Installation

First timer and excited to install this but first ...

First timer and excited to install this but first ...

by L Ng -
Number of replies: 7

Our institution has decided that we want to pilot this on our platform and before we begin, I would like to know a bit more this application.

1. Does this application run or can it run on RHEL 8.X? Redhat Enterprise Linux version 8.x? I saw the docs that you do but people mostly use Ubuntu/MySQL correct? Was it because it was built with Ubuntu distro primarily?

 

  1. I see it does it use a database and if so, which is the recommended one and minimum version?

 

  1. Does it use PHP and if so, what is the minimum version?

 

  1. I noticed it uses Perl? Any specific recommendations for this setup under redhat 8?

 

  1. What is its Moodle integration and how does it work? We don’t host our own Moodle (outsourced to a provider) so it is important we know what needs and how things are integrated.

 

  1. Does our WeBWorK server it need to be exposed publicly or can it just reside inside our firewall?

 

  1. Any special ports, firewall rules, plugins, packages, technology, etc? do we need to set up for it to communicate with other systems?

 

  1. Any other detailed information that you can provide to us would be great.

 

Thank you.

 

Lawrence


In reply to L Ng

Re: First timer and excited to install this but first ...

by Nathan Wallach -
  • WW 2.16 is very close to being released. I would recommend either using the release candidate or waiting for the final release. It will work on the upgrade, and there are significant improvements in the new version.
  • There are (draft) install instructions for WW 2.16 on RHEL 8 at  https://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Installation_Manual_for_2.16_on_RHEL8 but getting WW to work on RHEL 8  requires some "hacks" (such as a special version of Perl). I'm not running WW directly in RHEL so cannot say more.
  • You could also run WW 2.16 inside Docker under RHEL 8, which makes the setup easier (in my opinion) but at the penalty of the overhead of the container engine.  (I'm running inside Docker on a CentOS 7 base OS).) See: https://github.com/openwebwork/webwork2/wiki/Running-a-production-WeBWorK-server-using-Docker
  • Any reasonably recent version of Maria DB or mySQL should work. You want a version which supports utf8mb4 and to enable that character set in the database.
  • Moodle - there are several integration options. The easiest (and most maintained) option is to use LTI:
  • About the other options - search the Wiki, and have a look at https://learning-analytics.info/index.php/JLA/article/view/5021 but I suspect that the other options are not necessarily working well any longer.
  • If the WeBWorK server is behind a firewall, then students can only access it from the campus network / VPN. As such, typically you would want to expose it to the public network.
  • WeBWorK does not use PHP.
In reply to Nathan Wallach

Re: First timer and excited to install this but first ...

by L Ng -
thank you Nathan. When do you estimate that might be ready?
In reply to Nathan Wallach

Re: First timer and excited to install this but first ...

by Michael Gage -

I can confirm that the wwassignment module  which connects one homework assignment to moodle, has not kept up with the most recent versions of Moodle  (https://github.com/openwebwork/wwassignment  -- I have been the most active maintainer.)  It does work well with versions of Moodle up to 3.3 (and maybe 3.4). It's only advantage over using LTI 1 is that it does a better job of integrating the webwork grade book (which only records homework assignment scores) with the Moodle gradebook (which also records tests, exams, final score calculations, etc.).  Once the integration of LTI Advantage (or LTI1.3)  in WeBWorK is complete so that gradebook  passback works smoothly (for multiple grades, not just a single grade) then I think it will be time to close the wwassignment project (which predates LTI) down and concentrate on making the WeBWorK LTI interface work well Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard. 

The other method of using WeBWorK as a back end for Moodle involves rendering problems one at a time in WeBWorK and presenting them within the Moodle Quizzes.  On the Moodle side this used the Opaque module created by Tim Hunt and on the WeBWorK side it uses a webservice interface which has since expanded to allow embedding individual questions in ordinary webpages (e.g. https://demo.webwork.rochester.edu/public/features/05embedded_questions/ ) more sophisticated versions of this have been developed to embed active webwork problems in PreTeXt documents (https://pretextbook.org/) and also in  libretext pages (https://www.libretext.org).  The integration of individual WeBWorK problems with the Moodle quiz needs quite a bit more work.  As far as I know there is not much development of the Opaque client on the moodle side. A better approach is likely to be to use LTI for single problems to embed them in Moodle quizzes.  There are lots of tools for  pursuing this but I'm not aware of a   smooth  and polished implementation.

In reply to L Ng

Re: First timer and excited to install this but first ...

by Andrew Parker -

Quick responses for now:

  1. We have installation instructions for RHEL 8. Most people opt for non-SELinux, for simplicity.
  2. mySQL or MariaDB are supported
  3. no PHP
  4. the RHEL setup recommends perlbrew to manage a custom perl (necessary for mod_perl2 support)
  5. someone else will have to chime in here, I haven't undertaken a moodle integration yet
  6. you'll need to expose 80 or 443 for http(s) access
  7. most dependencies are handled in the install notes -- with the exception of installing r-base to support problems that use R for stats.
In reply to Andrew Parker

Re: First timer and excited to install this but first ...

by L Ng -
Thank you Andrew. I did come across the RHEL 8 version but needed perlbrew as a "hack"... we want to keep it simple but will decide if we want to go with rhel 8 or not. SELinux is not a big deal breaker for me and in fact, i like to use it. Something new to learn.
In reply to L Ng

Re: First timer and excited to install this but first ...

by L Ng -
Any recommended compute resources? For example, 2 core cpu, 8 GB ram, 100 GB disk space, etc.. this will be on VMWare and soon if users decide they like it, we'll try and have it at AWS

thanks

Lawrence