Sakai Newcomer: 10 easy questions not so easy

Transcription

Sakai Newcomer: 10 easy
questions not so easy
Daniel Merino Echeverría (daniel.merino@unavarra.es)
Centro Superior de Innovación Educativa - Universidad Pública de Navarra
A brief presentation about us
Universidad Pública de Navarra
March 2010
European Sakai Conference – Valencia - Spain..
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• Universidad Pública de Navarra
• A small university created in 1987.
• 8669 students.
• 911 teachers.
• 26 degrees.
• Located in Pamplona (Navarra)
• About 200000 citizens.
• Maybe you have heard
about the Sanfermines.
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• WebCT 4.1 since 2001/02.
• June of 2007: 66,43% average of use.
• 3000 courses, 800 teachers, 8000 students.
• “Aulario virtual” fully integrated in academic activity.
• Migration to Sakai.
• 2008/09: Pilot of Sakai 2.5.3. Migration of contents.
• 2009/10: Sakai & WebCT in production at the same time.
• 2010/11: End of WebCT.
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Disclaimer
• This conference is about our experience.
• We only have worked with Sakai 2.5.
• Some things could have been fixed in newer versions.
• This document is for newcomers.
• Lost in the beginnings with Sakai.
• With non too technical profile.
• Corrections & contributions are welcome.
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1- Where can I find documentation?
• Is the first question a newcomer will do.
• Not an easy question.
• Open source documentation is contributive.
• Every version of software can change things.
• The most boring thing in the development process.
• Sakai official page is a good starting point.
• http://sakaiproject.org --> Support --> Documentation
• 2.5 and 2.6 guides, linking scattered resources.
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• But Sakai documentation is not perfect.
• Some docs in the source code are a bit obsoletes.
• The wiki (Confluence) is huge, but..
• The pages are not classified about relevance.
• The old obsolete info is not always deleted.
• Is hard to know what is useful and what is not.
• The JIRA title descriptions are sometimes confusing.
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• Some advices.
• Read the Sakai book.
• Good non-technical reference.
• Many links to extend the information.
• Look the previous conferences programs.
• There are great documents out there.
• All the programs are in Confluence.
• Look the blogs (planetsakai.org).
• Some blogs go in depth with concrete themes.
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• End-user documentation.
• Few oficial documents.
• It seems that each university makes its own documents.
• Two awesome public resources.
• Delaware:
• http://www.udel.edu/sakai/training/gettingstarted/index.html
• Oxford:
• https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/info/page/browse_hel
2- How can I migrate contents?
• A critical matter if you come from other platform.
• Users want their old contents.
• Starting from scratch can discourage them.
• Two different problems here.
• The contents organization structure.
• The contents themselves.
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• The usual import schema.
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• Problems about this schema.
• IMS CP partially supported.
• Only Melete imports it (AFAWK).
• Melete has its own resources folders.
• Each platform has its own IMS standard
• So each platform needs its own IMS parser.
• There are several solutions already availables.
• But probably you will have to touch some code.
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• Another distinct simpler schema.
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2 -How can I migrate contents?
• A simple WebDAV script can upload the contents
• To a site's Resources.
• To an user's MyWorkspace Resources.
• You can optionally create HTML pages.
• Linking the files and showing them in WebContent tool.
• Flexible visual design with CSS files.
• Our experience.
• Our teachers love Resources
• But they hardly use the WebContent pages.
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3- How do the permissions work?
• Realms, Roles, Permissions.
• One of the most dangerous things in Sakai.
• Very complex configuration.
• Little documentation.
• Disastrous consequences of a bad use.
• Once settled, hard to change in existing sites.
• We explain three examples that happened to us.
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First real example: site.visit
• Every maintain & access role has it checked.
• We gave it to the realm !user.template.
• We thought that they could only visit their sites.
• But !user.template sets global permissions.
• Result: URL direct access to every site.
