Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Manuals for LAMS 2.0

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

I have set up a server at school with LAMS 2 and am looking at importing users. I don't have a concept of how the groups thing works. Is there anything I can read that will explain the structure so that I can decide how to organise a useable system here.

e.g. do I create a new master group similar to the playpen idea that I can import all users into. How do the groups and classes relate to each other. Who can create classes etc.

Greg

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Jun-Dir Liew

[ Reply | Forward ]

The only thing at the moment is the spec in the development wiki:

http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Course+and+User+Management
http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/User+Roles

Although it's not really documentation, it's the closest there is right now.

Just a quick overview then:

Users are put into groups, for example a group called 'Year 7'. At this level you have students, teachers and admins, who can be given admin rights.

Staff can assign sequences to their groups; but most of the time they will probably only want to run sequences with smaller subgroups, e.g. 'Class 7R'. So this subgroup contains a subset of users from the group 'Year 7'.

Your admins will have the 'group admin' or 'group manager' role - this allows them to create subgroups, assign users in these subgroups, and, at your option, create new users in their group.

So there are only 2 levels of groups, unlike LAMS 1 where child organisations could nest forever.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew

By: Fiona Malikoff

[ Reply | Forward ]

The point about assigning sequences to groups is important - when you select a group for a sequence then it will bring you up a list of all the users in that group so if you want someone in a group to do a sequence, then you have to assign the sequence to their group.

You can't assign a sequence to more than one group, but a user can belong to more than one group.

If remove a user from a group, then they will not be able to get to the sequences attached to their old group anymore, although any entries they made in the sequence will still be there in the sequence. So you might want to think about making it "Year 7 (2007)".

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

My context is a fairly large high school with approx 1100 students and approx 80 teachers.
Can you clarify something for me please

From both replies it appears I could create groups for each year level and then import the relevant students into each group e.g. Yr8 Yr9 Yr10 Yr11 Yr12.

I can see that this would make it easier to select students for courses than if I created one large group called say school which holds all students.

However on the other hand Jun-Dir said "Users are put into groups, for example a group called 'Year 7'. At this level you have students, teachers and admins, who can be given admin rights."

Since teachers have classes across grade levels which group do teachers get assigned to?

Greg

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Jun-Dir Liew

[ Reply | Forward ]

Users can be assigned to more than one group - they don't have to be stuck to only 1 group. So you can add your teachers as monitors (the role name for teachers in LAMS 2) to each group that they have a class in.

For example you could create a user called teachera in the group "Year 7 '07", with author, learner, monitor. You also want to give him/her the ability to manage all Year 7 classes, so you also give them the 'group admin' role.

However teachera also teachers other years, so you go to each of the other groups, click 'Manage Users', 'Add/Remove Users', and add teachera with the author, learner and monitor roles.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

Thanks for the explanation and links to the documentation. I will have a play on my laptop before tackling the server.

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

I have created a group called Year 10 (2007) and imported all the year 10 students into that group. I then created a subgroup called extenssion maths and added selected students to it.

I have created a test user called gjtest. I have added gjtest to the Year 10 (2007) group as group admin, group manager, author, learner and monitor.

When I log in as gjtest i get a screen with 3 tabs: Profile; Author; Groups
The groups tab shows Year 10 (2007) and the subgroup Extension Maths.
Both groups have the icon "add lesson". Clicking on the add lesson icon starts a monitor window - the lamb appears - a progress bar reaches 100% then a blank window.
In author mode gjtest has created 3 sequences. However preview does not show anything.

The workspace area has the follwing structure
Greg's Test User
List of sequences
My Groups
Developers Playpen
Lesson Sequence Folder
(This is empty)

- No mention of the Year 10 (2007) group


Can you help?
Thanks

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Jun-Dir Liew

[ Reply | Forward ]

> Clicking on the add lesson icon starts a monitor window - the lamb appears - a progress bar reaches 100% then a blank window.
> In author mode gjtest has created 3 sequences. However preview does not show anything.

