[LON-CAPA-admin] Assignments appear differently on different dates/access nodes

[Stuart Raeburn]

Hi Maged,

> 1.      When the course coordinator instructed lon-capa to forward   
> all access5 users to access4, it did not work!!
>
> 2.      When I try to go to   
> https://access5.lon-capa.illinois.edu/adm/login I get directed to   
> the shib login page which does not happen with the rest of the   
> access nodes.

These two items are entirely consistent with what the domain  
coordinator (not course coordinator) for the uiuc domain did yesterday.

The uiuc domain configuration was modified so that the LON-CAPA log-in  
page: /adm/login on uiucaccess5 would return a page containing a meta  
refresh to one of your other servers.

If a specific path is not selected from the drop-down list in the  
"Path" column when setting this configuration, then the redirect will  
be to /.  On a server on which Shibboleth authentication is enabled  
(as is currently the case for all LON-CAPA servers in the uiuc domain)  
that will result in display of the Shibboleth authentication screen  
(https://discovery.illinois.edu).

Hence item 2:

A request for https://access5.lon-capa.illinois.edu/adm/login would  
have returned a page containing a meta tag with a refresh to  
https://access4.lon-capa.illinois.edu/ which in turn caused  
https://discovery.illinois.edu to be displayed.  I would expect that  
if you then logged in you would have found your session hosted on  
access4.

As for item 1:

If Shibboleth auth is enabled on a server, then requests for / or  
/adm/roles will not result in a request for /adm/login (the standard  
LON-CAPA log-in page), and hence the "Login page requests redirected"  
option set in the domain configuration will not apply.

Instead, what the domain coordinator can do in a case where SSO (e.g.,  
Shibboleth) is enabled, and a server is not to no longer be used to  
host sessions is to use:

Main Menu -> Set domain configuration -> Display (Dedicated Load  
Balancer(s) checked)

and then use the "Add balancer" drop-down list to select the server  
(uiucaccess5 in this case). There are additional other options  
available to determine to which servers different types of  
authenticated users should have their sessions switched on log-in.

Anyway, that is for another time, since you are currently using some  
other mechanism (outside LON-CAPA) to redirect  
access5.lon-capa.illinois.edu to  
http://publish.illinois.edu/loncapastatus/

> The above 2 might indicate some messed up configuration somewhere   
> and might be related to this problem.

Neither are related to the original problem you reported.

However, taking access5 out of the pool of servers hosting user  
sessions makes sense, given that the information you have provided  
about the original problem suggests something was awry with that  
particular server.


Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium


Quoting "Abdel Messeh, Maged" <mmesseh at illinois.edu>:

