Dokeos

Dokeos FREE 1.8.6 - Svalbard installation guide

Thank you for downloading Dokeos FREE.

• Quick preview of Dokeos features set
• Dokeos Svalbard screenshots
• Test Dokeos on http://dev.dokeos.com

This guide explains how to install Dokeos Learning Management. Please read this fully before proceeding with the installation.

Contact us to learn more about Dokeos PRO and Dokeos MEDICAL : info@dokeos.com 

Contents

1. Pre-requisites
2. Installation of Dokeos LMS
3. Upgrade from a previous version of Dokeos
4. Troubleshooting
5. Administration section
6. LDAP 
7. Mathematical formulas with LaTeX

1. Pre-requisites

Dokeos
can be installed on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and UNIX servers
indifferently. However, we recommend the use of Linux server for
optimal flexibility, remote control and scalability.

Dokeos FREE is a LMS running Apache, MySQL and PHP5 (the so called AMP trilogy).

All these software are open source and freely available.

To run Dokeos LMS on your server, you need to install WAMP, LAMP or MAMP:

• To install WAMP (AMP on Windows), we recommend the XAMPP .exe installer
• To install LAMP
  (AMP on Linux), use the Package manager of your favourite distribution (Synaptic, RPMFinder etc.).
  For instance, on a Ubuntu server, use Shell or Synaptic following the
  Ubuntuguide on Apache and the following sections
• To install MAMP (AMP on Mac OS X), refer to the MAMP dedicated website

MySQL database server

You will need a login and password allowing to administrate and create
at least one database. By default, Dokeos will create a new database
for each course created. It means your host should allow you to create
and administrate several databases. You can also install Dokeos using
only one database, in that case you have to select this option during
the installation.

2. Installation of Dokeos LMS

• Download Dokeos FREE
• Unzip it
• Copy the dokeos directory in your Apache web directory. This can be
  C:\xampp\htdocs\ on a Windows server or /var/www/html/ on a Linux server
• Open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox...) and type
  http://localhost/dokeos/ if you install locally or
  http://www.domain.com/dokeos/ if you install remotely
• Follow the web installation process. You can accept all default
  values. Consider changing the admin password to remember it. 

The following directories need to be readable, writeable and executable for everyone:

• dokeos/main/inc/conf/
• dokeos/main/upload/users/
• dokeos/main/default_course_document/
• dokeos/archive/
• dokeos/courses/
• dokeos/home/

(where 'dokeos' is the directory in which you installed Dokeos)

On Linux, Mac OS X and BSD operating systems you can use the CHMOD
777 command for this (although we recommend you seek advice from an
experienced system administrator).
In Windows, you may need to check the properties of the folders (by
right-clicking on them).

2.5. The following files need to be readable and writeable for the web browser,
only during the installation process:

• dokeos/main/inc/conf/configuration.php (if present)

On Linux, Mac OS X and BSD operating systems you can use the CHMOD
666 command for this (although we recommend you seek advice from an
experienced system administrator).
In Windows, you may need to check the properties of the files and
folders (by right-clicking on them).

NOTES:

Do not modify the home_*.html files directly. Instead,
choose "Configure the homepage" in the Dokeos administration section.

Windows : with combination packages like XAMPP, out of the box, login and password
for MySQL should probably remain empty.

Configuration and security after installation

• Protect your configuration file:
  make sure no one can overwrite it. You can find the config file in (dokeos folder)/main/inc/conf/configuration.php.
  Make it read-only (windows/xwindows: right-click the file to edit the
  properties. linux/bsd/macosx: use the chmod 444 command). The config
  file is created by Apache so you may need to be root user to change its
  permissions.
• Protect your installation folder:
  if the (dokeos folder)/main/install
  folder is still accessible, someone could install over your existing
  version (you could lose your data that way). Move the folder somewhere
  out of the web directories so it is not accessible, change its name, or
  edit its properties so no one can read or execute it.
• For better security:
  making the files world-writable will help you install, and solves many
  issues for people without much admin experience. However, it's better
  security to make the owner of the apache process (often called apache
  or www-data) also owner of all the dokeos files and folders. Ths way,
  these files need only be readable and writable by the Apache process
  owner, not by the entire world.
• Configure your Dokeos installation:
  in the administration section of Dokeos, you can use the Dokeos Config Settings to adjust the behavior of your installation.
• Configure Dokeos mail:
  most of Dokeos uses the mail settings from the php.ini file. However,
  the announcements tool uses phpMailer (another free software project)
  and the settings for this tool can be adjusted in (dokeos folder)/main/inc/conf/mail.conf.php.

PHP configuration

To get the best of Dokeos, you need to finetune PHP settings. Consider :

• Editing php.ini file (on windows can be located at C:\xampp\php\php.ini, on Ubuntu Linux : /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
• search the word "max" and increase values to optimise the server
• you may want to end up with the following values :

Some users could meet problems if their PHP settings don't fit
these ones:

• short_open_tag = On
• safe_mode = Off
• magic_quotes_gpc = On
• magic_quotes_runtime = Off

Past Dokeos versions required register_globals to be set to On. This is
no longer necessary, this can be set to Off and Dokeos will work fine.

