[LON-CAPA-users] error on new course

[Stuart Raeburn]

Jim,

Yes, I see the problem in the course you originally created -- course  
initialization as Course Coordinator fails because the  
default.sequence file (i.e., top level map) is missing, hence you  
can't use:

(a) Settings > Course Settings > Display (General course settings  
checked) to change the course title

and/or

(b) People > Users > Automated Enrollment to disable automated enrollment.

That said (as you reported), your use of Main Menu > "View or modify a  
course or community" as Domain Coordinator to remove the institutional  
course code will have effectively disabled automated enrollment in the  
course.

Similarly (as Domain Coordinator) expiring all roles in the course  
effectively means no one will be aware of this "broken" course.

However to the "fix" the course and, to use (a) and (b) above, you'd  
need to use command line access to the course's home server to add a  
default.sequence file.

You would use a text editor as user www to save the following:

<map>
<resource id="1" src="" type="start"></resource>
<link from="1" to="2" index="1"></link>
<resource id="2" src="" type="finish"></resource>
</map>

to the file:

/home/httpd/lonUsers/pitt/6/E/1/6E101732148bb57dcpittmath1/userfiles/default.sequence

on the Physics-Astronomy LON-CAPA library server.

Once that had been done I would expect you'd be able to successfully  
initialize the course from your roles screen, albeit with a top-level  
map containing no resources.

As an aside, I expect the default.sequence file created when cloning,  
as well as other .sequence files created in the new course would have  
been found in

/home/httpd/html/userfiles/pitt/6E101732148bb57dcpittmath1

on homework.math.pitt.edu

at least until cleaned up by cleanup_file_caches.pl (run nightly)  
which removes files in /home/httpd/html/userfiles not accessed in the  
past 24 hours (i.e., the value in seconds of lonExpire in  
/etc/httpd/conf/loncapa.conf on that server).


Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium


Quoting "Mueller, James A." <mueller at pitt.edu>:

> Stuart,
> Cloning worked the second time.  Thanks. The only problem is   
> renaming the failed course
> On Aug 25, 2016, at 7:14 AM, Stuart Raeburn wrote:
>
> You could then rename the current ?2171_24834 PHYS 0081 Space &   
> Time, Light & Matter" course, disable auto-enrollment, and expire   
> all roles.
> Within loncapa, I don?t see a way to rename the course.  As Domain   
> Coordinator, I can change the course code, so I did that, but I am   
> not sure how to change the course title or disable auto enrollment   
> without entering that course.  I can list all users who have roles,   
> and it looks like it is only me as course coordinator, so I revoked   
> that.  I think with the course code changed to an invalid value,   
> there will be will be no way for auto-enrollment to add any   
> students.  I was never able to enter the course, so there is no work  
>  there to lose.
>
> -Jim
>
> On Aug 25, 2016, at 7:14 AM, Stuart Raeburn   
> <raeburn at msu.edu<mailto:raeburn at msu.edu>> wrote:
>
> Jim,
>
>
> What might have gone wrong here, and is there any way to fix it?
>
>
> It sounds as though copying from the course being cloned to the new   
> course failed for the top-level map (i.e., the default.sequence   
> file) in the old course.
>
> The courseID of the new course tells me that your session was hosted  
>  on pittmath1, i.e., the Pitt Mathematics department's access server  
>  when you created the new course, and not Physics-Astronomy's  
> library  server (pittphyast1).
>
> That means that there would have been a number of calls to retrieve   
> sequence files (including default.sequence) from the library server,  
>  followed by copying, then modification (to replace instances of the  
>  old courseID with the new in any src attributes in the   
> default.sequence file), and lastly notification to the homeserver   
> for the new course (i.e., the library server) to copy the modified   
> sequence files from the access server to the library server for   
> permanent storage.
>
> The routines in lonclonecourse.pm which are used for cloning do not   
> currently return any information about success or failure of the   
> various operations which occur when cloning a course, so you'd need   
> to look in /home/httpd/perl/logs/lonnet.log on the access server,   
> and/or /home/httpd/perl/logs/lond.log on the library server for   
> information about failed replication.  However, since lonnet.log is   
> rotated, the information in the lonnet.log file may no longer be   
> around, if you created the new course more than a few days ago.
>
> What to do?
>
> Depending on how much work you have done in the new course, since   
> cloning, you could just create another course, (again with cloning),  
>  but this time with a web session hosted on the library server.  You  
>  could then rename the current "2171_24834 PHYS 0081 Space & Time,   
> Light & Matter" course, disable auto-enrollment, and expire all roles.
>
> Or you could attempt to repair the 6E101732148bb57dcpittmath1 course  
>  by using  command line access (as user www) to copy the   
> default.sequence file from   
> /home/httpd/lonUsers/pitt/$1/$2/$3/$clonedcourse/userfiles/default.sequence   
> to   
> /home/httpd/lonUsers/pitt/6/E/1/6E101732148bb57dcpittmath1/userfiles/default.sequence, and then use a text editor to replace any instances of $clonedcourse with 6E101732148bb57dcpittmath1 (where $clonedcourse is the courseID of the course that was cloned, and $1, $2, $3 are the first three characters in that   
> courseID).
>
> Of course it may be that other sequence files, besides   
> default.sequence, were also not copied/modified from the old course   
> to the new course, so you might need to do the same for them.
>
> Stuart Raeburn
> LON-CAPA Academic Consortium
>
>
> The other day, I cloned a course from last fall for use in the    
> coming term.  I thought it worked, but now when I try to access that  
>   course as course coordinator, I get the following error message:
>
> The following problems occurred:
>
> Map not loaded: The file    
> /home/httpd/html/userfiles/pitt/6E101732148bb57dcpittmath1/default.sequence   
>  does not exist.
>
> What might have gone wrong here, and is there any way to fix it?
>
>
> -Jim Mueller