Sakai 11 ReadMe

Recommend storing files on your file system instead of database

Sakai will store the file content in the database as BLOBs by default. Set this value to change it to store the content on the filesystem instead.

The file system root for content hosting's external stored files (default is null, i.e. store them in the db). 

# bodyPath@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService=/someplace/

# KNL-309 : To enable support for deleted files set this property to some location

# bodyPathDeleted@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService=${sakai.home}db/bodyContentDeleted/

# When storing content hosting's body bits in files, an optional set of folders just within the bodyPath -

# to act as volumes to distribute the files among - a comma separate list of folders.  If left out, no volumes will be used.

# see the readme file (2.2.7 File Based Content Hosting) for more details

# bodyVolumes@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService=vol1,vol2,vol3

# Set to true to enable the release/retract and hiding of resources in ContentHostingService, Default: true

# availabilityChecksEnabled@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService=true

# Set to true to enable custom sorts within folders in ContentHostingService and the Resources tool

# DEFAULT: true

# prioritySortEnabled@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService=true

You might also want to enable the soft deletion feature of Sakai

Soft site deletion. 

If enabled, sites that are deleted will be inaccessible to normal users but won't be deleted immediately, in case they need to be recovered.

You also need to set the gracetime value, in days. After this period, the softly deleted sites will be hard deleted. Defaults to 30 days.

There is a Quartz job that must be configured to run periodically (once per day or so) to expunge those sites.

site.soft.deletion=true (default is false)

 site.soft.deletion.gracetime=30

Lessons management of HTML pages

By default, Lessons uses Content Security Policy headers to restrict what an HTML page can do, when the page is loaded from Sakai.

This is a security tradeoff. There are security risks from opening a web page written by someone else. That page can contain Javascript, which will execute with your own permissions. For this reason, by default Sakai will not open web pages in Resources. If you click on an HTML file there, it will download. We considered this inaccessible for Lessons, since the whole point of Lessons is to present content online. But we still had to deal with the security problem. So the page is served with an HTTP header that causes browsers to open the page in a “sandbox.” This restricts what the page can do.

This is new in 11. In Sakai 10, Lessons would simply open any HTML page specified.

You can restore the Sakai 10 behavior by adding the following to sakai.properties:

lessonbuilder.use-csp-headers=false

The recommended approach for dealing with this security risk is to use Sakai’s content domain support. This causes HTML pages stored in resources to be served from a different hostname than the main Sakai hostname. E.g. if your institution uses sakai.univ.edu, you might use content.sakai.univ.edu for content, resulting in URL such as https://content.sakai.univ.edu/access/content/group ….  Using a separate domain prevents web pages from executing with your Sakai privileges. Thus if you are using a separate content domain, Lessons does not add the Content Security Policy headers.

Note that it is up to the browser to enforce Content Security Policy. Safari, Chrome, and Edge do. Firefox does not. Thus Firefox users are still at risk when opening HTML pages in Lessons. I believe IE 10 and 11 also support it.

Dashboard not included

The Dashboard tool, new for Sakai 11, has not been included in the 11.0 release because too many technical issues existed and not enough person-power to address them in time for the release.

List of Dashboard issues (not included in 11.0) .   

STEP - Delivery Exceptions will be in 11.2 or later

STEP (Samigo Test and Quizzes Enhancement Project) feature to allow different delivery settings for specific sections, groups, and individuals , did not make it into Sakai 11.0 due to issues with the Auto Submit feature and data storage and retrieval issues. We are hoping to have this go into a later 11.x maintenance release.  SAM-1408 - Getting issue details... STATUS

A number of other features were delivered as a result of STEP for 11.0 including:

SAM-1369 - Getting issue details... STATUS

SAM-1263 - Getting issue details... STATUS

SAM-1596 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Features on by default in Sakai 10, turned off by default in Sakai 11

Features off by default in Sakai 10, turned on by default in Sakai 11

Highly recommended settings to override default values

# ######################################
# SAK-29271 Feedback Tool Properties
# ######################################
# Recipient address that will receive the contact emails
# feedback.technicalAddress = someaddress@institution.org

# Enable/Disable the content panel
# DEFAULT: true
# feedback.show.content.panel = false

# Enable/Disable the help panel
# DEFAULT: true
# feedback.show.help.panel = false

# Enable/Disable the technical panel
# DEFAULT: true
# feedback.show.technical.panel = false

# Enable/Disable the suggestions panel
# DEFAULT: true
# feedback.show.suggestions.panel = false

# Configure the help link destination (Sakai help by default)
# feedback.helpPagesUrl = /portal/help/main

# Configure the help link target
# feedback.helpPagesTarget = _blank

# Configure the helpdesk destination
# feedback.helpdeskUrl = https://helpdesk.institution.org

# Configure the suggestion link destination
# feedback.featureSuggestionUrl = https://suggestions.institution.org

# Add supplementary information at the right side of the tool
# feedback.supplementaryInfo = Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum

# Maximum size for the feedback attachments. This value should be lower than content.upload.max value, if it's higher the tool will use content.upload.max value
# feedback.attach.max = 10

Significant changes to existing features

Sakai 11 skins using Morpheus

Documentation is stored with Sakai on Github

Sakai 11 changes the way sites are marked as "favorites"

  cd /path/to/your/tomcat-directory

  java -cp "lib/*" -Dtomcat.dir="$PWD" org.sakaiproject.user.util.ConvertUserFavoriteSitesSakai11

  java -cp "lib\*" -Dtomcat.dir=%cd% org.sakaiproject.user.util.ConvertUserFavoriteSitesSakai11

Sakai Properties

Open and Awaiting Review Jira tickets

For listings of all open issues see:

Blocker Critical Major Minor, trivial