WeBWorK Problems

Issues creating Homework sets

Issues creating Homework sets

by John Nicoletti -
Number of replies: 6
Hello,

We have been using WebWork (v 2.8) at our campus for about two years now. Things have been going smoothly since the installation. Just recently, we migrated to use HTTPS/SSL. I am not sure if this is causing the issue, but that has been the only main change as of recent.

I do not work directly with WebWork, but rather am in IT and have set it up for our math department. One of the professors stopped down to show me an issue today.

He created a course 'Test'. Inside that course, he attempts to add home work sets. He goes to the library browser, picks a target set then chooses a subject. Normally, once the subject is picked, it refreshes with chapters he can choose on the next drop down. This is no longer happening. Nothing will auto-update. Instead, he has to go to 'Advanced Search' and hit 'Update Menus' every time he changes a drop down.

The other issue he is having is once he finally gets to problems he wants to add, if he clicks 'Add,' he doesn't get the normal confirmation which would typically appear in the white space across form the add button. Instead, all the way at the top of the page, it will say 'Added one problem to set xxxxx' with a green background. However, when you go look at the homework set, there are 0 problems added. 

So not only are the drop down menu's not auto-refreshing, but we also cannot add problems to homework sets.

Any help is appreciated!

Thank you, 
John
In reply to John Nicoletti

Re: Issues creating Homework sets

by Michael Gage -
Almost certainly an address issue with the javaScript on the page. (using the Developer view on Safari or Chrome will show that some AJAX request is not getting through).

The most likely cause is a configuration error in webwork2/conf/site.conf  for the address of the server. (e.g. http instead of https or vice versa).

or search the forum with other key words that describe your error.


In reply to Michael Gage

Re: Issues creating Homework sets

by Danny Glin -
Because this comes up often enough, I created a wiki page:
http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Troubleshooting_the_Library_Browser

If you have a solution that isn't listed there, feel free to add it.
In reply to Michael Gage

Re: Issues creating Homework sets

by John Nicoletti -
Michael,

Thank you for the response. When I use the developer tools in Goolge Chrome after selecting a subject, this is what I see:

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 (Forbidden) - 
https://xxxxxxx.yyyyyyy.edu/webwork2_files/mathjax/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML

webkitIndexedDB' is deprecated. Please use 'indexedDB' instead - 
modernizr-2.0.6.js:437 

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token E in JSON at position 0 - 

xxxxxxx.yyyyyyy.edu/:1 

I have checked the site.conf file and confirmed that the $server_root_url is set to https:// and the $webwork_url is /webwork2

Is this possibly some sort of permissions issue? 
In reply to John Nicoletti

Re: Issues creating Homework sets

by Danny Glin -
Are the mathematical expressions displaying properly?  The error message you included seems to indicate that MathJax is not being loaded, which controls the output of math to the browser.  It seems that this would be a different problem than the issue with adding problems to sets.

The 403 status suggests a permissions problem as you suspect.  Two immediate suggestions are:
  1. Ru-run the permissions commands from http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Installation_Manual_for_2.12_on_Ubuntu_16.04#Setting_Permissions (making any appropriate changes to reflect your setup)
  2. If you are using a RedHat flavour of linux, check that SELinux is not blocking things.  In my case this means turning SELinux off as I don't know enough about it to write custom rules.
(In fact I would try the second before the first, just to avoid screwing things up that were already working)

The other place to check is the apache error log.  It may give more illuminating information than the browser console.
In reply to Danny Glin

Re: Issues creating Homework sets

by John Nicoletti -
Danny,

we are currently running Webwork 2.8 on Ubuntu 12.04. SELinux doesn't appear to be installed on this version, natively. Alternatively, should I be following the manual for 2.12 on 16.04 for my issue?

Thanks!
In reply to John Nicoletti

Re: Issues creating Homework sets

by Danny Glin -
I believe that SELinux is a Red Hat thing, so you probably won't find it on Ubuntu.

There is an installation manual specifically for WeBWorK 2.8 on Ubuntu 12.04, so you should probably follow the instructions there (though I don't think the permissions section has changed at all since then, so the permissions commands are probably identical in the link I posted).