[LON-CAPA-admin] How to Uninstall Lon Capa on Our Test Server so We Can Retest Upgrade Process

[Stuart Raeburn]

Hi,

> We would like to wipe the existing version (2.1.0) of Lon Capa from our
> test server so we can have a clean environment and go back to an older
> version (2.9.0)  of Lon Capa and then retest the upgrade process.  Can you
> tell us the best way to do uninstall Lon Capa?

How best to do that is somewhat dependent on your use of your test server.

My recollection is that the VCU test server contains a copy of the  
resources and users on the VCU production library server.

If that is the case then an rsync run on the test server would be a  
way to proceed to copy the contents of /home from your production  
server to the testing server e.g.,

rsync --exclude-from=exclude_from_copyprod --delete --delete-after  
--stats -az loncapa2.vcu.edu:/home/ /home

where exclude_from_copyprod is a file containing items in /home to  
exclude from the rsync:

httpd/captchadb
httpd/captchaspool
httpd/lonCerts
httpd/lonIDs
httpd/lonTabs
httpd/prtspool
httpd/sockets
httpd/zipspool

rsync is powerful so make sure that you have the command typed  
correctly so you will overwrite files on the test server, and *not* on  
the production server.  I generally like to confirm that I have the  
direction of the updates right by using rsync for a single file before  
re-running the command to rsync /home in its entirety.

Installation of LON-CAPA also modifies /usr/local/loncapa/CHECKRPMS,  
/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol, and the following items in /etc/httpd/conf
(CentOS/RHEL/Scientific/Fedora distros):

loncapa_apache.conf
startup.pl
mime.types

You should also rsync those files, or copy them from production to  
test server.

There is also /etc/cron.d/loncapa.
On a test server you may have some entries commented out (e.g.,  
Autoenroll.pl, Autocreate.pl, Autoupdate.pl, refresh_courseids_db.pl)  
which are not commented out on the production server.

If you have any filesystem authenticated users they will need to exist  
in /etc/password, /etc/group, /etc/shadow and /etc/gshadow on the  
testing server. There may be one filesystem authenticated user (the  
initial Domain Coordinator) originally added using the  
make_domain_coordinator.pl script found in the loncom/build directory  
in the uncompressed tarball for a LON-CAPA release.

After your update you could also download the 2.9.0 tarball to the  
test server, and confirm that your test server does indeed have 2.9.0  
installed, as follows:

wget http://install.loncapa.org/versions/loncapa-2.9.0.tar.gz
tar zxf loncapa-2.9.0.tar.gz
cd loncapa-2.9.0
./UPDATE

You should find that all files will be reported as unchanged.

Stuart Raeburn
MSU LON-CAPA group

Quoting Jana C Avery/FS/VCU <jcavery at vcu.edu>:

> We would like to wipe the existing version (2.1.0) of Lon Capa from our
> test server so we can have a clean environment and go back to an older
> version (2.9.0)  of Lon Capa and then retest the upgrade process.  Can you
> tell us the best way to do uninstall Lon Capa?
>
> Thanks very much for your help,
> Jana Avery and Paula Smith
> Learning Systems, Technology Services
> Virginia Commonwealth University