WeBWorK Installation Script(s)

This repository consists of a perl script ww_install.pl, along with some supporting bash scripts, config files, and perl modules designed to work together install the open source online homework system WeBWorK.

The script has been updated to install WeBWorK 2.13 as of 12/1/2017 by Arnold Pizer.

Temporary General Instructions for installing WeBWorK 2.13 from this repository.

• You should use the perl script ww_install.pl as the bash shell script install_webwork.sh has not yet been updated.
• First look at the notes below to see if you need to do anything before running the ww_install.pl script.
• After any preliminaries in a working directory run
  • git clone git://github.com/apizer/ww_install.git
    • Note you will have to install git (e.g. as root, apt-get install git) if it is not on your system
  • cd to the directory ww_install and run: git checkout ww2.13
  • cd to the directory bin
  • Run perl ww_install as root. Note either use sudo or su to root depending on the system.
  • Accept all defaults

It has been tested and works on

• Debian 9

  • Notes for Debian
    • Before running the script ww_install.pl do the following:
      1. For some reason WeBWorK fails to work with MariaDB as installed from the Debian package so we use the package from mariadb.org.
      2. Open firefox and goto https://downloads.mariadb.org
      3. Click on: Use CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, or Mageia? See our repository configuration tool.
      4. Select: Debian, Debian 9 Stretch, 10.2. and a mirror
      5. Follow the instrucions for running commands but run them as root as sudo does not work. Note that using copy and paste works well.
    • Now run the script ww_install as root
    • The script ww_install will stop at installing Email::Sender::Simple with an error. Just rerun the script and it will get past that point. I think Email::Sender::Simple does get installed correctly.

• Fedora 24 (Workstation)

  • Notes for Fedora
    • Before running the script ww_install.pl do the following:
      1. Run the command: sudo dnf install perl-core
      2. Run the command: sudo dnf update perl-Errno
      3. Edit the file /etc/selinus/config setting: SELINUX=disabled and reboot.
    • Now run the script ww_install as root

• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Desktop)

  • Notes for Ubuntu
    • None

• CentOS 7 (Server with GUI)

  • Notes for CentOS.
    • Before running the script ww_install.pl do the following:
      1. Run the command: sudo yum install perl-core
      2. Edit the file /etc/selinus/config setting: SELINUX=disabled and reboot.
    • Now run the script ww_install as root

On these systems it did install WeBWorK.

Gotchas

• See the notes above.

Usage

To install WeBWorK:

1. Get the install_webwork.sh script:

wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openwebwork/ww_install/master/install_webwork.sh

or if you prefer

curl -ksSO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openwebwork/ww_install/master/install_webwork.sh

2. As root (or with sudo) do

bash install_webwork.sh

Note that if you use sudo, then you must be a sudoer with sufficient administrative rights (probably ALL=(ALL) ALL) for install_webwork.sh to work properly. If not, run this command as root.

For more control over the process you can clone this repository with

git clone git://github.com/openwebwork/ww_install.git

and then run sudo perl ww_install.pl.

Contents

install_webwork.sh

This script is the 'controller' that ties together the other scripts. It opens an install log, downloads this repo and opens it in (typically) /tmp. Then it installs any files needed to run ww_install.pl and then runs ww_install.pl. When ww_install.pl exits, it attempts to open webwork in the system's default web browser, copies webwork_install.log to your top level webwork directory (e.g. /opt/webwork) and then deletes the downloaded installation package.

bin/ww_install.pl

The goal of ww_install.pl is to install WeBWorK on any system with a properly set up distribution file in the distros folder.

It is an interactive script based on the core perl module Term::UI, and is written with the goal of being cross-platform. It does use some linux built-ins, and work is needed to ensure that this script will work as well on unix machines. Again, contributions of work in this direction would be welcome.

distros

This folder contains distribution files which ww_install.pl uses to install WeBWorK on various systems. For example the file distros/centos/7.pm is used to install WeBWorK on CentOS version 7. If you are interested in getting the installer working on your favorite distribution you would create the appropriate file in this folder and submit a pull request. You can base your distro file off of blankdistro.pm. In general you will need to set the following:

• The array of versions which you have tested the installer on.
• The list of packages which provide the binaries described by the hash keys
• The list of packages which provide the perl modules described by the hash keys. Use 'CPAN' if you intend to get the package from CPAN
• The apacheLayout array which defines where various folders and configuration files are for your apache setup.
• The command for updating package sources.
• The command for updating packages.
• The command for installing packages.
• The command for installing packages from CPAN.
• The command for checking and configuring services post install.
• You can add code in various "hooks" which will be run at various stages of the installation. This is an opportunity to perform any hacky fixes necessary for your distro.

old_distros

This folder contains obsolete distribution files which are no longer being supported.

Other files

The extra/ subdirectory contains scripts which help with optional post install tasks. These are not currently hooked into the other scripts, so you'll need to run them separately. Currently contains

• iptables_rules.sh

  Sets up an iptables firewall which only allows network services necessary for running WeBWorK.

• generate_ssl_cert.sh

  Steps user through generating an ssl cert. Under construction.

• install_chromatic.pl

  Standalone script to compile pg/lib/chromatic/color.c so the NAU library graph theory problems work. This functionality has been incorporated into ww_install.pl, so it should not be necessary to run this script. However, if you find the NAU graph theory problems are complaining that pg/lib/chromatic/color doesn't exist, then you can run this script to compile it for you.

The lib/ subdirectory contains copies of any perl modules the script uses but which don't need to be installed on your system for webwork to run.

The conf/ subdirectory contains copies of config files or snippets of config files that this installation package will ask to modify.

Other Resources

Please report any problems on the issues page for this repository.

Questions and comments about this installer can be directed to me on the webwork-devel mailing list. For a recent discussion see [1].

Information and documentation about WeBWorK itself can be found at http://webwork.maa.org/wiki

Author

Jason Aubrey aubreyja@gmail.com

Small updates (for WeBWorK 2.13) made by Arnold Pizer apizer@math.rochester.edu

If you use the script, please email me to let me know what OS you installed it on so I can add a notation to the list of tested distributions above and address any problems you run into. I'd also be happy to hear suggestions for improvement. Seriously, though. Send all your complaints to this guy.

Acknowledgements

This script was inspired by Tom Haggedorn's automatic installer for WeBWorK 2.4 on Mac OS 10.5 for Intel processors bash script. Valuable feedback and testing has been provided by Danny Glin, Djun Kim, Geoff Gohle, John Travis, Peter Staab, Arnie Pizer, Paul Pearson, Christina Kayastha, and Nathaniel Case (Qalthos).

Copyright and Disclaimer

This program is Copyright 2016 by Jason Aubrey and in 2017 by Arnold Pizer. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Perl Artistic License or the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

If you do not have a copy of the GNU General Public License write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.