The WeBWorK files can be placed almost anywhere but a reasonable location is
under /usr/local/
. The setup directions contained in
linux.html
assume this location. Despite the name,
linux.html
gives detailed instructions for setting up WeBWorK on
any unix system. Another reasonable location is as follows. Your webserver uses
two directories (often called htdocs
or html
and
cgi-bin
) under which it expects to find html documents and cgi
scripts respectively. These two directories are often subdirectories of a
directory called e.g. httpd
. The webwork
directory
could be set up as a subdirectory of the httpd
directory. Placing
the webwork
directory under /usr/local/
results in a
directory structure which looks like:
usr local webwork system courses system_html
The system
, courses
and system_html
subdirectories each contain their own files and subdirectories. The
system
directory contains all the files needed by the WeBWorK
system. The courses
directory contains files related to the
individual WeBWorK courses. The system_html
directory contains
auxiliary applications, graphics, and documentation.
The webwork
directory should not be a subdirectory of
the htdocs
directory as you do not want anyone using the web to
have direct access to any files under the webwork
directory.
How much disk space you need depends on how large your courses are, how much temporary data you keep, whether or not you do any "housekeeping", whether for example you have WeBWorK keep an access_log which can become huge, etc. It is difficult to give general guidelines. The actual system files take up less than 5 MB. The system log files can be many many times that size. A 100 student course might have 25 MB of actual permanent data and 250 MB of temporary data. If you are setting up a system which will have a substantial number of users, we recommend you set up tmp directories for courses under a separate file system (see linux.html). Disk space is very cheap --- it is a lot better to have too much than too little.
No WeBWorK files are directly accessible from the web. Rather all access is through two types of methods, one for cgi scripts and one for html files. The WeBWorK cgi directory can be accessed through either of two methods.
www/webwork/system/cgi
)
so that it lies under the webserver's cgi-bin directory at which point a cgi
link will not be needed. Or you can use the second method which is our
recommended method.
ScriptAlias
directive in
Apache's httpd.conf
file. With this method it is not required that
your webserver to be set up to follow symbolic links for cgi scripts. Note that
the Apache performance tuning document mentions there is a performanace hit
(probably slight) if your webserver is not configured to follow symbolic links.
Directions for configuring apache and setting up these links are given in the linux.html document.
This script is run only when you initially set up the WeBWorK system.
webworkConfig.pm
file and
webworkInit.pm
files contain the correct path to WeBWorK on your
system and other configuration data. The webworkConfig.pm
file is
located in the .../webwork/system/lib
directory and the
webworkInit.pm
files are located in the cgi
,
cgi/cgi-scripts
, scripts
and
courseScripts
directories. Each of these four directories is a
subdirectory of .../webwork/system
.
Global.pm
file entering the cgi and html
WeBWorK URL's for your system. The variables defined in the Global.pm
file set defaults and parameters for the whole WeBWorK system. Defaults
can be over ridden for individual courses by redefining variables in the
individual course webworkCourse.ph
files. The
Global.pm
file is located in the
.../webwork/system/lib
directory.
This script is run every time a WeBWorK course is set up.
webworkCourse.ph
file. The variables defined
in this file set defaults and parameters for the individual course. System
defaults set in Global.pm
can be over ridden for the individual
course by redefining variables in the webworkCourse.ph
file. The
webworkCourse.ph
file for the course mth161
is located
in the
.../webwork/courses/mth161
directory.
index.html
, i.e. a front
page, for the course. Almost certainly, professors will want to customize this
page. The index.html
file for the course mth161
is
located in the .../webwork/courses/mth161/html
directory.