Edit2.  The buttons at the bottom of the page will not be formatted, the text and box that allows you to change the seed will not be shown, and hovering over any of the buttons (View, Update, NewVersion, Append) results in a JavaScript message showing at the bottom of the browser.  The message is:  javascript:void(null);

 

As you suggested, I probably made the wrong choice when the upgrade of Ubuntu asked whether to overwrite the Apache configuration files.  That sounded dangerous to me, so I said no.  (I did not know how different the new version of Apache was.) That was probably the wrong choice, as now I don’t know what the configuration files for the new version of Apache should look like, other than the apache2.conf file that you posted. (Apache reports its version to me as  Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu).)  My apache2.conf is considerably different from yours.  There are likely to be other files and/or folders inside of /etc/apache2 that are not the same as well.  For example, my webwork.conf link is in the conf.d folder instead of conf-enabled.

 

Although I have long used Linux, I am not used to Ubuntu.  Is there a way to download everything that belongs to /etc/apache2?  I might then be able to piece things together.  Is there a way to reinstall this version of apache so that I can make the right choice and overwrite the configuration files?

 

I have a test installation of WeBWorK on a virtual machine, but the Ubuntu upgrade to 14.07 would not run on it, so I have been flying blind on all of this.  I know that Ubuntu usually uses apt-get to install and update software, but that is another tool that I do not know well.  Is it possible to use apt-get (or perhaps git) to install Apache 2.4.7?  If so I could try installing this in my virtual machine so as to see what /etc/apache2 should contain.


He also gave me two attachments, but it seems I can only post one at a time.


Thank you for any help!

In reply to Chrissy Safranski

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Chrissy Safranski -
Second attachment
In reply to Chrissy Safranski

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Hedley Pinsent -
Gosh - I was hoping it would be just that file (with its expectations)

Here is my corresponding listing for /etc/apache2

This is from a fresh install using the latest procedures: Install of ubuntu 14.04 followed by the procedure outlined on the Webwork site (somewhere - I will find it in a bit). I just wanted to see how it worked so I went to the used computer store and bought a 200Gig harddrive for $20. If your operation is modest (a machine dedicated to Webwork, etc) you might consider this route.

Next post will be a tarball of the files themselves.

hp
In reply to Hedley Pinsent

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Hedley Pinsent -
Tarball of /etc/apache2

attached
In reply to Hedley Pinsent

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Hedley Pinsent -
Yes - WW_install

The idea is that you install one of the supported operating systems (ubuntu 14.04 ?) and then, from that system you run an install script.

Works like a charm but the script itself took way longer than expected - you sort of need one of those things Homer Simpson had that kept pushing enter.

https://github.com/aubreyja/ww_install


Attachment ww_install.png
In reply to Hedley Pinsent

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by Chrissy Safranski -
Wow, thank you so much for your quick responses!  I've passed it on to him, but it'll probably be at least a few days before he can play with it again.  Thank you!
In reply to Hedley Pinsent

Re: upgraded Ubuntu

by David Carlson -
My thanks, Hedley, for all of the suggestions. In the end the new version of Apache was causing us too many problems, so to get a clean install I reinstalled Ubuntu 12 and WeBWorK 2.7 from the Live DVD and went forward from there. I upgraded WeBWorK to 2.9, got the new Ubuntu HWE stack, but did not upgrade Ubuntu from 12.x to 14.x. I'll deal with upgrading Ubuntu and working with the new version of Apache later as we needed to have a stable system quickly. Happily I had kept tarballs of all of our courses, as well as a dump of the database, so we did not really lose anything important in this process.