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File: [LON-CAPA] / doc / build / Attic / faq.html
Revision 1.8: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Wed Jan 29 22:14:34 2003 UTC (21 years, 6 months ago) by harris41
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: HEAD

After 2 days of a discussion vacuum, a decision is now made to
support FreeBSD 4.7.

1: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 2: "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 3:  4: <html> 5: <head> 6: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></meta> 7: <title>Frequently Asked Questions</title> 8:  9:  10: </head> 11: <body bgcolor="#ffffff"> 12:  13:   14: 15: 16: Questions about anything and everything 17: 18: 19: 20: Shown below are frequently asked questions others have 21: about LON-CAPA installation and system management. For 22: a more complete FAQ, you are strongly encouraged to visit 23: 24: 25: 26: <a href="http://help.lon-capa.org/">http://help.lon-capa.org/</a> 27: 28: 29:  30:  31: FAQ 32: <blockquote> 33: 1. <a href="#q1">What is TtH and how do I know I have it?</a> 34: 2. <a href="#q2">So I think I'm done with the LON-CAPA installation. 35: Now what do I do? How do I begin?</a> 36: 3. <a href="#q3">Why do I have to worry about choosing a "role"?</a> 37: 4. <a href="#q4">What kind of computer and operating will this work 38: on?</a> 39: 4a. <a href="#q4a">Will this work on BSD Unix?</a> 40: 4b. <a href="#q4b">Will this work on Mac OS X?</a> 41: 4c. <a href="#q4c">Will this work on an old SPARC, Solaris, SGI, NeXT, or 42: DEC machine that is collecting cobwebs in my university's technology center?</a> 43: 5. <a href="#q5">What does LON-CAPA stand for?</a> 44: 6. <a href="#q6">Who wrote this code?</a> 45: 7. <a href="#q7">Where is this software being used?</a> 46: 8. <a href="#q8">What are current plans for the installation?</a> 47: 9. <a href="#q9">How do I upgrade?</a> 48: 10. <a href="#q10">What are RPMs?</a> 49: 11. <a href="#q11">How do I know this will be a secure solution for 50: my users?</a> 51: 12. <a href="#q12">How do I contribute code?</a> 52: 13. <a href="#q13">Is LON-CAPA owned by any umbrella company?</a> 53: 14. <a href="#q14">What are the costs?</a> 54: 15. <a href="#q15">What kind of computer do I need?</a> 55: 16. <a href="#q16">Where can I learn more about the technical 56: ideas surrounding the LON-CAPA project?</a> 57: 17. <a href="#q17">How are you similar or different to 58: WebCT, Blackboard, etc?</a> 59: </blockquote> 60: <hr />1. <a name="q1" />What is TtH and how 61: do I know I have it? 62: 63: TtH = TeX-to-HTML. 64: You should have a file called <tt>tth.so</tt> on your system. If you do not 65: have it (should be located somewhere underneath /usr/lib/perl5), then you 66: should download and install the binary 67: <a href="http://install.lon-capa.org/resources/tth.so"> 68: http://install.lon-capa.org/resources/tth.so</a> 69: into your /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.???/ directory (5.??? corresponds 70: to the version number of your perl distribution). 71: 72: <hr />2. <a name="q2" />So I think I'm done 73: with the LON-CAPA installation. 74: Now what do I do? How do I begin? 75: 76: You will first need to set up a domain coordinator on your machine. 77: See loncapa/doc/how_to_domain_coordinator.txt in your CVS repository checkout. 78: After this, it is time to play with the interface. We do not 79: yet have a user manual, but 80: <a href="mailto:felicia@lon-capa.org">Felicia</a> is helping answer 81: questions related to the LON-CAPA web interface. 82: 83: <hr />3. <a name="q3" />Why do I have to 84: worry about choosing a "role"? 85: 86: A critical feature of the LON-CAPA interface is the idea that a user 87: must select a role before doing anything further inside the educational 88: system. 89: 90: <hr />4. <a name="q4" />What kind of 91: computer and operating will this work on? 92: 93: The operating system LON-CAPA runs on is the Linux operating 94: system (RedHat 7.3 is the supported linux distribution). 95: LON-CAPA relies on an Intel-based architecture. In order to 96: move beyond this state of affairs, we are beginning to develop 97: a BSD-based solution, as well as a set of diagnostic scripts 98: which should verify LON-CAPA's performance on any computer platform. 99: 100: 101: For full-time, classroom usage, an adequate LON-CAPA server 102: should be/have: 103: 104: <ul> 105: <li>a multiprocessor machine,</li> 106: <li>a CPU speed of 1 gigahertz,</li> 107: <li>a gigabyte of memory,</li> 108: <li>and at least 40 to 80 gigabytes of hard disk space.</li> 109: </ul> 110: 111: A lesser machine can be used for toying around with LON-CAPA 112: (LON-CAPA will run for a single user on most any machine). 113: 114: 115: LON-CAPA servers experience significant peaks of activity 116: before a homework submission deadline. To support these critical 117: peaks of activity, it is strongly advised that LON-CAPA machines 118: fit the above recommendation. 119: 120: 121: If thousands of students start accessing the box as a web server... 122: you may want to consider more options. The design of the LON-CAPA 123: system is to naturally and transparently load-balance on multiple 124: computer clusters. So, a simple solution for running an entire 125: college campus is to just have an adequate plurality of LON-CAPA 126: servers rather than a single, particularly monstrous server. 127: 128: 129: We like to think of high web server usage as "a good problem" though.. :) 130: 131: <hr />4a. <a name="q4a" />Will this work on 132: BSD? 133: 134: Active development has begun for supporting LON-CAPA on FreeBSD version 4.7. 135: 136: <hr />4b. <a name="q4b" />Will this work on 137: Mac OS X? 138: 139: No. Plans for Mac OS X involve waiting for completion of a FreeBSD version 4.7 140: solution, as well as allowing Mac OS X more time to mature within the freeware 141: community. 