[Server-devel] [XSCE] End User Documentation / Basic Setup Guide / How to upload PDFs etc

[Sameer Verma]

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 8:15 PM, Anna <aschoolf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pathagar is still a work in progress.  I'm not sure if it can handle pdfs,
> though.  Last I saw, it was just epubs.
>

By design, Pathagar will serve *any* kind of file. The file serving is
done via HTTP (Can be apache, nginx, or lighttpd, etc). Here is an
example of PDF: http://108.171.173.65/book/10/view and here's an
example of epub: http://108.171.173.65/book/8/view Pathagar itself
doesn't care about the file format, as long as the http server has a
way (MIME) to handle it. As far as the Pathagar software itself is
concerned, there are no showstopping bugs that I know of.

A couple of notes on the *installation* of Pathagar, where we do have
a bunch of problems:

1) The *current* version of Pathagar is borked. I haven't gone back to
see where it fails or how, but there should be a prior version that
works. There is also a version (patch) that apparently fixes the book
edit and upload problem. I have not tested it. I hope someone else can
take a look?

https://github.com/PathagarBooks/pathagar/issues

2) There seem to be multiple deployment approaches. We have PIP, RPM,
fabric, and the good old way of installing and configuring by hand
(which is what I follow, because I haven't had the time to test the
other methods). At the OLPC SF Summit, Jerry told me that they have
the RPM part addressed, but the current bug (cannot add/edit books)
gets in the way.

Hopefully the latest patch can address these things.

> For your immediate purposes, I'd suggest `mkdir /var/www/html/science` and
> put the pdfs there.  Then clients can go to http://schoolserver/science to
> download them.
>
> Anna
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 10:05 PM, Curt Thompson <curtathompson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> So I've been tinkering around XSCE School Server for a while now - I
>> have it set up with Internet-in-a-box via USB drive and I spent a while
>> trying to get my laptop to work as AP/server.
>>
>> I've also been poking around looking for basic setup info.  In
>> particular, I'm trying to upload these ~36 Science Textbook PDFs and I'm
>> not sure where to put them, if I should just be copying them to some
>> directory (etc/Moodle or etc/pathagar or /library/pathagar/media?) or
>> uploading them via one of these systems.  Any advice on which method is
>> best?
>>
>> I've looked around the Wiki but I can't find anything like a basic setup
>> guide (such as a reference that could be used by teachers, students,
>> and/or volunteers in the field.)  Is there such a guide?
>
>



-- 
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Professor, Information Systems
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://commons.sfsu.edu/
http://olpcsf.org/
http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/