Do you mean that clicking 'preview' does not popup a window, or that the popup window is blank? Could you check your flash version (just go to this website, http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_15507). I know at least Flash 8 on Mac OS X does not popup a preview window.

>The workspace area has the follwing structure
>...
>- No mention of the Year 10 (2007) group

Not sure why this is. You could try these to narrow down the problem:
- take away gjtest's author role, then give it back
- add another user to the group with the author role, and see if they have the folder available
- create a new user in the group with the author role, and see if they have the folder available
- create a new group, add a user with the author role, and see if they have the folder available

If you have access to the server's logs, it may also be worth sending those in as well (see 'Which Files to Send?' at http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocs/Creating+DEBUG+Logs)

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

Just to be on the safe side I uninstalled and reinstalled LAMS V2.

While still at the server console (Windows 2003) I logged into LAMS as sysadmin, created a sequence with just the q&a. Saved and was able to preview.

Logged out of lams and went to a workstation. At the workstation logged into LAMS as sysadmin, opened the sequence and tried to preview. The preview windows opens and says next task is loading - but it never does. [Attached screenshot]
This is the same behaviour as before the reinstall.

Tried on a different workstation with same result.
Is this a permissions issue?

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Fiona Malikoff

[ Reply | Forward ]

I doubt that it is a permission issue. It looks more like a Flash issue.

The frame on the left hand side should contain a Flash movie. In LAMS 2.0, the Flash movie MUST run successfully for the first activity to appear on the right hand side.

Have you had a chance to check which version of Flash you are using? Also, what are you using as a workstation - Mac, Windows, Linux?

Incidently, we are hoping to change it in 2.0.1 so that if the Flash movie fails to load, then the right hand window will still load the first activity. Hopefully that will LAMS more robust. But we haven't finished this change yet.

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

ON the server console where the preview worked it is using flash 8
On the workstations (XP)which I tried the latest flash player is installed

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Fiona Malikoff

[ Reply | Forward ]

I hate tracking down Flash issues.

On one of the workstations, could you log onto our demo server and see if that works? That should establish if the problem is on the workstation end or the server end.

You can get to our demo server on http://demo.lamscommunity.org/

If you don't have an account on the demo server, you can sign up for an account via that page.

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

On the demo server everything worked as it should.

Thanks Fiona

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Fiona Malikoff

[ Reply | Forward ]

Greg,

This may sound like clutching at straws but... is there anything in the way of a proxy server being used by the workstation clients? Any popup blockers apart from the built in ones in the browsers?

I run a little thing called Proxomitron on my PC. This morning it was stopping Flash from working properly when I was accessing the demo server. The Flash movie would start to load but it wouldn't get any data from the server. Turned it off and it worked fine. Could have been Prox, or it could have been complete co-incidence.

Yet I could access other LAMS servers without a problem. GRRRR!

The other thing to try is go to the C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Macromedia\ directory on the workstation, and then search in the subdirectories for a directory with the name of your LAMS server. Delete the directory level with the server name.

e.g. on my PC I have:
C:\Documents and Settings\Fiona\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\FHKSY5XY\translations.lamscommunity.org\

C:\Documents and Settings\Fiona\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\#translations.lamscommunity.org\

This is where Flash stores cached files. Sometimes Flash gets itself terminally confused about the files and you have to clean it up manually. In this case, I'd delete the directories translations.lamscommunity.org\ and #translations.lamscommunity.org\ to remove any files cached for the translations.lamscommunity.org's LAMS server.

Then reboot the workstation.

Nasty, but we can't work out why Flash needs this occasionally. Normally we only get it on developer's PCs - and given the mix of software we run its probably not completely Flashs fault (e.g. I run one version of Flash in IE and another version in Firefox).

Is this a public server I could access, or is it behind a firewall?

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

Fiona,
Workstations do use a proxy server for outside addresses. On my workstation I stopped it using the proxy.
I also deleted any reference to LAMS in the Macromedia folder.
Restarted but unfortunately no change.
I am running both IE and firefox and did initially have trouble getting the latest flash version installed for IE. Don't know if that is significant.

The server in question is on our school network and is not accessible from outside.

Thanks for your efforts so far. I was the IT coordinator here for about 7 yrs and appreciate the frustations of diagnosing and solving issues.

Greg

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

Fiona,

Hadn't used my laptop version of LAMS for a while. Just started it up and everything seems to be OK - can preview a sequence.
Previously I had verified that the problem of previweing wasn't just on my workstation by connecting this laptop to the network. While connected I had the preview problem.
Tomorrow I will try it again just to double check - however am pretty certain that I will replicate the problem while on the network.

Summarising standalone version of LAMS on my laptop works OK however if I access the school server version via my laptop I have the preview problem. The problem is independent of the browser used.

Furthermore when I am at work tomorrow I will log on to the server console (win 2003) remove any proxy references - even pull the network cable and test.

Hope this is helpful

Greg

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Fiona Malikoff

[ Reply | Forward ]

Yes, these tests are helpful.

When you test tomorrow, can you set the laptop to have no cache in the browser and clear the current cache.

Then after you have finished testing, get the server logs and email them to me please? If the file is too big to post here, then email it directly to fmalikoff@melcoe.mq.edu.au.

The instructions for which files to send are on http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocs/Creating+DEBUG+Logs. You don't need to turn on the DEBUG level - I don't think it will help much in this case. It is mainly the access logs I'm after but I'll get the whole lot while I'm at it just in case!

Why clear the cache? I want to look at the access log and see what queries are being received by the server and clearing the cache and setting to no cache will ensure that all possible calls are sent.

The other thing you can try is to create the Flash log. When the preview window opens, put the cursor over the left hand pane and Press CTRL-ALT-? (which on my PC is CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-/). If it works a debug window will appear. You will need to drag the vertical frame bar to the right to see the debug window properly. Then highlight the log text, right mouse click to get up the little menu then do copy. Paste the text into a text file. Have a look at the attached screenshot to see what I mean.

Now this may not work - if Flash is busy trying to get stuff from the server then it won't bring up the debug window, and eventually Flash will time out and say that the movie is running slowly. If you get the movie running slowly message then give up trying to get the Flash log - you won't get it.

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Greg Jones

[ Reply | Forward ]

Fiona,

Finally cracked the problem. It all relates to the server name. If I use http://10.52.94.8:8080/lams the preview works

I have been using a DNS \ WINS entry to allow a slightly more friendly name to be use http://lams:8080/lams.
Using this causes the problem.
Verified on a number of workstations.

Does this relate to the setup where you specify the IP adress of the server? I remember at some stage typing in 10.52.94.8

Anyway thanks very much for you assistance

Greg

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Fiona Malikoff

[ Reply | Forward ]

Greg,

Good sleuthing there!

The server name used by the clients should be the same one that is configured on the server. Flash can be particularly fussy about calling across domains (its a Flash security thing) and although we try to avoid it, that may be why the problem is showing up in the Flash related bits.

You would have been asked for the URL when you first installed LAMS.

To update it (to make it http://lams:8080/lams/)
* log in as sysadmin
* select the Sys Admin link
* the System Administration menu should appear
* select "Edit Configuration Settings"
* change the entry ServerURL

Please put the "/" on the end of the address ie use http://lams:8080/lams/, not http://lams:8080/lams. LAMS should cope fine with either but having the '/' is more robust in case we do a have a bug somewhere.

If you are wondering what the other settings are on this screen, click on the little question mark icon and the help page (http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocs/LAMS+Configuration) will be opened. I've just added a warning to that page about potential Flash problems if this setting is not correct.

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff