New Version 2.9.1 Released

This is primarily a bug fix release.
It is recommended to update 2.9.0 installations to 2.9.1.

Changes from 2.9.0

Student interface
   - Course catalog: display of subcategory names containing spaces 
     works again.
   - Browser detection updated for IE for consistency in charset used 
     for rendering symbols with TeX-to-HTML (TTH).
   - Remove HTML tags and decode HTML Entities in message excerpt 
     sent as e-mail, (unless user preference set to retain HTML tags), 
     and encode in utf8 before sending.
   - Ability to post to discussion based on "discussend" parameter 
     takes precedence over the ability to post based on problem's open
     status for student.


Instructor interface
   - Description for roles-based and user-based course-wide blocking of 
     discussion or chat no longer reversed in course settings interface.
   - Resource-specific parameter for discussend setting (closes discussion)
     applies to standalone boards (i.e., those not associated with homework).
   - "Edit this resource" link shown on all servers belonging to domain of 
     resource, if user has author/co-author privileges for resource.
   - Restriction of a slot to use with specific resource now works correctly.
   - Speed-up in processing enrollment of users from an uploaded CSV file.
   - Leading and trailing spaces trimmed from email, domain, 
     institutional status and username entries from uploaded CSV file.
   - Reverse association for columns in file of users works again.
   - Improvements in feedback when enrolling from CSV file if institutional 
     rules for format of usernames and/or studentIDs prevent user creation.   
   - Names of users affected by bulk access date changes made with 
     "Manage Users" utility displayed correctly.
   - Automated adds and automated drops settings stored correctly for 
     course requests.
   - Display when changing parameters in table mode rendered correctly.
   - Course Coordinator can now use the role switcher to change to a role 
     in cases where the user's own assigned roles include an expired role 
     of the same type/section in the course.
   - If user has advanced role (and hence discussion is always open), 
     note appended to discussion link, if discussion is closed for 
     other roles.


Authoring resources
   - Publication of raw XML files (i.e., with .xml extension) allowed again. 
   - Warning that alt-tag is still output, even for encrypted URLs;
   - Can assign a co-author role to a username containing an underscore.
   - Updates to problem templates (Custom Response, and plot data) to:
     (respectively) extend recognized number types, and limit execution time.


Printout generation:
   - TeX errors eliminated when printing .sequence files with answers
     (or only answers) from Construction Space.
   - TeX errors eliminated when printing HTML tables created dynamically
     within a script block.
   - Table border settings now enforced when printing tables.
   - Text in table cells with align="right" attribute kept vertically aligned.
   - Support restored for the TeXwidth attribute in <td> tags.
   - TeX errors eliminated when generating printouts with answers only,
     or in a composite page.
   - Printing of folders containing simplepage(s) works again.


Domain Coordination
   - Domain Coordinator can override course-specific cloning rights.
   - Selection of clonable courses based on wildcard within a specific domain
     possible again.
   - When ad hoc co-author access acquired via "Edit resource' in a course,
     original role context is preserved.
   - Display of roles in hot list for Domain Coordinator readability restored.
   - Auto-creation of courses via command line call with arguments 
     (legacy method) works again.
   - Domain Coordinators can filter courses by creation time when selecting
     a course.
   - Warning displayed if clone selection is attempted when no course 
     owner specified.
   - Domain Coordinator can display cloning information in course 
     creation requests.


Internals/system behavior
   - Changes to reduce the incidence of timeouts when large amounts
     of data are sent between LON-CAPA machines across the network.
   - Frequency/times for new entries being added to lonapa cron now saved 
     by ./UPDATE
   - Improvements to filtering for Community roles when assembling roles 
     supported on LON-CAPA version installed on server hosting user's session.
   - Scientific Linux version checking for updates to RPMs works again.
   - Processing of requests for creation of official courses queued pending
     automatic validation of instructor status now supported.

Localization     
   - New translations and improvements for Spanish interface.


Specific bugs addressed in this release:
2703, 5372, 5435, 6067, 6175, 6233, 6288, 6242, 6294, 6295, 6300, 6301, 6304, 
6312, 6313, 6317, 6331, 6332, 6335, 6363, 6366, 6373, 6378, 6381


Installation Notes:

To use this release you need to have version 1-18 of LONCAPA-prerequisites
installed. (This is the same version as required for LON-CAPA 2.9.0).

To install this update:

1) You will need to be running Fedora Core 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12,
RHEL (AS|ES) 4 or 5, SUSE 10.2, 10.3, 11.1 or 11.2, SLES 9, 10 or 11,
CentOS 5, or Scientific Linux 5.
(Fedora Core 5 should continue to work but is deprecated.)

2) Update LONCAPA-prerequisites to 1-18 if necessary.

(a) Fedora
yum update

(b) Red Hat Enterprise 4

up2date -u LONCAPA-prerequisites

(c) Red Hat 5/Centos 5/Scientific Linux 5

yum update

(d) SuSE/SLES

Use yast-> Installation Source to refresh the LON-CAPA repository
Use yast->Software Management->Search to update LONCAPA-prerequisites

On all distributions, it is recommended that you check that you have
the correct versions of LONCAPA-prerequisites installed before proceeding.

rpm -q LONCAPA-prerequisites

should report:
LONCAPA-prerequisites-1-18.X

(where X is a distro identifier e.g., fc12.lc)

3) Download the new LON-CAPA tarball from
wget http://install.lon-capa.org/versions/loncapa-2.9.1.tar.gz

and untar it

tar xzvf loncapa-2.9.1.tar.gz

4) stop the LON-CAPA system services

/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol stop

5) stop the web server:

Fedora/RHEL/Centos/Scientific Linux
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd stop

SLES 9:
/etc/init.d/apache stop

SUSE 10.2,10.3,11.1,11.2/SLES 10,11:
/etc/init.d/apache2 stop


6) Run the UPDATE script as root
cd loncapa-2.9.1
su
./UPDATE


7) restart the LON-CAPA system services
/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol start


8) restart the web server:

Fedora/RHEL/Centos/Scientific Linux
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start

SLES 9:
/etc/init.d/apache start

SUSE 10.2,10.3,11.1,11.2/SLES 10,11:
/etc/init.d/apache2 start


----NOTES
1) Many questions are answered at http://help.lon-capa.org
2) Defects reports, and enhancements requests can be entered at
       http://bugs.lon-capa.org
3) Mailing lists can be joined and left at http://mail.lon-capa.org

Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium

