Overview

ECSpooler is a Python XML-RPC service, which provides the automatic

testing of submissions for ECAutoAssessmentBox. It manages a

submission queue and several backends.

Download

* "Project page":http://wdok.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/software/ecspooler

Prerequisites

* "Python":http://python.org

* A UNIX or UNIX-like operating system, e. g., NetBSD, Solaris, Mac

OS X, or Linux.

ECSpooler does run on Windows (with some restrictions), but this

is neither supported nor recommended.

* ECSpooler is primarily intended to be used via the

"ECAutoAssessmentBox":http://plone.org/products/ecautoassessmentbox

Plone product. So you will normally have a Plone installation

with ECAutoAssessmentBox.

* For use of SOAPWrapper for ECSpooler "Spyne":http://spyne.io and

"Suds":https://fedorahosted.org/suds/ is needed

Installation

* If necessary, edit the installation directories in 'setup.cfg'.

By default, ECSpooler will be installed in '/opt/ECSpooler'.

* Run 'python setup.py install' (installation may require

appropriate privileges for writing to the specified installation

directory)

* Be sure that 'ECSpooler/var' and 'ECSpooler/logs' are writeable by

the user who is starting the spooler (cf. below if you run the spooler

as root).

Quick Start

After installation, you should then be able to start the spooler (on

the default port 5050) using the command (you may have to specify

the path)::

spoolerctl start

and the Keywords backend using::

backendctl -u root -p bazquux Keywords start

If you check the status using::

spoolerctl -u root -p bazquux status

and get a response similar to::

{'queue': 0, 'backends': ['keywords'], 'pid': 26946, 'results': 0}

If you run these commands as root, the processes will be started

as user "nobody".

Once ECSpooler and the backend are running, go to your Plone site,

log in as Manager, and go to the "Site Setup", where you should

find "Auto Assessment Settings". Make the spooler connection

settings. You should the see the available backends; select the

Keywords backend.

You can then start to create Auto Assessment Boxes. See the

ECAutoAssessmentBox documentation for details.

Description

ECSpooler provides automatic testing of submissions for

"ECAutoAssessmentBox":http://plone.org/products/ecautoassessmentbox.

ECAutoAssessmentBox allows students to submit their assignments via

the Web at any time during the submission period. A typical case

are programming assignments, where students have to submit programs.

Submitted programs are automatically checked and students get

immediate feedback on whether their programs are syntactically

correct and yield the expected results.

When a student submits a program, it is first sent to ECSpooler.

ECSpooler is a Web service which manages a submission queue and

several backends. Backends provide syntax checking and testing for

a specific programming language, usually in conjunction with the

corresponding compiler and/or interpreter. The results of the tests

performed by the backend are immediately returned and are displayed

by ECAutoAssessmentBox.

Backends

We have implemented backends for Haskell (using Hugs), Scheme

(using MzScheme), Erlang, Prolog (using SWI-Prolog), Python, and

Java. Backends can also be used to implement different approaches

for testing: For example, we have implemented one backend for

Haskell which compares the output of the student solution with the

output of a model solution for a set of test data, and, as an

alternative, we have implemented another backend for Haskell which

uses QuickCheck for testing based on formal specifications of

properties required for a correct solution.

However, ECSpooler only ships with a demo backend, Keywords, which

checks whether a submission contains certain keywords specified by

the creator of the assignment. We do not include other backends

because, when executing student code, you have to take security

precautions, e.g., by using chroot, jails, or systrace. These

mechanisms are, however, system-dependent, so we cannot include

anything that runs out of the box *and* is secure. Furthermore,

paths to interpreters or compilers vary across installations. If

you are aware of the risks and if you are able to deal with the

configuration issues, we are happy provide you with our backends on

request.

Users

For job submissions and for administrative tasks authentication is

required. ECSpooler uses a simple user/password authentication

scheme. Note that a user normally corresponds to a Plone site, not

to an individual person.

ECSpooler ships with a password file ('etc/passwd') containing two

users: root (default password "bazquux") and demo (default password

"foobar").

The root user is only intended for administrative tasks. Only the

root user can start and stop backends, thus you have to provide the

username "root" and the corresponding password to spoolerctl and

backendctl.

The root user should not be used for job submissions. In a

production environment you should also definitely change the

passwords.

To create a new user, add a new line into the password file,

consisting of the user name and an MD5 hash of the password,

separated by a colon. If your system doesn't provide an md5

command, you can use the following command line to create the hash::

python -c 'import md5; print md5.new("password").hexdigest()'

SOAP Wrapper

TODO

Support

For questions and discussions about ECSpooler, please join the

"eduComponents mailing

list":https://listserv.uni-magdeburg.de/mailman/listinfo/educomponents.

Credits

ECSpooler was written by

"Mario Amelung":http://wdok.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/Members/amelung and

"Michael Piotrowski":http://wdok.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/Members/mxp.

Additional programming by Wolfram Fenske.

License

ECSpooler is licensed under the

"GPL":http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.

Copyright © 2007-2011 Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg

ECSpooler is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it

under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the

Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at

your option) any later version.

ECSpooler is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU

General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along with ECSpooler; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,

Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA