| topic started 2/10/2001; 12:02:34 PM last post 2/10/2001; 12:02:34 PM |
2/10/2001; 12:02:34 PM (reads: 1211, responses: 0) |
| Typeset
mode uses latex2html which is a very slow process and is also subject
to random errors which may cause a student's problem to be unviewable
in typeset mode. Depending on the speed of your server and the
complexity of the problem, it may take 6 seconds per student per
problem to create the problem the first time it is created. For this
reason we cache the problem images in typeset mode (and suggest you
precreate them) which speeds things up tremendously but can cause other
complications. What follows is a pretty detailed explaination of what
is going on and some suggestions regarding the use of typeset mode. If a student can not view a problem, tell them to switch to "formatted text" mode and they will be able to view the problem (they can also use the hard copy). Here is how things work and how to fix them so the student can use typeset mode. When a student views a problem in typeset mode, webwork looks for a directory where the images should be (I'll tell you where below). If the directory exists and is more recent then the date of the problem .pg file, webwork uses the images in that directory. Otherwise it (re)creates the directory. Thus if somehow bad images are created, that is all a student will see. To fix this, you just have to remove the bad directory. These directories are under l2h in the tmp directory. By default this is e.g. .../mth161/html/tmp/l2h but we suggest you put this in a separate file system e.g /home/htdocs/tmp and then you would have /home/htdocs/tmp/mth161/l2h under l2h/ you will see e.g drwxrwx--- 4 wwhttpd MTH161 512 Dec 13 21:56 1-40080/All you should see are set0, set1, etc. The 1-40080/ is a bad directory. Under a set you will set e.g. .../l2h/set2/3-45678 This is the directory for prob 3 from set2 for psvn number 45678. If the student with psvn 45678 had trouble viewing prob 3 in set2, this is the directory your would remove. The directories are created under l2h and then at the last stage moved under the proper set so if they don't get moved, they are bad which is what happened in the case of the directory 1-40080/ above. If you remove a student's directory you can check that things are OK by viewing the student's problem. From the prof page (item 3) go to this student's entry and view the problem in typeset mode. This will run latex2html and rebuild the typeset html page. Even if the directory gets moved to the proper location (e.g. under .../l2h/set2/), there may be bad images. Bad images seem to be a random problem which is related to the speed and load on your server. If you have a fast server, you will almost never see this problem. If you have a slow heavily loaded server, you will see it a lot. Preceateing the latex2html images is a very good way to avoid this problem. Otherwise at busy times many students may be viewing problems for the first time which causes latex2html to be called which puts a high load on the server which makes these random errors more likely. How can you recognize when and where these random errors have occured (other than receiving an email from a student)? If a directory e.g. set2/3-12345/ contains any files of the type *.old or *.css or a subdirectory named l2h*, it is bad and should be removed. Maybe we should write a script which searches for and removes such directories, but we haven't found that necessary. |