• Every user can visit every site, pasting its URL.
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Second real example: site.upd.site.member
• We assigned it to the realm !user.template
• We thought that it affects only to user's MyWorkspace.
• We wanted that users could unsubscribe of their sites
(this is configurable in the site's xml file).
• But MyWorkspace is ruled by !site.user.
• !user.template sets user's global permissions.
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Second real example: site.upd.site.member
• User permissions prevail over site permissions.
• The sites access role hasn't site.upd.site.member.
• But the global !user.template permission wins.
• Result: Any user can add users to their sites.
• It doesn't matter if he is access or maintain.
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Third real example: realm.add/del/upd
• We thought that realms are a matter of admins.
• Problems with public resources.
• Users can't make public resources.
• Other users can't revert to private contents.
• Any public resource has its own realm.
• Users must have permissions over realms in their sites.
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• Some advices.
• Read carefully the permissions document deployed with Sakai.
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/download/attachments/37290420/sakai_permissions_2-1-2.pdf
• Then read carefully “Configuring Sakai Boston 09”:
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CONF10/Wednesday+-+Configuring+Sakai
• Make a collaborative wiki to document your permissions.
• So you can see other's changes and others can see yours.
• Don't touch permissions without being sure about what they do.
• Specially the !user.template permissions, which are global.
• If you need to propagate a role to existing sites, look here:
http://steve-on-sakai.blogspot.com/2009/05/roles-in-sakai-sites.html
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4- How can I configure sites?
• Enter as admin.
• In MyWorkspace/Sites, you have templates.
• !user: Configure MyWorkspace's template.
• !user.guest
• !user.registered
• !admin: Configure admin's MyWorkspace template.
• !gateway: Configure the portal's gateway template.
• These templates have pages with tools.
• All sites inherit their corresponding templates.
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• Worksites are different.
• Configure them in sakai.sitesetup.xml.
• Categories (project, course, etc).
• Tools of each category.
• There is a !worksite too in sites, but is overriden.
• More useful information about configuration:
• Configuring Sakai Boston 09
(http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CONF10/Wednesday+-+Configuring+Sakai)
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• Some advices.
• It's hard to change existing sites.
• Changes in templates don't propagate to existing sites.
• You'll need webservices to do this.
• We had about 800 bad MyWorkspaces...
• Home: Announcement's limit set to 3.
• Home: Without Messagecenter synoptic tool.
• Home: Iframe with a height value too big.
• Just be sure about the tools you want!
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5- Which tools should I use?
• Many tools to choose.
• http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Tool+List+%282.x%29
• Several tools for similar things.
• 2 blogs (Blogwow & Blogger)
• 3 forums. (Forums, JForum & Yaft)
• 2 testing tools (Samigo & Mneme)
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• There is an official (deprecated?) classification.
• Core tools.
• Included in the release. Tested and following best practices.
• Provisional tools.
• Mature enough to be included in the release.
• Not fully tested in production, not enabled by default.
• Contrib tools.
• Not formally QA'ed, neither included in releases.
• Is being replaced by the Scorecard Working Group.
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• Some advices.
• Some contrib tools might look better than core tools.
• Nicer user interfaces.
• Some better and extra functionalities.
• But several core functionalities aren't obvious.
• Integrations with other tools (e.g. Section Info or Resources)
• i18n.
• More deeply tested and more community support.
• Always check that somebody is using the tool in production.
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6- How can I patch my Sakai?
• JIRA is not too intuitive.
• The principal page has attachments of tested patches.
• Users can think that these attachments are the real patches.
• But usually they are only temporary tests.
• The true patches are obtained with Subversion.
• You must get them from the official source code.
• Search for your Sakai version's patch, if available.
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• We must look in the tab “Subversion commits”.
●
Search for our Sakai version's patch, if there is any.
●
If there isn't, we can try the trunk patch revision.
●
Generate the revision of the patch with Subversion.
●
●
svn diff -r 45235:45236 https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/dav/branches/
sakai_2-5-x/ > parche.patch
Apply the patch with the command “patch” (in Unix).
●
patch -p0 < parche.patch (with --dry-run for testing the patch without
applying).
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• A JIRA page example.
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7- How can I modify the help pages?
• Sakai brings a bunch of help pages.
• There are several properties included.
• help.button: Showing the help button.
• help.location: External location for help.
• help.url: URL to use instead of built-in help.
• display.help.menu: Showing/hiding the help's link.
• But we can change the built-in help easily.
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• Each tool has (should have) a folder with:
• A help.xml file.
• A bunch of html files linked from help.xml.
• For example, sam/samigo-help/src/sakai_samigo/
•
•
•
• You can edit these files to change whatever you want.
• You must redeploy and restart to see changes.
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• These changes can include i18n.
• You can translate the help to your language.
• You just must create:
• A translated help_xx_XX.xml file (e.g. “help_es_ES.xml”)
• The translated html pages linked from it.
• Redeploy, restart and it's done.
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8- How can I change the Sakai appearance?
• Skin (portal's visual design)
• Well documented in sakai_skin.doc
(https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/reference/trunk/docs/architecture/sakai_skin.doc)
• Static content
• Several pages are static, without i18n.
• At {sakai_root}/reference/library/src/webapp/content/
• myworkspace_info.html : Initial info in the user's My Workspace.
• webcontent_instructions.html: Template for Web Content Tool.
• webdav_instructions.html: Webdav tutorial at Resources tool.
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• Tools names.
• {sakai_root}/tool/tool-impl/impl/src/bundle/tools.properties
• These are the tools names in the database.
• Can be i18n'ed too (e.g. tools_es_ES.properties).
• Properties
• Each tool has its own properties files.
• The texts of Sakai can be modified or i18n'ed.
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• An useful shell script to locate properties (Unix).
find . -name "*.properties" -print -exec grep "Text to locate" {} \; |more
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• Our advice:
• If you change this and you are more than one person...
• ...make common collaborative environments.
• Repositories.
• For files (e.g. properties and static html content)
• Wiki pages.
• For text (e.g. tools names).
• Individual local copies can be a living hell.
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9- How can I change the Wiki's pages?
• Wiki's default pages are based on templates.
• Default page: used in all new pages.
• Help pages: normal help and macros help.
• Etcetera.
• These templates are created from a properties file.
•
./rwiki-tool/tool/src/bundle/uk/ac/cam/caret/sakai/rwiki/tool/bundle/PrepopulatePages.properties
• These templates:
• support i18n partially (they use the tomcat's language).
• are used one only time for site (when the wiki is created).
• the pages created from them are stored in the database.
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• Any maintain can change the templates in his site.
• Just use the macro {index} before creating content.
More awesome documentation at http://udel.edu/~mathieu/wiki/
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• More advices, of course.
• Changing globally the created pages is hard.
• Raw database sentences.
• The user's changes in these pages will be lost.
• We changed all our wiki's help pages.
• We changed the prepopulate_pages_es_ES.properties.
• So all the new help pages are OK.
• We changed the database tables.
update rwikicurrentcontent set content='Wiki Help Page's Formatted Content'
where rwikiid = any (select distinct id from rwikiobject where name like '%edit_right%')
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10- How can I change things without restarting Tomcat?
• An annoying matter.
• You change a tool and deploy it with mvn.
• Theorically, Tomcat should notice the changes.
• But it's needed (we, at least) to restart Tomcat to see them.
• A non general solution.
• touch <TOMCAT-ROOT>/webapps/<TOOL>/WEB-INF/web.xml
• It restarts only that tool.
• Only possible with “light” tools.
• “Heavy” tools (e.g. portal, site, etc) still need the restart.
March 2010
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Sakai Newcomer: 10 easy questions not so easy

Transcription

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