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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.
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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/.
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As seen from a login session on www.pa.msu.edu which will
have links to the files via a network connection so they appear to have the same filename):
/web/documents/courses/semester-name/COURSENAME/filename
As seen from the web:
URL: "http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/semester-name/COURSENAME/filename"
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
URL:"http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2009fall/PHY251/desc_PHY251.html"
may also be accessed as
URL:"http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/current/PHY251/desc_PHY251.html"
or
URL:"http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/PHY251/desc_PHY251.html"
but the latter URLs used to point to the 2002spring version during Spring Semester 2002, and to other versions during the appropriate semesters.
In cases where a course is not offered during Summer Semester, its entry reverts to the previous Spring's.
Courses offered in Summer Semester have their own separate web areas.
Current valid values for semester-name:
- 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.
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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).
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What you may do in your
courses/semester-name/COURSENAME area
If you've got permissions for a course area:
- You may add any files or subdirectories you want to it.
- You can't change the files
default.html
or desc_COURSENAME.html.
- 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.
- 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).
- Areas using HTML "Basic" security may be set up upon request, to restrict access
to certain files to viewers who provide a password.
- 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.
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- 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).
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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.
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