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2.1 Installing Verkkoke

2.1.1 Prerequisites

The software depends on the following components:

To install these components, please refer to their own instructions.

2.1.2 Installation Steps

See Detailed Installation, for more thorough instructions.

  1. Extract the contents of the package: tar -zxf verkkoke-1.1.tar.gz.
  2. Copy the verkkoke root folder (and its contents) to the desired deployment location.
  3. Configure your PHP enabled web server to publish files under web directory
  4. Deploy the topologygenerator.war file in the verkkoke folder to your servlet engine. Refer to your servlet engine's documentation on how to deploy a WAR (Web ARchive) file. Make sure that the “$topologygeneratorURL” variable in config.php matches the URL of the deployed servlet.
  5. Deploy the SCORM package to your LMS. See the README.txt file in the “scorm” folder.
  6. Configure file system permissions. Web server must be able to read from and under verkkoke directory. It must also be able to write to data/student_data directory, and to files server/bin/simulationserver.properties and topology_generator.conf. Topology Generator must be able to read topology_generator.conf from verkkoke directory, write to data/student_data, data/brite and web/topologyPics, and to execute dot. Simulation Server must be able to read its own files (including simulationserver.properties written by web server) and to write its log files (if logging is required) to log directory.
  7. Launch Graphical Configuration Interface by pointing your web browser to web/configGUI/index.php. Save settings once, even if you do not need to change anything, to update Simulation Server's and Topology Generator configuration files.

2.1.3 Detailed Installation

First, make sure you have installed everything needed that is needed by Verkkoke: A PHP 5.0 capable web server (e.g. Apache), a servlet engine (e.g. Apache Tomcat), a SCORM supporting learning management system (e.g. Moodle), Java 5.0 or newer and Graphviz' dot program1.

Extract the contents of the package: tar -zxf verkkoke-1.1.tar.gz. This should create directory verkkoke with some subdirectories (data, log, phpinc, scorm, server and web). There should also be default_brite_conf, default_student_data.data and topology_generator.conf files.

2.1.3.1 Configuring Web Server

Configure your web server to publish files in web directory, including its subdirectories. Note that scripts in web directory need access to some files in verkkoke directory or its subdirectories, so web directory should not be copied or moved anywhere, neither should verkkoke directory be accessible via HTTP2.

Web server, or more precisely the PHP engine, must also be able to write files to data directory. If Graphical Configuration Interface is used, server must also be able to write Simulation Server's and Topology Generator's configuration files (server/bin/simulationserver.properties and topology_generator.conf respectively).

Also note that the web server must be able to handle PHP 5.0.

2.1.3.2 Deploying Topology Generator

Deploy server/topologygenerator.war to your servlet engine3. Make sure that Topology Generator servlet can read its configuration file topology_generator.conf. Read and write permissions are needed for topology and data files in data and web/topologyPics directories. It is probably easiest to grant read and write permissions for whole verkkoke directory and subdirectories. This should not be a problem.

Execute permission is needed for dot. Topology Generator uses reflection, so java.lang.reflect.ReflectPermission "suppressAccessChecks" must be set.

Finally, Topology Generator's URL must be updated to phpinc/config.php, either by manually editing the file or by Graphical Configuration Interface. GCI is located in web/configGUI and should be accessible using web browser and working if web server is correctly configured. Name of the parameter is $topologyGeneratorURL. Default value for URL is to assume that servlet engine is run on a local machine (localhost) at port 81804.

2.1.3.3 Deploying SCORM Package

Before SCORM package can be deployed to LMS, it must be updated. In scorm/simassignment/launch.htm find parameter onLoad="launchSim('http://host/directory/simassignment.php')". Edit the URL according to your web server settings to match simassignment.php in verkkoke/web directory. Then package contents of the scorm/simassignment directory to a zip file. This zip file is now ready to be deployed to your LMS.

2.1.3.4 Updating Configuration Files

Usually, configuration files should be updated using Graphical Configuration Interface. GCI is located in web/configGUI and should be accessible using web browser and working if web server is correctly configured. To update configuration files, simply log in to GCI and save configuration once. CGI has explanations of different parameters.

Main Verkkoke configuration file is phpinc/config.php. Simulation Server and Topology Generator have their own configuration files (server/bin/simulationserver.properties and topology_generator.conf respectively), but they are just subsets of parameters in config.php. If files are edited manually, they must be kept in sync to avoid problems.

2.1.3.5 Starting Simulation Server

Simulation Server is located in directory server/bin along with run.sh script to run it. It should be ready to run after configuration files have been updated. Server is able to follow changes made to configuration file and automatically adopts new settings.


Footnotes

[1] All of the mentioned programs are available via apt in Debian GNU/Linux, including Sun's Java Virtual Machine

[2] In Apache, it is easy to use Alias and Directory commands to publish just about any directory in arbitrary URL (within domain, of course)

[3] In Apache Tomcat this is usually simply done by copying .war file to webapps directory

[4] This is Debian's default setting