P-A web server "courses" area information

This is information on the "courses" directory tree on the MSU P-A web server (www.pa.msu.edu) provided for professors/instructors who wish to maintain web pages for a course.

Who may edit what course area

If you are teaching a course and your name appears on the Teaching Assignments web page (or the sorted-by-course equivalent web page -- if they don't match, let us know), then your account on the departmental web server system has the permissions referred to below for the course in question.

Note: as of 10 July 2009, if you're listed in the MSU online schedule of courses, you should be on these web pages and your permissions have been set.

If you are teaching a course and these Teaching Assignment web pages don't list you, submit a ticket at http://helpdesk.pa.msu.edu/.

If you have not logged into the departmental web server system in a long time, you may not remember your password or it may have expired; information on resetting passwords may be found at http://support.pa.msu.edu/, but if you don't recall what the password was, or if it really has expired, submit a ticket at http://helpdesk.pa.msu.edu/.

If you are teaching a course but you want someone else (grad student, secretary or other faculty member, for example) to maintain its web pages, submit a ticket at http://helpdesk.pa.msu.edu/.

If you are teaching a course but you want to maintain your web pages on another web server or in another area of the departmental web server, there are instructions below for setting up an "auto-redirect" in the course area web page to it, or you can submit a ticket at http://helpdesk.pa.msu.edu/.

Note: instructors from outside the P-A Dept may not already have accounts (though some do). If you want to maintain course web pages on our server, or set up an "auto-redirect" to another server, submit a ticket at http://helpdesk.pa.msu.edu/.

Layout of directory tree

As seen from the web:

Note: If "filename" is left unspecified, the default behavior of the P-A web server is to display the contents of the file index.html if it exists, and to automatically generate an index listing of the directory's contents if there is no index.html file or link.

During a given semester, semester-name may be replaced by current, or left out entirely for that semester's COURSENAME areas. For example, during Fall Semester 2009, the file at

• Valid values for COURSENAME for a given semester-name may be found at the web page at
  
  URL:"http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/semester-name/index.html"
  These URLs also contain pointers to pages linking to the subset of courses which were active on the web during semester-name.
   
• Each COURSENAME may be entered as all-upper-case or as all-lower-case (no mixed-case COURSENAMEs).
   
• Each COURSENAME area is, for the duration of a semester, writeable by a specific file access group to which the professor of the course has been added (any other users he/she may designate will be added to the file access group upon request).
   

What you may do in your courses/semester-name/COURSENAME area

1. You may add any files or subdirectories you want to it.
    
2. You can't change the files default.html  or  desc_COURSENAME.html.
    
3. You can remove the index.html link, which by default sets up index.html as an alias for default.html.   Then, you can create your own index.html file (preferably containing at least the same information as may be found in the default.html file). This may be accomplished via the following commands:
   
   rm index.html
cp default.html index.html
edit index.html
   
   where edit is the name of your preferred text editor (e. g., vi, emacs, nedit, xedit, jed).
    
   Since you have write permission for this new index.html, you may also use text-mode FTP to transfer it to a different system where you might be more comfortable with the editors, and then transfer the edited version back on top of it (though you might want to make an extra copy of the original first, just in case).
    
   Note that as long as index.html remains a link to default.html, the latter' s file restrictions apply. You have permission to remove the link, but not to change anything as long as it still exists.
    
4. If more than one account is authorized to manage files in a course's area, files and subdirectories should have "group-write" permissions set (see General Tips, below).
    
5. Areas using HTML "Basic" security may be set up upon request, to restrict access to certain files to viewers who provide a password.
    
6. The area will revert to a generic access group after the following semester becomes "current" -- its contents will remain available, read-only, on the web.
   
   • If you have any files which contain info which you don't want retained and accessible past the end of the term, let us know (submit a helpdesk ticket), and they will be replaced with placeholders stating that the material is no longer available on the website. This will satisfy your security concerns without breaking web links.
   
    

General tips

• File permission groups are set up on a per-course basis. Be careful that you are in the correct semester subdirectory for a course, so you are not changing files for an inappropriate semester's offering of that course.
   
• The tips regarding file permissions refer to logging into an ssh shell (command-line) session. The departmentally recommended ssh client software for Windows has a file transfer window mode, in which right-clicking a file or directory name and choosing "Properties" will show and allow changes to file permissions graphically, so that may be used instead of the command-line window commands. The different method of viewing and changing permissions does not affect which permissions are recommended.
   
