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1: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 2: "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 3:  4: <html> 5: <head> 6: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></meta> 7: <title>Frequently Asked Questions</title> 8:  9:  10: </head> 11: <body bgcolor="#ffffff"> 12:  13:   14: 15: 16: Questions about anything and everything 17: 18: 19: 20: Shown below are frequently asked questions others have 21: about LON-CAPA installation and system management. For 22: a more complete FAQ, you are strongly encouraged to visit 23: 24: 25: 26: <a href="http://help.lon-capa.org/">http://help.lon-capa.org/</a> 27: 28: 29:  30:  31: FAQ 32: <blockquote> 33: 1. <a href="#q1">What is TtH and how do I know I have it?</a> 34: 2. <a href="#q2">So I think I'm done with the LON-CAPA installation. 35: Now what do I do? How do I begin?</a> 36: 3. <a href="#q3">Why do I have to worry about choosing a "role"?</a> 37: 4. <a href="#q4">What kind of computer and operating will this work 38: on?</a> 39: 4a. <a href="#q4">Will this work on BSD Unix?</a> 40: 4b. <a href="#q4">Will this work on Mac OS X?</a> 41: 5. <a href="#q5">What does LON-CAPA stand for?</a> 42: 6. <a href="#q6">Who wrote this code?</a> 43: 7. <a href="#q7">Where is this software being used?</a> 44: 8. <a href="#q8">What are current plans for the installation?</a> 45: 9. <a href="#q9">How do I upgrade?</a> 46: 10. <a href="#q10">What are RPMs?</a> 47: 11. <a href="#q11">How do I know this will be a secure solution for 48: my users?</a> 49: 12. <a href="#q12">How do I contribute code?</a> 50: 13. <a href="#q13">Is LON-CAPA owned by any umbrella company?</a> 51: 14. <a href="#q14">What are the costs?</a> 52: 15. <a href="#q15">What kind of computer do I need?</a> 53: 16. <a href="#q16">Where can I learn more about the technical 54: ideas surrounding the LON-CAPA project?</a> 55: 17. <a href="#q17">How are you similar or different to 56: WebCT, Blackboard, etc?</a> 57: </blockquote> 58: <hr />1. <a name="q1" />What is TtH and how do I know I have it? 59: 60: TtH = TeX-to-HTML. 61: You should have a file called tth.so on your system. If you do not 62: have it, then you should download and install the binary 63: http://install.lon-capa.org/3.1/binaries/tth.so 64: into your 65: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.???/ directory. 66: 67: 68: <hr />2. <a name="q2" />So I think I'm done with the LON-CAPA installation. 69: Now what do I do? How do I begin? 70: 71: You will first need to set up a domain coordinator on your machine. 72: See loncapa/doc/how_to_domain_coordinator.txt in your CVS repository checkout. 73: After this, it is time to play with the interface. We do not 74: yet have a user manual, but 75: <a href="mailto:felicia@lon-capa.org">Felicia</a> is helping answer 76: questions related to the LON-CAPA web interface. 77: 78: <hr />3. <a name="q3" />Why do I have to worry about choosing a "role"? 79: 80: A critical feature of the LON-CAPA interface is the idea that a user 81: must select a role before doing anything further inside the educational 82: system. 83: 84: <hr />4. <a name="q4" />What kind of 85: computer and operating will this work on? 86: 87: The operating system LON-CAPA runs on is the Linux operating 88: system. LON-CAPA relies on an Intel-based architecture. 89: 90: 91: For full-time, classroom usage, an adequate LON-CAPA server 92: should be/have: 93: 94: <ul> 95: <li>a multiprocessor machine,</li> 96: <li>a CPU speed of 1 gigahertz,</li> 97: <li>a gigabyte of memory,</li> 98: <li>and at least 40 to 80 gigabytes of hard disk space.</li> 99: </ul> 100: 101: A lesser machine can be used for toying around with LON-CAPA 102: (LON-CAPA will run for a single user on most any machine). 103: 104: 105: LON-CAPA servers experience significant peaks of activity 106: before a homework submission deadline. To support these critical 107: peaks of activity, it is strongly advised that LON-CAPA machines 108: fit the above recommendation. 109: 110: 111: If thousands of students start accessing the box as a web server... 112: well you may want to consider more options. The design of the LON-CAPA 113: system is to naturally and transparently load-balance on multiple 114: computer clusters. So, a simple solution for running an entire 115: college campus is to just have an adequate plurality of LON-CAPA 116: servers rather than a single, particularly monstrous server. 