EvaP - Evaluation Platform¶

Vagrant¶

Usually it’s easiest to just use the Vagrant VM. Since we use puppet in git submodules for easier configuration of the VM, you’ll need to clone with --recurse-submodules or run git submodule update --init after checking out EvaP, and of course you need to have Vagrant installed. Then you can run vagrant up in your EvaP root directory; this builds you a fully working EvaP installation with PostgreSQL as database and Apache as webserver.

You can use EvaP at http://localhost:8000/ on your host, write code in your git repo, and access the VM with vagrant ssh. Your git checkout is mounted in /vagrant there.

Use vagrant halt to shutdown the VM, and vagrant destroy to delete it.

If you don’t want to use Vagrant, you can use the following instructions to manually set up EvaP.

Vagrant and Hyper-V¶

To use the Vagrant VM with Hyper-V as provider, do the following:

1. Enable Hyper-V (note the warning on this page).

2. Configure Networking

You can either connect the VM to your external network directly by creating an External Virtual Switch in Hyper-V Manager->Virtual Switch Manager, or use “NAT-Mode” by creating an Internal Virtual Switch and setting up Windows Internet Connection Sharing (recommended).

3. vagrant up --provider hyperv

Select the virtual switch created in step 2 and enter your Windows host credentials when prompted, in order to give the virtual machine access to the working directory via SMB.

4. Because port forwarding doesn’t work with Hyper-V, you have to access the EvaP website using the VM’s IP address.

Filesystem Structure¶

We recommend that you install the application into the directory /opt/evap according to the filesystem hierarchy standard. In the remaining steps, we will assume that this is your installation directory.

Clone the repository or copy the files into that directory. The installation should be correct if the settings file has the path /opt/evap/evap/settings.py. Make sure that all files and directories are readable by the Apache web server. Additionally please make sure that the directory /opt/evap/evap/upload is writable by the web server.

Dependencies¶

EvaP is written in Python using the Django framework and you need at least Python 3.4 to run it. Apart from Python and Django there are some other dependencies that are listed in the file requirements.txt. Use pip to install these with the following command: pip install -r requirements.txt.

For Windows users: As lxml has native code and compiling it with your installed compiler usually fails, you need to install a precompiled package from lfd.uci.edu.

For Windows users: For the compilation of translation files gettext is used. This can be downloaded as a precompiled package from the GnuWin project.

Database Initialization¶

To initialize the database during the installation you have to perform the following command in /opt/evap directory:

• python manage.py migrate

File Refresh¶

You have to run some additional commands during the installation and whenever you update EvaP. Perform these steps in the /opt/evap directory after you have upgraded the files:

• python manage.py migrate to perform any potential database updates.
• python manage.py collectstatic to collect all files that the front-end webserver should serve.
• python manage.py compilemessages to update the binary translation catalog.

Finally, restart the Apache web server.

Load test data¶

The Vagrant VM automatically loads test data from a fixture on it’s creation. If you want to load this data in your manual installation, run the following commands (Note: This will remove all data previously stored in the database):

python manage.py flush --no-initial-data
python manage.py loaddata test_data.json

Development Environment: Setup and Server Running¶

The manual creation of a superuser is just recommended for development environments. In productive environments a Kerberos authentification system or similar should be used.

To create a superuser perform in the /opt/evap directory the command python manage.py createsuperuser.

A login in a development environment can be simulated by setting the variable REMOTE_USER to your previously created user.

The server for this environment can be started from within the /opt/evap directory with python manage.py runserver.

Productive Environment: Settings¶

The configuration of the application is done by creating a localsettings.py in the evap folder and overwriting the defaults from settings.py there. The defaults should be OK for most development purposes. For a production environment you should change the following settings:

• Choose an appropriate database and modify the default entry in the DATABASES settings. Please make sure that you use a database that supports transactions.
• Change the DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL to an administrative mail address that is used as the sender of the mails generated by the system.
• Change MEDIA_ROOT to a directory that is writable by the web application. This directory will hold user-uploaded files.
• You should change the SECRET_KEY.
• Finally, set DEBUG to False.

Productive Environment: Apache 2 Configuration¶

We recommend the following Apache configuration:

::

WSGIScriptAlias / /opt/evap/evap/wsgi.py

Alias /static /opt/evap/evap/static_collected <Location /static>

ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault “access plus 1 month”

</Location>

Alias /media /opt/evap/evap/upload

Productive Environment: Kerberos Authentication¶

To use Kerberos as an authentication backend, do the following:

• run pip install django_auth_kerberos

• copy the following to your localsettings.py and edit KRB5_REALM and KRB5_SERVICE according to your setup:

  KRB5_REALM = 'EXAMPLE.COM'
  KRB5_SERVICE = 'krbtgt@AS.EXAMPLE.COM'
  INSTALLED_APPS += ('django_auth_kerberos',)
  MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES += ('django_auth_kerberos.backends.KrbBackend',)
  

Productive Environment: Cron Configuration¶

EvaP has components which need to react to timed events. This behavior is implemented by running two cronjobs, which in turn trigger a management command. One should be run hourly and the other one daily.

For example you could use a /etc/cron.hourly/evap like

#!/bin/sh

pushd  /opt/evap
/usr/bin/python manage.py run_tasks
popd

And a /etc/cron.daily/evap like

#!/bin/sh

pushd  /opt/evap
/usr/bin/python manage.py run_tasks daily
popd

Data Import¶

The key module for data imports is staff.importers.