BSD users: these php libraries have to be included during php installation:

• php-mysql The mysql shared extension for php
• php-pcre The pcre shared extension for php
• php-session The session shared extension for php
• php-zlib The zlib shared extension for php
• (optional) php-ldap if you want to be able to use LDAP authentication

3. Upgrade from a previous version of Dokeos

Before upgrading we heavily recommend you do a full backup of the previous
Dokeos directories and databases. If you are unsure how to achieve this
please ask your hosting provider for advice.

3.1 Upgrading from Dokeos 1.8.x

If you upgrade from Dokeos 1.8.x : 

• check that you haven't left any customised stylesheet or image*
• download the Dokeos 1.8.6 install package from the Dokeos download page
• unzip the new files of Dokeos 1.8.6 over the files of the older version
• point your browser on your portal URL + main/install/
• choose your language and click Upgrade from 1.8.x

* Styles and images are located in the main/css or main/img
directories. You can still recover them from your backup if you have made it.
Any modified style or image that uses the default style/image name will be
overwritten by the next step. To avoid loosing your customisations, always
ensure you copy the styles/images under a new name and use and modify the
copy, not the original. The original will always be overwritten by newer
versions. In Dokeos 1.8.5, we have changed the name of several CSS themes.
Backwards compatibility is ensured by the fact that an upgrade only adds the
new themes, but you should try and use these new themes rather than sticking
to the old ones which will be deprecated shortly (not maintained).

3.2 Upgrading from Dokeos 1.6.x

If you upgrade from a lower version of Dokeos (1.6.x), the first
and most important thing to do is to *move* your current directory to another
place.
An easy way to do that is to create a subdirectory called "old_version"
in your current Dokeos directory and move everything in there using a
simple "move" command (i.e. under Linux: mkdir old_version; mv *
old_verion/), then make the old_version/ directory writeable by the web
server so that courses/ and upload/ directories can be moved from the
old to the new installation.

The complete process is as follow:

• move the current Dokeos directory contents to a subdirectory called
  old_version and make it writeable by the web server. This
  is important to allow the move of the courses/ and upload/ directories
  to the new install
• download the Dokeos 1.8.6 install package from the
  Dokeos download page
• unzip the new files of Dokeos 1.8.6 in the main Dokeos directory. The
  new directory main should be located directly inside your
  Dokeos root folder
• point your browser on your portal URL
• choose your language and click Upgrade from 1.6.x and confirm the
  current directory of the old version

NOTE: The upgrade from 1.6.x to 1.8.x implies a revision of
the customised graphics and styles. The new version uses a complete new
set of icons and styles, which means the ones from version 1.6 cannot be
simply reused. The good news is the version 1.8.x allows you to create
your own style in a separate css folder, that you can then reuse through
all the 1.8.x versions

WARNING:

Do not delete the previous Dokeos installation directory before installing
the new one. When the update is successfully finished, you can remove
the old path.

NOTE:

Do not modify the home_*.html files directly. Instead,
choose "Configure the homepage" in the Dokeos administration section.

3.3 In both cases

The following directories need to be readable, writeable and executable for the web server:

• dokeos/main/inc/conf/
• dokeos/main/upload/users/
• dokeos/main/default_course_document/
• dokeos/archive/
• dokeos/courses/
• dokeos/home/

On Linux, Mac OS X and BSD operating systems you can quick-fix this using the
CHMOD 777 command, but if you are unsure, we recommend you seek advice for
your own OS on our forum.
In Windows, you may need to check the properties of the folders.

3.4 Quick-upgrade from 1.6.x guide for Linux

The following quick-upgrade guide assumes that:

• the Dokeos database username (for MySQL) is "dokeos_db_user" and your login is "dokeos_user"
• the Dokeos installation is currently in /var/www/dokeos/ and it has 777 permissions
• your portal's URL is http://www.portalurl.com/

On the command-line, type:

• cd /tmp
• mysqldump -u dokeos_db_user -p --all-databases --result-file=/home/dokeos_user/dokeos_old.sql
• cp -ra /var/www/dokeos /home/dokeos_user/backup_dokeos
• mkdir /var/www/dokeos/old_version
• mv /var/www/dokeos/* /var/www/dokeos/old_version/
• chmod -R 0777 /var/www/dokeos/old_version/
• wget http://www.dokeos.com/download/dokeos-1.8.6.tar.gz
• tar zxvf dokeos-1.8.6.tar.gz
• sudo cp -ra dokeos-1.8.6/* /var/www/dokeos/
• rm dokeos-1.8.6.tar.gz
• sudo rm -r dokeos-1.8.6/

Then:

• Direct your browser to http://www.portalurl.com/main/install/
• Proceed with the installation
• Review the directories permissions

4. Troubleshooting

If you have problems, go to the Dokeos website and ask a question on the
support forum. Please read the previous messages first to see if there is
already an answer to your question. We also maintain a list of
Frequently Asked Questions.

