Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Author problem

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been trying to think of the best way forward.

Can you have a look at the log directory ([jboss]\server\default\log and see if the lams.log has any errors that look related to this user? If so, could you post the logs.

If you are concerned about protecting the privacy of some of the content of the logs (particularly in debugging mode)
then email them to fmalikoff@melcoe.mq.edu.au.

It sounds like the problem happens every time, so if you arranged a time with the student to retry it then you could turn on the debugging, recreate the error and then turn off debugging. You don't need to restart LAMS to do this - if you wait a while after changing the configuration file LAMS will switch itself to debug mode while running, and then out of it again when you change the configuration file again. It won't usually take the 15 mins it says on the page - it is usually within 5. But I don't know the maximum time it will take so I sat 15min on the wiki page just to make sure.

But while the debugging is turned on, your server will slow down (as it is writing a LOT more stuff to the log).

Instructions for turning on debugging are on the wiki as Creating DEBUG Logs.

At which point exactly is the error occurring? We had a look at the dump and it gives us the error that is occurring. but that has confused me even further - the error looks like it is trying to write to the database but from your description she is just trying to get up the list of sequences and hence it should only be reading from the database, not writing.

The error suggests there might be a corrupt design (either the one she wants or another one) in that folder. If so, it will probably require a database change to get the corrupt design back again.

Does she have an earlier version of the design in her folder that she could go back to (if she can access the folder) and then redo her final changes?

Has she done a preview of the design? If so, even if the original design is corrupted, we may be able to get back a version of it the way it was when she did preview.

I know this is a bit open ended - if you could give me a few more details we might be able to come up with a solution.

If students want to do backups of their own work then they can export the design (using the LAMS format, not the IMSLD format) and put the resulting zip file on their USB drive / CD / etc.

While you shouldn't have had this issue with LAMS, back in the days when I was a computing science student we rarely got much sympathy if our assignment work was lost and we didn't have our own backup - whether it was our own fault or not.

To anyone that has put hours of effort into their sequences, I'd seriously suggest learning how to export and import your designs and practice it on a regular basis. When you do an import, it won't overwrite your existing copy - it will be saved with a new name.

Any computer system can fail - be it a software or a physical problem with the machine - and I never completely trust someone else to do my backups. Why, because the work is MINE and at the end of the day its my time and effort that is gone. I follow this practise with lots of things - source code, Word documents, photos, etc.

I'm not saying "don't trust LAMS", I'm saying "don't trust computers completely".

If she has done an export, but can't import it in to her workspace and open it due to the error, then could you create her a temporary account to load the sequence while we sort out the issue with her proper account.

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff