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Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

by Subasa Nguyen -
Number of replies: 7

Hello everyone, Happy New Year,

My WebWork TA just reported issues when she archived Fall 2020 courses (message "Successfully archived course" with a bunch of red warnings), also when she tested unarchiving said archived course.

The first error while archiving:


Image preview



Second error unarchiving it:

Image preview


A bit more context:

- Up until Fall 2020, we were running WebWork 2.10
- From Fall 2020, we are now running WebWork 2.15
- The courses we currently have on WebWork 2.15 are courses that the TAs have brought over from the old WebWork, imported & upgraded.

Please advise, thank you very much.

Subasa

In reply to Subasa Nguyen

Re: Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

by Danny Glin -

It looks like the image links aren't working.  Can you check the links or include them as attachments?

In reply to Danny Glin

Re: Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

by Subasa Nguyen -

Yes thank you. 


This is the first screenshot.

Attachment 1-thumbnail_Screen Shot 2021-01-04 at 8.12.30 PM.png
In reply to Subasa Nguyen

Re: Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

by Nathan Wallach -
It looks like the Apache server is running in an environment which does not contain /bin/mysqldump and /bin/mysql. That explains why the shell is reporting the commands are missing.

It could also be that these commands are in a different location on the file system. The main system configuration file can be used to modify where they are expected. It looks to me like webwork2/conf/site.conf by default has settings:
  • $externalPrograms{mysql} ="/usr/bin/mysql";
  • $externalPrograms{mysqldump} = "/usr/bin/mysqldump";
and your server apparently has modified those values to:

Another possibility is that Apache on your server is running in a "chroot" jail, or something else which was set up (probably as a security measure) which modifies what commands are available to a shell started by Apache, and interferes with the archive/unarchive functionality in a critical way.

If the second case is the cause of the problems - your local IT people can hopefully help you look into it and how to overcome the problem.

If it turns out to be more than just changing the configuration setting - please do share something about what needed to be overcome and how it was handled.
In reply to Nathan Wallach

Re: Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

by Subasa Nguyen -
Hi Nathan,

Thank you. We actually have nginx instead. Does it make sense with the errors then?

Please advise, thank you,

Subasa
In reply to Subasa Nguyen

Re: Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

by Nathan Wallach -

You may be running nginx as a "reverse proxy" between the real webwork server and the client, but since WeBWorK is currently a mod_perl based system, I am almost certain that there is an Apache process running on the back-end. If not - many people would like to know how someone has managed to remove the dependency on Apache and mod_perl.

Assuming it is still mod_perl - the Apache mod_perl server process is what needs to call the mysqldump and mysql porgrams for archive / unarchive, and it is reporting that it it not being found in the shell process being run. So, in this case I stand by my analysis of what is probably going wrong.

In reply to Nathan Wallach

Re: Problems archiving and unarchiving courses

by Subasa Nguyen -

Hello Nathan, Danny,

Thank you very much.

I installed mysql client and now it's working.


Thanks again, much appreciated,
Subasa