CPSCI 107: Applications, Implications, and Issues

How To Create and Maintain an Audit Website

Spring 2006

For the purposes of this discussion, we'll assume that your username is astudent and that you are a member of group omega. (So wherever astudent occurs below, substitute your actual username on warp, and wherever omega occurs below, substitute your actual group name.)

1. Make sure that warp knows that you are a member of group omega.

   How:

   Enter groups at the bash prompt.

   What you should see:

   astudent omega

   If you don't ...

   Send me an email —you can't fix this yourself.

2. Find the location of your group's audit website on warp.

   How:

   It is located at /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html

3. Create a symbolic link in your home directory to your group's audit website.

How:

cd

ln -s /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html omega-web

ls -l omega-web

What you should see:

lrwxrwxrwx   1 astudent astudent    44 Apr 22 10:07  omega-web -> /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html

Is this a good idea?

I haven't made up my mind. It can save you some typing, but it also makes it easier to lose your place in the filesystem (a pwd will indicate that you're in a subdirectory of your home directory, which isn't really the case.) So I don't use the symbolic link in the instructions that follow. (Since bash will do directory name completion for you, it isn't really all that much extra typing to use the absolute directory name instead of the link.)

4. Copy your audit files from your personal webspace on warp to your group's webspace.

   How:

   Make your public_html directory the working directory:
   cd ~/public_html

   cp filename /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html/.

5. Check to make sure your copied file has the correct group association.

   How:

   cd /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html

   ls -l filename

   What you should see:

   -rw-rw-r--   1 astudent omega    207 Apr 22 10:09  filename

   If you don't ...

   chgrp omega filename

6. Check to make sure your copied file has the correct group permissions.

   How:

   cd /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html

   ls -l filename

   What you should see:

   -rw-rw-r--   1 astudent omega    207 Apr 22 10:09  filename

   If you don't ...

   chmod g=rw filename

7. Check to make sure your copied file is world-readable.

   How:

   cd /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html

   ls -l filename

   What you should see:

   -rw-rw-r--   1 astudent omega    207 Apr 22 10:09  filename

   If you don't ...

   chmod o=r filename

8. (Remember ... only a file's owner can change its group or set its permissions. Further, the way things are set up on warp, only a file's owner can rename or delete the file. If you followed the above instructions, however, everyone in the group can modify the file.)
9. View your file over the web.

   How:

   Go to the Accessibility Audit Websites webpage; select the appropriate link, then modify the address bar to include the name of your file in the URL.

   What you should see:

   After you're prompted for a username and password, the page should load into your browser.

   If you don't ...

   Make sure your file is world-readable.

10. Repeat steps 4-9 as necessary.
11. If you create directories in your group's audit webspace, don't forget to make sure that the permissions are suitable for web access.

    How:

    cd /projects/audit-groups/2006/omega/public_html

    mkdir dirname

    ls -ld dirname

    What you should see:

    drwxrwsr-x   1 astudent omega   1024 Apr 25 16:22  dirname

    If you don't ...

    chmod a+x dirname

12. Don't forget that all files to be served out over the web must be world-readable—this includes any stylesheets or image files.

If you've followed these instructions and you're still having problems, contact me. In your message, be specific about where you've run into a problem.

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