doc/build/faq.html - view

File: [LON-CAPA] / doc / build / Attic / faq.html
Revision 1.7: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Sat Oct 12 23:29:05 2002 UTC (22 years ago) by harris41
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: version_0_6_2, version_0_6, HEAD

a wide range of changes--answering question 7 (what institutions are involved);
also introducing and fixing several hyperlinks; minor text changes and
improvements

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">  <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></meta> <title>Frequently Asked Questions</title>   </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff">    Questions about anything and everything Shown below are frequently asked questions others have about LON-CAPA installation and system management. For a more complete FAQ, you are strongly encouraged to visit <a href="http://help.lon-capa.org/">http://help.lon-capa.org/</a>   FAQ <blockquote> 1. <a href="#q1">What is TtH and how do I know I have it?</a> 2. <a href="#q2">So I think I'm done with the LON-CAPA installation. Now what do I do? How do I begin?</a> 3. <a href="#q3">Why do I have to worry about choosing a "role"?</a> 4. <a href="#q4">What kind of computer and operating will this work on?</a> 4a. <a href="#q4a">Will this work on BSD Unix?</a> 4b. <a href="#q4b">Will this work on Mac OS X?</a> 4c. <a href="#q4c">Will this work on an old SPARC, Solaris, SGI, NeXT, or DEC machine that is collecting cobwebs in my university's technology center?</a> 5. <a href="#q5">What does LON-CAPA stand for?</a> 6. <a href="#q6">Who wrote this code?</a> 7. <a href="#q7">Where is this software being used?</a> 8. <a href="#q8">What are current plans for the installation?</a> 9. <a href="#q9">How do I upgrade?</a> 10. <a href="#q10">What are RPMs?</a> 11. <a href="#q11">How do I know this will be a secure solution for my users?</a> 12. <a href="#q12">How do I contribute code?</a> 13. <a href="#q13">Is LON-CAPA owned by any umbrella company?</a> 14. <a href="#q14">What are the costs?</a> 15. <a href="#q15">What kind of computer do I need?</a> 16. <a href="#q16">Where can I learn more about the technical ideas surrounding the LON-CAPA project?</a> 17. <a href="#q17">How are you similar or different to WebCT, Blackboard, etc?</a> </blockquote> <hr />1. <a name="q1" />What is TtH and how do I know I have it? TtH = TeX-to-HTML. You should have a file called <tt>tth.so</tt> on your system. If you do not have it (should be located somewhere underneath /usr/lib/perl5), then you should download and install the binary <a href="http://install.lon-capa.org/resources/tth.so"> http://install.lon-capa.org/resources/tth.so</a> into your /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.???/ directory (5.??? corresponds to the version number of your perl distribution). <hr />2. <a name="q2" />So I think I'm done with the LON-CAPA installation. Now what do I do? How do I begin? You will first need to set up a domain coordinator on your machine. See loncapa/doc/how_to_domain_coordinator.txt in your CVS repository checkout. After this, it is time to play with the interface. We do not yet have a user manual, but <a href="mailto:felicia@lon-capa.org">Felicia</a> is helping answer questions related to the LON-CAPA web interface. <hr />3. <a name="q3" />Why do I have to worry about choosing a "role"? A critical feature of the LON-CAPA interface is the idea that a user must select a role before doing anything further inside the educational system. <hr />4. <a name="q4" />What kind of computer and operating will this work on? The operating system LON-CAPA runs on is the Linux operating system. LON-CAPA relies on an Intel-based architecture. For full-time, classroom usage, an adequate LON-CAPA server should be/have: <ul> <li>a multiprocessor machine,</li> <li>a CPU speed of 1 gigahertz,</li> <li>a gigabyte of memory,</li> <li>and at least 40 to 80 gigabytes of hard disk space.</li> </ul> A lesser machine can be used for toying around with LON-CAPA (LON-CAPA will run for a single user on most any machine). LON-CAPA servers experience significant peaks of activity before a homework submission deadline. To support these critical peaks of activity, it is strongly advised that LON-CAPA machines fit the above recommendation. If thousands of students start accessing the box as a web server... you may want to consider more options. The design of the LON-CAPA system is to naturally and transparently load-balance on multiple computer clusters. So, a simple solution for running an entire college campus is to just have an adequate plurality of LON-CAPA servers rather than a single, particularly monstrous server. We like to think of high web server usage as "a good problem" though.. :) <hr />4a. <a name="q4a" />Will this work on BSD Unix? No. <hr />4b. <a name="q4b" />Will this work on Mac OS X? No. <hr />4c. <a name="q4c">Will this work on an old SPARC, Solaris, SGI, NeXT, or DEC machine that is collecting cobwebs in my university's technology center? No. <hr />5. <a name="q5" />What does LON-CAPA stand for? The Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach. An eclectic variant is: Look! Our New Car Answers Pizza Appetites. Or something. <hr />6. <a name="q6" />Who wrote this code? This code was originally written by a group of staff and graduate assistants at Michigan State University. We are now receiving software contributions from several other universities. The original technical design behind the project was constructed by Gerd Kortemeyer. <hr />7. <a name="q7" />Where is this software being used? The existing user sites are: <ul> <li>4 high schools in Michigan</li> <li>Westshore Community College and Truckee Meadows Community College</li> <li>Universities in Senegal, Hungary, Germany, Canada (Simon Frasier University) and Zimbabwe</li> <li>Florida State University</li> <li>George Washington University</li> <li>Michigan State University</li> <li>Ohio University</li> <li>SUNY Stony Brook</li> <li>Florida State University</li> <li>University of Massachusetts at Amherst</li> <li>University of Michigan</li> <li>University of South Carolina</li> <li>University of North Carolina, Greensboro</li> </ul> <hr />8. <a name="q8" />What are current plans for the installation? We have been able to run LON-CAPA on RedHat 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, Debian, and Mandrake. <hr />9. <a name="q9" />How do I upgrade? You must use CVS over the network. Please click on the upgrade button at the top of this web page. <hr />10. <a name="q10" />What are RPMs? Software packages that are (usually) very easy to install. RPM stands for RedHat Packaging Manager software package. <hr />11. <a name="q11" />How do I know this will be a secure solution for my users? LON-CAPA is distributed without warranty as described in the <a href="http://install.lon-capa.org/docs/license/index.html">license</a>. We do think our security strategy is fairly robust. Important communications are encrypted and the server-client validation is instantiated in such a way as to prevent any remotely conceivable kind of spoofing. <hr />12. <a name="q12" />How do I contribute code? Send a diff to <a href="mailto:lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org"> lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org</a>. It helps if you give it context with the -C option. For example, <pre> diff -u -C3 doc/build/faq.html doc/build/faq.html~ | mail lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org </pre> <hr />13. <a name="q13" /> Is LON-CAPA owned by any umbrella company? No and hopefully never. That is not what we are about. We are about a freeware-community oriented approach where the software features are directly specified by the involved academic institutions and instructors. <hr />14. <a name="q14" /> What are the costs? Time & Money. You and/or somebody else needs the time to learn how to use the LON-CAPA system. You and/or somebody else needs the money to set up and maintain a working computer server(s) for your institution. More importantly, if your institution wants a sound future and a increased ability to configure the LON-CAPA software, we recommend that you assume some responsibility for contributing code to the freeware project. <hr />15. <a name="q15" /> What kind of computer do I need? You need a RedHat 7.3 Intel-compatible computer. For more information on RedHat compatible hardware, visit <a href="http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/">http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/</a>. We do not currently support the SPARC, SGI, Macintosh, or other hardware architectures. <hr />16. <a name="q16" /> Where can I learn more about the technical ideas surrounding the LON-CAPA project? You will find the technical manual to be very handy; please visit <a href="http://www.lon-capa.org/technical.html"> http://www.lon-capa.org/technical.html</a>. <hr />17. <a name="q17" /> How are you similar or different to WebCT, Blackboard, etc? I would suggest two major differences: <ol> <li>In LON-CAPA, the user is the fundamental data object. Other educational software systems seem to focus on the virtual classroom as the fundamental data object.</li> <li>I look at it like this. Many strictly profit-based enterprises aim to significantly please 80% of their users. LON-CAPA started out, in the beginning, aiming for a much higher percentage since the whole project was about doing what no one had done before. </li> </ol>   </body> </html>