Peteramati

Peteramati is a Web system for collecting, evaluating, and grading student programming assignments. It collects student assignments using Git. It uses Linux containers to run student assignments; assignment code is segregated from the main machine. Students can run test code themselves.

Configuration

Peteramati is configured primarily through the psets.json file. See doc/psetsjson.md for more information.

Installation

1. Run lib/createdb.sh to create the database. Use lib/createdb.sh OPTIONS to pass options to MySQL, such as --user and --password. Many MySQL installations require privilege to create tables, so you may need sudo lib/createdb.sh OPTIONS. Run lib/createdb.sh --help for more information. You will need to decide on a name for your database (no spaces allowed).

2. Edit the conf/options.php file with information about your class. The username and password information for the conference database is stored here.

3. Configure your web server to access Peteramati. The right way to do this depends on which server you’re running.

   Apache: Add a <Directory> to httpd.conf (or one of its inclusions) for the Peteramati directory; an Alias redirecting your preferred URL path to that directory; and a FallbackResource for that URL path. This example makes /testclass point at a Peteramati installation in /home/kohler/peteramati:

    # Apache 2.4 and later:
    <Directory "/home/kohler/peteramati">
        Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride all
        Require all granted
        FallbackResource /testclass/index.php
    </Directory>
    Alias /testclass /home/kohler/peteramati
   

   Note that the first argument to Alias should NOT end in a slash. If you get an Error 500, see “Configuration notes”.

   Everything under Peteramati’s URL path (here, /testclass) should be served by Peteramati. This normally happens automatically. However, if the URL path is /, you may need to turn off your server’s default handlers for subdirectories such as /doc.

   Nginx: Configure Nginx to access php-fpm for anything under the Peteramati URL path. All accesses should be redirected to index.php. This example, which would go in a server block, makes /testclass point at a Peteramati installation in /home/kohler/peteramati (assuming that the running php-fpm is listening on port 9000):

    location /testclass/ {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(/testclass)(/.*)$;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /home/kohler/peteramati/index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
   

   You may also set up separate location blocks so that Nginx directly serves static files under /testclass/images/, /testclass/scripts/, and /testclass/stylesheets/.

4. Build the pa-jail program and other helper programs.

    cd jail && make
   

   The pa-jail program must be set-uid/gid root, so you may need to build it using sudo make.

5. XXX Configure conf/gitssh_config and conf/sshid

6. XXX Configure the jail