OSYL Tomcat Bundle

Requirements

1. Windows platform (Only tested under XP SP2). It should not be too difficult to have it working under Linux/MacOS though...
2. Java JDK 1.5 installed and environment variable JAVA_HOME set accordingly.
3. MySQL Server installed (version 4.1 or 5.0) and access to root account

Download

1. Download the Opensyllabus Tomcat bundle here (125 MB)
2. Create the folder c:\opt, for example (you can choose whatever folder suits you, you will simply have to adjust the procedure accordingly!).
3. Extract the bundle in c:\opt, this will create a single folder: tomcat-osyl.

Configuration

1. First, ensure that the mySQL Server is started.
2. Connect to it using the root account
3. Type the following commands:

   create database sakaiOSYL default character set utf8;
   grant all on sakaiOSYL.* to sakaiuser@'localhost' identified by 'sakaipassword';
   grant all on sakaiOSYL.* to sakaiuser@'127.0.0.1' identified by 'sakaipassword';
   quit
   

4. The sakai.properties shipped with this bundle of OpenSyllabus is configured to use the database name sakaiOSYL and the account
   sakaiuser with password sakaipassword. You will have to edit the file only if choose different values for these parameters.
5. If you already have an application listening on port 8080, either shut it down, or change the Tomcat and Sakai config (edit files conf/server.xml and sakai.properties)
6. Set your environment variable CATALINA_HOME to C:\opt\tomcat-osyl (if you extracted somewhere else, adjust accordingly!)
7. Open a new cmd.exe and type %CATALINA_HOME%\bin\startup.bat
8. Wait for Tomcat to start. Next starts will be faster as databases are only created on first startup!

Startup

1. First, be advised that OpenSyllabus is known to work much better with Firefox than in Internet Explorer. Other browsers have not been tested extensively therefore we encourage you to use Firefox 3 for the following steps.
2. Connect to http://localhost:8080/portal using account admin/admin
3. Go to Worksite Setup, you should see a couple of Course Sites which have been created automatically (0-000-00, 2-309-00, etc.)
4. Click on 2-708 for instance and then on OpenSyllabus (left menu)
5. Here you are: this course outline from HEC Montreal is titled "Information Technologies in Organizations".
6. You can navigate to other predefined websites by returning to My Workspace/Worksite Setup
7. You can also create a new Project Website, adding at least the tool OpenSyllabus. Then you will be able to create a Course Outline from scratch.
8. More user documentation will be made available as soon as possible!