• The preferred file permission for subdirectories and HTML files is world-read-and-execute, group-read-write-&-execute, and owner-read-write-&-execute.
  • To do this, from an ssh login session on www.pa.msu.edu, issue
    chmod 775 filename.html   or
    chmod 775 subdirname
  • For subdirectories, also issue
    chmod g+s subdirname
  • These permissions allow other people in your course access permission group to edit, overwrite, or upload via FTP new versions of the file.
  • The execute permission is used as a flag to the web server to allow certain HTML pre-parsing functions to occur, such as server-side includes and cgi scripts. For example, there is one at the end of this web page which automatically updates the page's last modification date using the command
    <!--#config timefmt="%Y.%m.%d (%A) %T %Z" --> <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED" -->.
    (If you don't use these, the execute permission is not necessary, but it won't hurt, either).


• The preferred file permission for most other files (including especially GIF, JPG & PNG graphics files, PDF documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations) is world-read-only and group-read-&-write.
  • To do this, from an ssh login session on www.pa.msu.edu, issue
    chmod 664 filename.gif
  • This permission allows other people in your course access permission group to edit, overwrite, or upload (via FTP or SCP) new versions of the file.
  • You do NOT want the execute permission to be set on these files, or the HTML pre-parser will see it as a flag to swing into action. Even though the pre-parser probably won't find anything to do, the file will end up being sent to a user's browser in a form it will not recognize as a graphics (or spreadsheet or whatever) file, and the browser will not do what needs to be done to make proper use of the file.


• You can check that permissions are set correctly by issuing
  
  ls -al filename.html
  
  The preferred permissions for HTML files look like:
  -rwxrwxr-x 1 username groupname 398 Aug 5 18:34 filename.html
  
  The preferred permissions for other files look like:
  -rw-rw-r-- 1 username groupname 890 Aug 5 18:35 file.name
  
  The preferred permissions for subdirectories
  (use ls -ald subdirname) look like:
  drwxrwsr-x 3 username groupname 512 Aug 5 18:33 subdirname
  
  The permissions are listed for owner, group, and world (in that order).
  The "chmod 775 or 664" command encodes read/write/execute for each of these groups in octal.
  The "chmod g+s" for subdirectories causes new files created in the subdirectory to be in the correct permissions group.
  
  
• If you FTP files into your course area from another machine:
  • Use text (ASCII) mode for HTML files, straight text files and most PostScript files.
    
  • Use binary mode for image files (GIF, PNG, JPG), Adobe Acrobat files (PDF), word-processed files (DOC, etc.), spreadsheet files (XLS, etc.) -- in fact, most kinds of files other than those listed in the "text" mode category above.
    
  • The default file permission for files deposited by FTP is "644".
    You will have to log in later and issue the command (above) for the appropriate "preferred file permission".
    NOTE: this default does not include "group-writeable" permission, so if you are a member of a course access permission group with other people, they will not be able to edit or overwrite these files (including transferring in new versions via FTP) until you reset permissions away from the default.
    
  • NOTE: we strongly recommend using SFTP or scp for file transfer instead of standard FTP, as the latter sends passwords over the net in the clear, while the newer, secure, protocols encrypt the password before it enters the network. Many graphical SFTP/scp clients allow one to easily see and set file permissions (usually by selecting the file name with a right-click, shift-click or ctrl-click and choosing 'properties' or 'permissions' from an option list). This would eliminate the need to separately log in and use the 'chmod' command to reset permissions as described earlier. Thus, choosing SFTP or scp may not only enhance security but also simplify file management.
    
  
  
• If you are maintaining a separate area for your course pages, perhaps on another web server, you can create an index.html or .htaccess file whose sole purpose is to automatically redirect users' browsers to that other area. Instructions for doing this, and an example, may be found at the URL "http://www.pa.msu.edu/services/computing/faq/auto-redirect.html".
   
• If possible, try not to design pages which may be viewed properly only with the most recent version of a particular web browser. The original intent of the World Wide Web was to convey information, not layout expertise. If your students can't read what you've written without jumping through hoops, why go through all the trouble of "fancifying" in the first place?
   
• Don't put students' grades or exam scores on the web in any way that a casual web viewer can associate a grade or score with a particular student, or in any way that students can see other students' grades/scores. This includes listings using just student numbers, since student ID cards using student numbers are used (not surprisingly) as a means of identifying particular students. Doing so would be a violation of various MSU policies set up as a result of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
   

Note on "Courses active on the web this semester" web page: The current semester's courses area is checked at least weekly (at the beginning of the semester, every couple of days) for files which are new or changed from the time of the last check. The course areas in which these new/changed files reside are noted, and if they are not already on the "active" list, are added to it.