[LON-CAPA-announce] New version released - LON-CAPA 2.8.1

[Stuart Raeburn]

New Version 2.8.1 Released

This is primarily a bug fix release for version 2.8.0.
It is recommended to update 2.8.0 installations with 2.8.1.

Changes from 2.8.0

Bug fixes for 2.8.0-specific bugs

- Upload of files to bridgetasks is possible again when no allowed  
file types have been specified.
- Information about student-scheduled slots is visible again to students.
- The table view of resource parameters is available again for  
resources with author-specified parameter descriptions which contain [].
- Formularesponse problems will permit the submission of non-vector  
answers including commas, if the required answer is a set, i.e., if  
the submission is of the form {a,b,c,d}.
- Display of user lists, filtered by status, is possible again for  
languages besides English.
- An external resource linking to a web page from a SSL web server  
again retains the https protocol in the stored link.


Bug fixes for other general bugs

- UPDATE used to install/update LON-CAPA now prompts for protocol in  
use (i.e., http or https) on the server.
- Script to stop/start/restart LON-CAPA daemons is now customized for  
different distros for better reporting of firewall status of the port  
used for internal LON-CAPA communication between servers
- E-mail address(es) for recipients of server status e-mail generated  
by nightly run of loncron.pl can be set via "Contacts" setting in DC's  
Domain Configuration menu.
- Files linked to in an uploaded html file (and which a CC uploaded in  
the check for embedded objects/links) are now set to be viewable when  
the html file itself is accessed.
- Verification of valid HTML no longer occurs when displaying style  
files in construction space.
- The script used to a generate certificate signing request for  
SSL-enabled internal LON-CAPA communication runs within  
/home/httpd/lonCerts.
- If a user needs to create a user account to self-enroll in a course,  
the user's domain will be the domain of the course.
- Faster collation of course roles and sections is employed when  
generating options used in a Course Coordinator's inline course role  
selector.
- TTH is always used to render a right arrow in the Reaction Editor  
pop-up (to circumvent jsMath issue).
- Files accepted by default by DropBox now include additional MSOffice  
extensions: docx, xlsx, pptx.

Installation Notes:

To use this release you need to have version 1-12 of LONCAPA-prerequisites
installed (this is the same version as used with LON-CAPA 2.7). If  
updating directly from 2.7 you will need to update the version of  
perl-DateTime installed on your server to perl-DateTime-0.4304-1.

To install this update:

1) You will need to be running Fedora Core 6, 7, 8, or 9, RHEL (AS|ES)  
4 or 5, SUSE 10.1 10.2 or 10.3, SLES 9 or 10, CentOS 5, Scientific  
Linux 5 .(Fedora Core 5 should continue to work but is deprecated.)

2) Update rpms:

(a) Fedora
yum update

(b) RedHat Enterprise 4

up2date -u perl-DateTime

(c) Red Hat 5/Centos 5/Scientific Linux 5

yum update

(d) SuSE/SLES

Use yast-> Installation Source to refresh the LON-CAPA repository
Use yast->Software Management->Search to update perl-DateTime

On all distributions, it is recommended that you check that you have
the correct versions of LONCAPA-prerequisites and perl-DateTime
installed before proceeding.

rpm -q LONCAPA-prerequisites

should report:
LONCAPA-prerequisites-1-12.X

rpm -q perl-DateTime

should report:
perl-DateTime-0.4304-1.X

(where X is a distro identifier e.g., fc7.lc)

3) Download the new LON-CAPA tarball from
wget http://install.lon-capa.org/versions/loncapa-2.8.1.tar.gz

and untar it

tar xzvf loncapa-2.8.1.tar.gz


4) stop the LON-CAPA system services

/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol stop


5) stop the webserver:

Fedora/RHEL/Centos/Scientific Linux
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd stop

SLES 9:
/etc/init.d/apache stop

SUSE 10.1,2,3/SLES 10:
/etc/init.d/apache2 stop


6) Run the UPDATE script as root
cd loncapa-2.8.1
su
./UPDATE



7) restart the LON-CAPA system services
/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol start


8) restart the webserver:

Fedora/RHEL/Centos/Scientific Linux
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start

SLES 9:
/etc/init.d/apache start

SUSE 10.1,2,3/SLES 10:
/etc/init.d/apache2 start



----NOTES
1) Many questions are answered at http://help.lon-capa.org
2) Defects reports, and enhancements requests can be entered at
      http://bugs.lon-capa.org
3) Mailing lists can be joined and left at http://mail.lon-capa.org

Stuart Raeburn
MSU LON-CAPA group