Adapt Learning Community: Installation in Linux

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I wanted to install this on a Linux mint setup.

the installation guide is not very clear. and I have run into troubles.
first some comments about the guide:
- explain for linux users how to setup git and node. I think i succeeded.
- npm needs to be installed separately.

I was able to install adapt and grunt. at least there were no error messages.

then I typed into the terminal: Adapt create course.

which gave me an error message saying:

/usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory.

And now I am stuck. what should I do?

I tried looking at the manual installation guide, but that mentions something about going to the course directory to download the framework. unfortunately, during the install i never got to choose any directories, so I do not know where to find this course directory.

any help on the no such file or directory problem, or the manual installation?

maybe i should first cd to another directory and then run adapt create course? but if so which directory? do i need to reboot the system first?

thanks for any help

Okay I seem to have solved it.

the installation of node.js did not give any errors, but did not succeed. I had to follow the installation instructions here:

https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager

then adapt was able to run

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Thanks, Sander. Glad you got it working.

Sven

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Hi Sander,

We've begun work recently on fuller installation instructions for the authoring tool. They're under review. Due to your recent experience, can you review them and comment:
https://github.com/chucklorenz/demo-wiki/wiki

Comments from you (and from anyone else reading this) would be very helpful. Especially if your comments can help fill in what's missing. Please place your comments in "Issues" found in the wiki's right-side navigation bar.

Issues icon highlighted in right-side navigation bar

Thanks for your help,
Chuck

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I will try to give some feedback.

But for now I have run into another problem. When I press preview in the authoring tool I get:

Error: EACCES, mkdir '/home/sander/adapt_authoring/temp/5511851f5b4883cd7c58ee5d/adapt_framework/courses'

in the node server terminal window.

in the authoring tool I get an error saying: error generating preview please contact administrator.

It seems that the server is not running with administrator priviliges and therefor cannot create the folders. but that is just my best guess.

it works when i run it from an elevated terminal session. (su) so problem is fixable, but should maybe be put in a manual somewhere

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(FYI- I updated the draft of Node installation section based on the link you provided earlier in this thread. Thank you.)

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Okay,

I think I got it up and running. I made a small test training. it is working, but i have some small issues.

As indicated in the first post I am using Linux mint 17.1. linux mint is a popular distribution.
It comes installed with firefox as browser.
using firefox there is a problem viewing the add component screen. (see screenshot)

So I installed chrome. this works better, until i want to see the result.

when loading the published files (preview did not seem to work, because it uses a pop-up, i didnot check for a solution yet) chrome was stuck on the loading screen because of a javascript error. (see screenshot)

So back to firefox, and firefox loaded the files perfectly.

To conclude: it is working with the workaround, but maybe browser compatibility could be improved.

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Sometimes I hate it when i keep thinking of my own answers.

it turns out that this happens in chrome when you try to open local files. it just does not work.

the solution is to put it on a webserver and open the content from a browser using localhost.

so to solve this: install LAMP, copy the extracted zip files to var\www\html\ and type localhost in the webbrowser.

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No need for the entire LAMP stack. If you have python installed you can open the directory in the terminal and do

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

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Hey guys. I have just setup the latest build on an Amazon Linux box as well. From all appearances I have got it working. I can login from my local machine to the box sitting in the cloud. I can create a Course and Preview it. However I am getting one main issue when trying to upload an asset -

Also when running "node server" I did get this issue regarding bson: (however it still works...?) I never got that error on my local windows installation...

[root@ip-10-0-0-25 adapt_authoring]# node server &
[2] 25578
[root@ip-10-0-0-25 adapt_authoring]# { [Error: Cannot find module '../build/Release/bson'] code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND' }
js-bson: Failed to load c++ bson extension, using pure JS version
info: [27 Mar 2015 00:10:07 +00:00] configuration loaded from /home/ec2-user/adapt_authoring/conf/config.json
2015-03-27T00:10:07.865+0000 I NETWORK [initandlisten] connection accepted from 127.0.0.1:51946 #46 (1 connection now open)
2015-03-27T00:10:07.867+0000 I NETWORK [initandlisten] connection accepted from 127.0.0.1:51947 #47 (2 connections now open)
2015-03-27T00:10:07.881+0000 I NETWORK [initandlisten] connection accepted from 127.0.0.1:51948 #48 (3 connections now open)
2015-03-27T00:10:07.882+0000 I NETWORK [initandlisten] connection accepted from 127.0.0.1:51949 #49 (4 connections now open)
2015-03-27T00:10:07.889+0000 I NETWORK [initandlisten] connection accepted from 127.0.0.1:51950 #50 (5 connections now open)
info: [27 Mar 2015 00:10:08 +00:00] Server started listening on port 5000
2015-03-27T00:10:08.661+0000 I NETWORK [initandlisten] connection accepted from 127.0.0.1:51951 #51 (6 connections now open)

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This popped up in my terminal window as well... maybe something wrong with node-ffprobe??