142: 143: <hr />4c. <a name="q4c">Will this work on 144: an old SPARC, Solaris, SGI, NeXT, or DEC machine that is collecting cobwebs in 145: my university's technology center? 146: 147: No. The needs for predictable performance of a LON-CAPA system cause us 148: to emphasize support on a restricted set of platforms. We welcome developers 149: who would like to create porting solutions, however based on our timeline, 150: you are even more strongly encouraged to help develop the actual educational 151: software technology seen by students and instructors. 152: 153: <hr />5. <a name="q5" />What does LON-CAPA 154: stand for? 155: 156: The Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach. 157: 158: 159: An eclectic variant is: Look! Our New Car Answers Pizza Appetites. 160: 161: 162: Or something. 163: 164: <hr />6. <a name="q6" />Who wrote this 165: code? 166: 167: This code was originally written by a group of staff and graduate assistants 168: at Michigan State University. We are now receiving software contributions 169: from several other universities. The original technical design behind the 170: project was constructed by Gerd Kortemeyer. 171: 172: <hr />7. <a name="q7" />Where is this 173: software being used? 174: 175: The existing user sites are: 176: 177: <ul> 178: <li>4 high schools in Michigan</li> 179: <li>Westshore Community College and Truckee Meadows Community College</li> 180: <li>Universities in Senegal, Hungary, Germany, Canada (Simon Frasier 181: University) and Zimbabwe</li> 182: <li>Florida State University</li> 183: <li>George Washington University</li> 184: <li>Michigan State University</li> 185: <li>Ohio University</li> 186: <li>SUNY Stony Brook</li> 187: <li>Florida State University</li> 188: <li>University of Massachusetts at Amherst</li> 189: <li>University of Michigan</li> 190: <li>University of South Carolina</li> 191: <li>University of North Carolina, Greensboro</li> 192: </ul> 193: <hr />8. <a name="q8" />What are current 194: plans for the installation? 195: 196: We have been able to run LON-CAPA on RedHat 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, Debian, and 197: Mandrake. 198: 199: <hr />9. <a name="q9" />How do I 200: upgrade? 201: 202: You must use CVS over the network. 203: Please click on the upgrade button at the top of this web page. 204: 205: <hr />10. <a name="q10" />What are 206: RPMs? 207: 208: Software packages that are (usually) very easy to install. RPM stands 209: for RedHat Packaging Manager software package. 210: 211: <hr />11. <a name="q11" />How do I know 212: this will be a secure solution for my users? 213: 214: LON-CAPA is distributed without warranty as described in the 215: <a href="http://install.lon-capa.org/docs/license/index.html">license</a>. 216: 217: 218: We do think our security strategy is fairly robust. Important communications 219: are encrypted and the server-client validation is instantiated in such 220: a way as to prevent any remotely conceivable kind of spoofing. 221: 222: <hr />12. <a name="q12" />How do I 223: contribute code? 224: 225: Send a diff to <a href="mailto:lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org"> 226: lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org</a>. It helps if you give it context 227: with the -C option. For example, 228: 229: <pre> 230: diff -u -C3 doc/build/faq.html doc/build/faq.html~ | mail lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org 231: </pre> 232: <hr />13. <a name="q13" /> 233: Is LON-CAPA owned by any umbrella company? 234: 235: No and hopefully never. That is not what we are about. We are about a 236: freeware-community oriented approach where the software features are directly 237: specified by the involved academic institutions and instructors. 238: 239: <hr />14. <a name="q14" /> 240: What are the costs? 241: 242: Time & Money. You and/or somebody else needs the time to learn how to use 243: the LON-CAPA system. You and/or somebody else needs the money to set up and 244: maintain a working computer server(s) for your institution. 245: 246: 247: More importantly, if your institution wants a sound future and a 248: increased ability to configure the LON-CAPA software, we recommend 249: that you assume some responsibility for contributing code to the 250: freeware project. 251: 252: <hr />15. <a name="q15" /> 253: What kind of computer do I need? 254: 255: You need a RedHat 7.3 Intel-compatible computer. 256: For more information on RedHat compatible hardware, visit 257: <a href="http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/">http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/</a>. 258: We do not currently support the SPARC, SGI, Macintosh, or other hardware 259: architectures. 260: 261: <hr />16. <a name="q16" /> 262: Where can I learn more about the technical 263: ideas surrounding the LON-CAPA project? 264: 265: You will find the technical manual to be very handy; please visit 266: <a href="http://www.lon-capa.org/technical.html"> 267: http://www.lon-capa.org/technical.html</a>. 268: 269: <hr />17. <a name="q17" /> 270: How are you similar or different to 271: WebCT, Blackboard, etc? 272: 273: I would suggest two major differences: 274: 275: <ol> 276: <li>In LON-CAPA, the user is the fundamental data object. 277: Other educational software systems seem to focus on the virtual 278: classroom as the fundamental data object.</li> 279: <li>I look at it like this. Many strictly profit-based enterprises aim to 280: significantly please 80% of their users. LON-CAPA started out, in the 281: beginning, aiming for a much higher percentage since the whole project 282: was about doing what no one had done before. 283: </li> 284: </ol> 285:  286:  287: </body> 288: </html>