Attending:
Mary Holmes (Ferris), Bille Dorsey (Bb), Matt Davis (Bb), Jack Sharon, Kathy Saville (Marshall), Nick Dean (Marshall), Pete Boysen (IaSt), Randy Dalhoff (IaSt), Sam McCool (NevSt), Cheryl McCann (CSUS), Paula Lee (Lee), Amita Mahajan (Alamo Colleges), Karen Tan (UMOL), Kevin O'Brien (UMOL), Tim Lambert (UMOL), Bryant Withers (Cortland), Janry Jordan (U CT)
Hot Topics
Matt invited CE Vista Group to get together after reception Tuesday night, July 14, 2009 at Bb World 2009. Kathy will e-mail group with the details.
Mary will be out of office on June 25 and July 2, and Matt will host those two sessions.
Kathy Saville asked about the update to the client support document, and as of today, it doesn’t appear to be updated. Matt will check on it.
Chainsaw Presentation - Tim Lambert
Chainsaw v2 is from Log4j Dev Team(logging.apache.org/chainsaw/index.html). Download application from http://logging.apache.org/chainsaw/download.html. Tim showed a server log "webct.log" as an example -- clearly not easy to read. Chainsaw works from a bat file on his local computer, but it can be linked remotely to log files. Chainsaw puts the logs into a table with column headings: ID, Timestamp, Level, Logger, Message.
Tim explained that Chainsaw can also be installed on the server, if wanted, as well as run from a client desktop. He pulls the logs from the server to a local machine and read it with Chainsaw.
Discussion followed about strategies for pointing logs to a single node on the cluster and then installing Chainsaw on that node at the same mount point on the server to read the all logs from one location.
Discussion about how to find node for user. Two suggestions: Use either [yourschoolinstallationurl]/webct/applicationframework/clusterinfo.jsp
or
[yourschoolinstallationurl]/webct/checkStatusForLb to get only node
Discussion followed about the logs to check for data: webct.monitor.log; webct.server.log; webct.log (correlates to webct.server.log); webct.import.log; etc.
Tutorials and help files come with the application.
Roundtable
Matt
Nothing to report.
Amita Mahajan
Nothing to report.
Bille Dorsey
Nothing to add.
Bryant Withers (on CE 8.0.1)
Nothing to report other than everything is working well.
Cheryl McCann
Asked for advice about reports of 4 students whose assessment results did not appear to have been recorded. The instructor does not see submissions, and students cannot view results. When she checks the assessment tables, she sees start, end, and finish, but not scores in the results. Janry Jordan reported similar instances in which students claimed to have seen the results but a day later they weren't available. No one else has experienced this. For one student, the user tracking for the event and the assessment attempt log appear in the GUI, but the data tables did not show the associated data.
Jack Sharon
Nothing to report.
Janry Jordan (Vista 8.0.1)
Reported that UConn is about to install SP2 for Vista 8, and she is looking for information from others about what to expect. Tim reported that UMOL went to SP2 and HF 1 with no troubles. Asked about when SP3 will be available. Matt reported that it is expected in mid-July.
Kevin O'Brien
Still working on system delivery errors with internal mail. Also, he is continuing to work on load issues with Blackboard. Tim Livers (Bb) is working on the load issues by creating a data model of the same size as UMOL's system. Also, UMOL has moved to Cisco load balancer, and Tim has helped with the transition.
Nick Dean
Reported that Marshall is about to install Learn 9 test environment.
Paula Lee (Windows, single app, and single data nodes)
Paula reported that somebody told her to back up the logs and cleaning them up. And, she wondered about what do about rotating and archiving the logs. Discussion followed about what should be done. Amita recommended managing logs to control their size to make it easier to locate recent data. Discussion followed about ways to make them easier.
Randy Dalhoff, Pete Boysen
Nothing to report today.
Sam McCool
Reported on the meetings with Anessa Alderman, Blackboard RSM for Nevada, Nick Schiavi, and Jessica Finnefrock; and a Webex with Donna Jones about Bb Outcomes System. The Nevada Learning Network learned good news about its license, its upgrade path, and the Content and Community Modules. Jessica explained in more detail how Bb Learn 9 was designed to be the go to platform for CE 4 customers, and the next generation of NG will be designed for the CE Vista 8 customers. NLN asked Anessa to let Blackboard know that it wants to be part of the development and beta phases of the Bb Learn development for Vista 8 clients. Finally, Nick was able to discuss with NLN's server/systems manager how to set up a co-production environment using our present resources.
Tim Lambert
Nothing more than what has been shared.
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