[root@ip-10-0-0-25 adapt_authoring]# info: [27 Mar 2015 01:13:59 +00:00] Retrieving JSON
info: [27 Mar 2015 01:13:59 +00:00] All assets processed
info: [27 Mar 2015 01:13:59 +00:00] [object Object]
TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of null
at /home/ec2-user/adapt_authoring/plugins/filestorage/localfs/index.js:393:39
at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/home/ec2-user/adapt_authoring/node_modules/node-ffprobe/lib/ffprobe.js:110:4)
at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:98:17)
at maybeClose (child_process.js:766:16)
at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:833:5)
[root@ip-10-0-0-25 adapt_authoring]# info: [27 Mar 2015 01:16:28 +00:00] Retrieving JSON
info: [27 Mar 2015 01:16:28 +00:00] All assets processed
info: [27 Mar 2015 01:16:28 +00:00] [object Object]
[root@ip-10-0-0-25 adapt_authoring]# TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of null
at /home/ec2-user/adapt_authoring/plugins/filestorage/localfs/index.js:393:39
at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/home/ec2-user/adapt_authoring/node_modules/node-ffprobe/lib/ffprobe.js:110:4)
at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:98:17)
at maybeClose (child_process.js:766:16)
at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:833:5)

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Hi Greg,

You probably know from other posts in this thread that I'm trying to ensure that our installations are good experiences. Your Amazon Linux box installation is the first that I've heard of. If you find time, I'd greatly appreciate you reviewing the instructions that I'm working on and telling me if/where they fall short concerning your experience. Any insight appreciated.

User's install
Developer's install

Thanks!
Chuck

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Hi Chuck,

Well I followed your "Users install" guide which worked quite well for me. There were a few little challenges with getting some of the prerequisites installed (like ffmpeg) but that is not really within the realm of your guide.

Since I am running this on a remote box I am running mongo and node as background tasks so it might be useful mentioning something about that in your instructions.

Any ideas on my issues thought with uploading assets?

Cheers

Greg

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Are you running the node server with administrator rights?

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Yeah, I started the jobs as root user.

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Hi Greg,

The asset upload error points to an issue with the ffmpeg configuration. Can you set the useffmpeg flag to false and restart the server.js then try again? Obviously you'll lose thumbnails and meta data if you do this, but at least it will give an indication of where the problem lies.

Regards,

Brian

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Hi Brian,

Yep, that seemed to fix it. Will there be any issues with continuing to use the authoring tool without ffmpeg enabled?

Cheers

Greg

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re: uploading assets…no, sorry, Greg, I don't have ideas. Hopefully others will get involved.

Chuck

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Hi Greg

I got the same bson issue on "node install". Seemed to be solved by installing a compiler:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

This was on a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 on a Linode. I also did an "npm update" after installing the compiler.

Cheers

Dan

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Hi Dan,

After doing something similar (Amazon Linux equivalent) then the error message went away.

Thanks

Greg

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I already had build-essential. What worked in my case was editing the bson node module as described in this stack overflow answer...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28651028/cannot-find-module-build-release-bson-code-module-not-found-js-bson

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Has anyone got ffmpeg working in linux? I have to have it disabled in Adapt Author for it to allow me to upload assets...

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Yes I have it working on a Linux Fedora 21 Server. Running perfectly.

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What package did you install? It is obviously not working properly on my server as I can't save assets when it is enabled in the adapt config..? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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I have also now had a similar error that was previous reported where I cannot generate a preview.

I created a new theme (copy of the Vanilla theme) and uploaded it as a new plugin to the authoring tool. When I assigned that theme to the course in question and clicked 'Preview' I got this error on screen "Error generating preview, please contact Administrator".

Looking at the node server logs I get this:

server-0 (err): error: [07 Apr 2015 05:40:48 +00:00] undefined errno=34, code=ENOENT, path=/home/ec2-user/adapt_authorng/temp/548648aa051bb930029e4765/adapt_framework/src/theme/theme-gv-compliance
server-0 (err): error: [07 Apr 2015 05:42:22 +00:00] exec error: Error: Command failed:
server-0 (err): error: [07 Apr 2015 05:42:22 +00:00] Error: Command failed:

Then every subsequent time I try to save the theme and regenerate the preview I keep getting these two lines in the node server logs:

server-0 (err): error: [07 Apr 2015 05:42:22 +00:00] exec error: Error: Command failed:
server-0 (err): error: [07 Apr 2015 05:42:22 +00:00] Error: Command failed:

If I switch back to the Vanilla Theme and regenerate the preview it works. So because of that I thought it was my theme, however if I clean out the "adapt_authoring/temp" folder and let it all regenerate, I get the same errors on both my theme and the vanilla theme.

I am running the node server as root so I don't think it can be a permission thing??

Any ideas????

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