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MarkUs Version 0.5 Deployment Documentation (A System Administrator's Guide)

Note: Please notice that this documentation is not maintained anymore. Use it as a guideline for buildind old versions of MarkUs.

Supported version: This documentation should cover all MarkUs version from 0.5 to 0.8.

How to Install MarkUs

For more detailed instructions, please see our INSTALL file.

Required Software (including known to be working versions)

We know that the following versions work and believe that whatever version "gem" provides by issuing "gem install package" should also work.

  • Ruby (>=1.8.7) including development package (e.g. ruby-dev)
  • net/https Ruby library ('libopenssl-ruby' Debian package)
  • Gem (>= 1.3.x) see [Update gem on Debian](wiki:UpdateRailsDebian)
    • rails (gem) (2.3.2)
    • daemons (gem) (1.0.10)
    • mongrel (gem) (1.1.5)
    • mongrel_cluster (gem) (1.0.5)
    • ruby-pg (gem) (>=0.7.9.2008.01.28)
    • postgres (gem) (>=0.7.9.2008.01.28)
    • fastercsv (gem) (>=1.4.0)
    • rake (gem) (0.8.7)
    • ruby-debug (gem)
  • PostgreSQL including libpq-dev (>= 8.2, but any PostgreSQL version should work; We also know that MarkUs works with MySQL)
  • Apache httpd (1.3/2.x) (including mod_proxy, mod_rewrite, Subversion server modules if using Subversion as a backend) Note: Any other Webserver with similar features should also work.
  • 'build-essential' Debian package (required to build/compile some gem packages from source)
  • 'subversion' and 'libsvn-ruby1.8' (Ruby bindings for Subversion) if using an SVN Repository as back-end

Installation Proceedings (using a PostgreSQL database)

NOTE: An important thing to have installed prior installing the Rails gems is the libpq-dev package (i.e. development files for PostgreSQL).

Install PostgreSQL (make sure that the created cluster is UTF-8 encoded; If not required, it also works with latin-1 and ) and Apache Httpd

Update gem, so that a version >= 1.3.x is installed.

Install gem packages:

sudo gem install rails daemons mongrel mongrel_cluster ruby-pg postgres
fastercsv rake ruby-debug

Create an administrative database user and allow this user to connect using md5 passwords

Take the MarkUs application and extract it to an appropriate location

Set an environment variable RAILS_ENV="production"

Change to the "root" of the MarkUs Rails application

Set database connection settings accordingly in config/database.yml (see config/database.yml.postgresql for a sample setup)

If you are using a rails version >2.3.2, please uncomment the line featuring "RAILS_GEM_VERSION = 2.3.2 unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION" in config/environment.rb

Run the following rake tasks (non-root):

rake db:create                # creates the "production" database according to database.yml
rake db:schema:load           # creates the necessary database schema relations

Create an "instructor" user for the person responsible for the course:

rake markus:instructor first_name='Markus' last_name='Maximilian' user_name='markus'

Optionally, load some default data into the database (The database can be reset using rake db:reset)

rake db:populate

Configure the MarkUs application in config/environment.rb.

Note: Please pay particular attention to the "secret" in the cookies related configuration section of your MarkUs instance (see <http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Session/CookieStore.html>)

Configure the mongrel cluster (see config/mongrel_cluster.yml) and start the mongrel servers:

mongrel_rails cluster::start   # uses config settings defined in config/mongrel_cluster.yml

The mongrel_cluster gem isn't really necessary. It is a nice utility for starting/stopping mongrels for your MarkUs app, though. For more information concerning mongrel clusters see: http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/wiki/MongrelCluster.

Configure an httpd VirtualHost similar to the following (Reverse-Proxy-Setup)

RewriteEngine On

# define proxy balancer
<Proxy balancer://mongrel_cluster>
  BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8000 retry=10
  BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8001 retry=10
  BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8002 retry=10
</Proxy>

DocumentRoot /opt/olm/\<MarkUs-APP-Root\>/public

<Directory />
  Options FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride None
</Directory>

<Directory /opt/olm/\<MarkUs-APP-Root\>/public>
  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
  AllowOverride None
  Order allow,deny
  allow from all
</Directory>

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://mongrel_cluster%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

See Also:

  • [[Hosting several MarkUs applications on one machine (for Production)|MultipleHosting]]
  • [[How to use LDAP with MarkUs|LDAP]]
  • [[How to use Phusion Passenger instead of Mongrel|Passenger]]
  • See available rake tasks for MarkUs: rake -T

MarkUs Configuration Options

The main application-wide configuration file for MarkUs is config/environment.rb.

Allow Subversion Commandline Commits Only

When using Subversion as a storage backend for students' submissions, it is capable of exposing created Subversion repositories. Example: An instructor configures an assignment so that students can submit using the Subversion command-line client only (i.e. the Web interface will be disabled). In that case, the Subversion repositories will be created once the student logs in. Hence, the workflow is as follows:

  1. The instructor creates users and (at least one) assignment
  2. The instructor tells students to log in to MarkUs and find out their repository URL
  3. Students can connect to their repositories using svn

Requirements

In order to be able to use this feature, one requires a working (Subversion/Apache configuration as documented in the Subversion book: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.serverconfig.httpd.html). We assume that user authentication is handled by Apache httpd (whatever authentication scheme one chooses). Once a username (the identical username/user-id as defined in MarkUs) has been authenticated by the httpd, authorization (i.e. checking read/write permissions) is handled by Subversion. MarkUs writes appropriate Subversion configuration files when users and/or groups are determined.

Minimal Subversion/Apache httpd configuration

A minimal Apache httpd configuration (sippet of httpd.conf) would look similar to the following:

LoadModule dav_module
LoadModule dav_svn_module
LoadModule authz_svn_module   # we are using per-directory based access control

# make sure you have a ServerName or ServerAlias directive matching your
# hostname MarkUs is hosted on (uncomment the following line)
# ServerAlias your_hostname

# Make sure that the path after the hostname of
# REPOSITORY_EXTERNAL_BASE_URL matches the path of your
# Location directive
<Location /markus/svn>
  DAV svn

  # any "/markus/svn/foo" URL will map to a repository /home/svn-repos-root/foo
  # This should usually be identical to the REPOSITORY_STORAGE constant in
  # config/environment.rb of your markus app
  SVNParentPath /home/svn-repos-root

  # configure your Apache httpd authentication scheme here
  # for example, one could use Basic authentication
  # how to authenticate a user
  Require valid-user
  AuthType Basic                  # the authentication scheme to be used
  AuthUserFile /path/to/users/file

  # Arbitrary name: Should probably match your COURSE_NAME constant in
  # config/environment.rb
  AuthName "Your Course Name"

  # Location of Subversions authz file. Make sure it matches with
  # $REPOSITORY_SVN_AUTHZ_FILE in your config/environment.rb
  AuthzSVNAccessFile /path/to/authz/file
</Location>

This enables you to let your students access repositories created by MarkUs via the http:// uri scheme, once you have created an assignment and set up Groups/Users appropriately in MarkUs.

Use Externally Created Subversion Repositories with MarkUs

If you already have Subversion repositories created by some third-party, it is possible to use them with MarkUs.

Instructions

  1. Set IS_REPOSITORY_ADMIN = false in environment.rb
  2. Point MarkUs to the correct path where your repositories reside by setting REPOSITORY_STORAGE in environment.rb correctly (of course you would also use REPOSITORY_TYPE = "svn")
  3. Prepare a csv file adhering to the following field order: group_name,repo_name,user_name,user_name (Note: the repo_name field is important here, since this is the link with your third-party tool)
  4. Use this file to upload groups for your course (go to Assignment => Groups & Graders => Upload/Download)
  5. This configures MarkUs to use externally created repositories. Please note: MarkUs won't write any permissions related files in this kind of setup. The third party tool is in charge of that.