117: 118: 119: We like to think of high web server usage as "a good problem" though.. :) 120: 121: <hr />4a. <a name="q4" />Will this work on BSD Unix? 122: 123: No. 124: 125: <hr />4b. <a name="q4" />Will this work on Mac OS X? 126: 127: No. 128: 129: <hr />5. <a name="q5" />What does LON-CAPA stand for? 130: 131: The Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach. 132: 133: 134: An eclectic variant is: Look! Our New Car Answers Pizza Appetites. 135: 136: <hr />6. <a name="q6" />Who wrote this code? 137: 138: This code was originally written by a group of staff and graduate assistants 139: at Michigan State University. We are now receiving software contributions 140: from several other universities. The technical design behind the project 141: was constructed by Gerd Kortemeyer. 142: 143: <hr />7. <a name="q7" />Where is this software being used? 144: <hr />8. <a name="q8" />What are current plans for the installation? 145: 146: We have been able to run LON-CAPA on RedHat 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, Debian, and 147: Mandrake. 148: 149: <hr />9. <a name="q9" />How do I upgrade? 150: 151: You must use CVS over the network. 152: Please click on the upgrade button at the top of this web page. 153: 154: <hr />10. <a name="q10" />What are RPMs? 155: 156: Software packages that are (usually) very easy to install. RPM stands 157: for RedHat Packaging Manager software package. 158: 159: <hr />11. <a name="q11" />How do I know this will be a secure solution for 160: my users? 161: 162: LON-CAPA is distributed without warranty as described in the 163: <a href="http://mycrow.mph.msu.edu/docs/license/index.html">license</a>. 164: 165: 166: We do think our security strategy is fairly robust. Important communications 167: are encrypted and the server-client validation is instantiated in such 168: a way as to prevent any remotely conceivable kind of spoofing. 169: 170: <hr />12. <a name="q12" />How do I contribute code? 171: 172: Send a diff to <a href="mailto:lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org"> 173: lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org</a>. It helps if you give it context 174: with the -C option. For example, 175: 176: <pre> 177: diff -u -C3 doc/build/faq.html doc/build/faq.html~ | mail lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org 178: </pre> 179: <hr />13. <a name="q13" /> 180: Is LON-CAPA owned by any umbrella company? 181: 182: No and hopefully never. That's not what we're about. 183: 184: <hr />14. <a name="q14" /> 185: What are the costs? 186: 187: Time & Money. You and/or somebody else needs the time to learn how to use 188: the LON-CAPA system. You and/or somebody else needs the money to set up and 189: maintain a working computer server(s) for your institution. 190: 191: 192: More importantly, if your institution wants a sound future and a 193: increased ability to configure the LON-CAPA software, we recommend 194: that you assume some responsibility for contributing code to the 195: freeware project. 196: 197: <hr />15. <a name="q15" /> 198: What kind of computer do I need? 199: 200: You need a RedHat 6.2-7.2 Intel-compatible computer. 201: We do not currently support the SPARC and SGI hardware architectures. 202: 203: <hr />16. <a name="q16" /> 204: Where can I learn more about the technical 205: ideas surrounding the LON-CAPA project? 206: 207: You will find the technical manual to be very handy; please visit 208: <a href="http://www.lon-capa.org/technical.html"> 209: http://www.lon-capa.org/technical.html</a>. 210: 211: <hr />17. <a name="q17" /> 212: How are you similar or different to 213: WebCT, Blackboard, etc? 214: 215: I would suggest two major differences: 216: 217: <ol> 218: <li>In LON-CAPA, the user is the fundamental data object. 219: Other educational software systems seem to focus on the virtual 220: classroom as the fundamental data object.</li> 221: <li>I look at it like this. Many strictly profit-based enterprises aim to 222: significantly please 80% of their users. LON-CAPA started out, in the 223: beginning, aiming for a much higher percentage since the whole project 224: was about doing what no one had done before. 225: </li> 226: </ol> 227:  228:  229: </body> 230: </html>