> Hi Stuart,
>
>
>
> Here are the rest of the answers:
>
>
>
>> What was the question type parameter set to for Student 1, 2 and 3 for
>
> the first question in the corresponding Pre-lab folders?  Were the
>
> assignments republished in the time between each student's first
>
> access and last access?  What do the submissions record for these
>
> students show for the award made for each problem part in question 1
>
> for the initial attempt?
>
>
>
> Nothing was set special for the first question (and it happened for   
> all the questions in the folders, not just the first question). The   
> folders were set as the default question type, standard problem.
>
>
>
>
>
>> Were the assignments republished in the time between each student's  
>>  first  access and last access?
>
>
>
> No, nothing was changed about the questions during the time the   
> assignment was open (and nothing was changed after either).
>
>
>
>> What do the submissions record for these students show for the   
>> award made for each problem part in question 1 for the initial   
>> attempt?
>
>
>
> Attached is an example for student1
>
> Trial 2 is an example on access5.  Trial 3 was done the next day on   
> a different server.  Note the missing foils on the problem trial.    
> The problem trials that are correct are also missing the foils.
>
>
>
> We noticed another category of problem as well.  The activity logs   
> show evidence of submissions that do not show up in the grade area   
> at all for some.  Thus, some submission are making it to the grade   
> records and are giving credit by not showing foils.  Others are   
> showing up in the activity logs but nowhere else.
>
>
>
> We noticed two other weird things on access5:
>
>
>
> 1.      When the course coordinator instructed lon-capa to forward   
> all access5 users to access4, it did not work!!
>
> 2.      When I try to go to   
> https://access5.lon-capa.illinois.edu/adm/login I get directed to   
> the shib login page which does not happen with the rest of the   
> access nodes.
>
>
>
> The above 2 might indicate some messed up configuration somewhere   
> and might be related to this problem.
>
>
>
> Thanks for the help,
>
>
>
> Maged
>
>
>
>
> From: Abdel Messeh, Maged
> Sent: Wednesday, February 4, 2015 1:21 PM
> To: list about administration and system updating
> Subject: RE: [LON-CAPA-admin] Assignments appear differently on   
> different dates/access nodes
>
> Hi Stuart,
>
> By those logs I mean things in /home/http/perl/tmp
>
> Answers to your other questions have been forwarded to course   
> coordinator and I will forward it to you once I get them.
>
> Maged
>
>
> Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Stuart Raeburn
> Date:02/04/2015 11:34 AM (GMT-06:00)
> To: lon-capa-admin at mail.lon-capa.org<mailto:lon-capa-admin at mail.lon-capa.org>
> Subject: Re: [LON-CAPA-admin] Assignments appear differently on   
> different dates/access nodes
> Hi,
>
>> Do we need to increase how verbose the logs are, or do you have any
>> other suggestion on what to do?
>
> What was the question type parameter set to for Student 1, 2 and 3 for
> the first question in the corresponding Pre-lab folders?  Were the
> assignments republished in the time between each student's first
> access and last access?  What do the submissions record for these
> students show for the award made for each problem part in question 1
> for the initial attempt?
>
>> Unfortunately , those logs are only kept for 2 days.  Also the
>> communication logs with library1 do not show any details, so I
>> cannot tell if what the students did on access nodes was
>> successfully applied to library1.
>
> My recommendation would be to retrieve each student's activity log in
> the course, and to view the transactions recorded for this particular
> assignment in the appropriate time window. If there were "critical"
> transactions (e.g., storage of submission data) completed on an access
> server which could not be sent to the library server, those will be
> recorded in /home/httpd/perl/logs/lonnet.perm.log on the access server.
>
>> I have checked the logs and I could see when certain student worked
>> on what using the temporary logs on uiucaccess2, uiucaccess3 ..etc.
>>  Unfortunately , those logs are only kept for 2 days.
>
> By logs, do you mean the web server's access logs?
>
>
> Stuart Raeburn
> LON-CAPA Academic Consortium
>
>
> Quoting "Abdel Messeh, Maged"   
> <mmesseh at illinois.edu<mailto:mmesseh at illinois.edu>>:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> We are having a strange problem for 3 students taking the same
>> course on LonCapa.
>>
>> This happened on 3 different assignments at different days/times.
>> All assignments are set up as new, nothing is hidden, and no
>> questions are repeated (and not in practice mode).
>>
>> Here is a summary of what happened:
>>
>> Student1:
>> Assignment folder "Pre-lab 6 " which was open from 1/25 6:00 PM and
>> due 1/29 8:00 AM.
>> Student did it on Monday 1/26, answering the first question at
>> 8:32:47 PM on uiucaccess5 and continued the assignment.
>> Then on Tuesday 1/27, student goes back to that first question, at
>> 11:14:52 AM on uiucaccess3 and it was a different version that time.
>>
>> Student2:
>> Assignment folder "Pre-lab 7 "  open 1/27 8:00 AM until 2/3 8 AM.
>> Student did it on Monday 1/26, answering the first question at
>> 6:41:22 PM on uiucaccess5.
>> Then on Monday 2/2, student goes back to that first question on
>> uiucaccess3 and it was a different version that time.
>>
>> Student3:
>> Folder "Pre-lab 8" open 1/28 8:00 AM until 2/4 8 AM.
>> Student did it on Friday 1/30, answering the first question at
>> 7:02:42 PM on uiucaccess5.
>> Then on Monday 2/2, student goes back to that first question, at
>> 8:17:23 AM on uiucaccess2 and it was a different version that time.
>>
>> These 3 students are in different sections.
>>
>> I have checked the logs and I could see when certain student worked
>> on what using the temporary logs on uiucaccess2, uiucaccess3 ..etc.
>>  Unfortunately , those logs are only kept for 2 days.  Also the
>> communication logs with library1 do not show any details, so I
>> cannot tell if what the students did on access nodes was
>> successfully applied to library1.
>>
>> Do we need to increase how verbose the logs are, or do you have any
>> other suggestion on what to do?
>>
>> Many Thanks,
>>
>> Maged