5. Administration section

To access the Dokeos administration section, open browser,
go to your Dokeos adress and log in with the admin user.
Then you will see a "Platform admin section" link in the header of the
web page. There you can manage users, courses, sessions, portal look
and feel, homepage content, course categories etc. 

6. LDAP

This part is optional, only organisations with an LDAP server will need to read this.

An LDAP module is already provided in Dokeos, but it has to be configured to make it work.

Compiling

Linux servers: It's possible that you have to recompile php with ldap support.
Newer distributions also allow downloading rpms for additional packages.

Activating LDAP in Dokeos

In (dokeos folder)/main/inc/conf/configuration.php, around line 90, you see

//for new login module

//uncomment these to activate ldap

//$extAuthSource['ldap']['login'] = "./main/auth/ldap/login.php";

//$extAuthSource['ldap']['newUser'] = "./main/auth/ldap/newUser.php";

remove the // from the last two lines to activate LDAP.

Settings

Ask the LDAP server admin for the settings:

• ldap server name
• ldap server port (usually 389)
• ldap dc

Since 1.8.5, you have to change the LDAP settings inside the "Portal
administration" panel, under "Dokeos configuration settings", section
"LDAP".

As an example, you should find the following kind of values:

LDAP main server's address: "myldapserver.com"; // your ldap server

LDAP main server's port: 389; // your ldap server's port number

LDAP domain: "dc=xx, dc=yy, dc=zz"; //domain

Teacher/student status

By default, Dokeos will check if the "employeenumber" field has a value. If it has, then Dokeos will
consider this user as being a teacher.

If you want to change this behaviour, you can edit main/auth/ldap/authldap.php, function ldap_put_user_info_locally(),
and change the if (empty($info_array[$tutor_field])) condition to whatever suits you.

You can also remove this check by removing the condition and leaving only the $status = STUDENT; line.

Protected LDAP servers

Some LDAP servers do not support anonymous use of the directory services.
In this case, you should fill in the appropriate fields in the
administration panel (e.g. "manager" and "mypassword") and Dokeos will
try to authenticate using these, or fall back to anonymous mode before
giving up.

LDAP import into sessions

There is a new set of scripts now that allow you to insert users
from LDAP directly into a Dokeos session. This, however, relies on a
set of static choices in the LDAP contact attributes.

The fields used intensively by the Dokeos module are:

• uid, which is matched to the username in Dokeos
• userPassword, which is matched to the user password, although
  this part will only work for non-encrypted passwords for now, but it
  shouldn't be necessary if using the LDAP server as authentication
• ou should end with the year of the person registration or any
  criteria you will use to filter users, so that they can be retrieved on
  that criteria
• sn is used as the lastname field in Dokeos
• givenName is used as the firstname field in Dokeos
• mail is used as the email field in Dokeos

7. Mathematical formulas with LaTeX

This part is optional, only organisations wanting to use mathematical formulas inside the online editor might want to read this.

You can enable mathematical equations writing inside the Dokeos online editor (FCKEditor) by applying the following steps:

• 1. Configure your Apache installation to add a cgi-bin directory that contains a symbolic link to the mimetex.cgi in dokeos/main/inc/lib/mimetex/(*see below)
• 2. Reload your Apache configuration
• 3. Edit the dokeos/main/inc/lib/fckeditor/myconfig.js and
  • 3.1. Add FCKConfig.Plugins.Add("mimetex", "en", sOtherPluginPath ) ; at the end of the file
  • 3.2. Add 'mimetex' at the end of the
    FCKConfig.ToolbarSets lines where you want the LaTeX icon to appear
    (there is one FCKConfig.ToolbarSets by tool). For example:
    FCKConfig.ToolbarSets["Test"] = [
      ['Bold','Italic','Underline','StrikeThrough','Subscript','Superscript','Link','Unlink','ImageManager','MP3','OrderedList','UnorderedList','Table','mimetex']

    ] ;

    You can add it to all the tools, or only to the document and tests tools, for example

• 4. For Windows servers only, update dokeos/main/inc/lib/fckeditor/editor/plugins/mimetex/mimetex.html to replace mimetex.cgi by mimetex.exe
• 5. Clear your browser's cache to test it (very important). This can be done using your browser's settings page

Adding the corresponding cgi-bin directory to your Apache configuration could be done, in Apache 2, like this:

Adding a symbolic link can be done, under Windows, by creating a
shortcut to the mimetex.exe file from the cgi-bin directory, or under
Linux by issuing the following command:

This procedure should make a new icon available in your Dokeos online
editor, which will make it possible to insert mathematical formulas
into your documents.

Contact address: Dokeos, Rue Victor Hugo 201, 108, B-1030 Brussels, Belgium

Mail: info@dokeos.com

Tel. +32 (0)2 669 69 55