WeBWorK at UW-Stout

Planned Outage: Saturday, January 21st, 3pm-4pm

2012-01-20T10:37:00.001-06:00

WeBWorK server will be offline for updates this Saturday, January 21st, 3pm-4pm

UW-Stout campus network maintenance: Fri, Nov. 25th, 4am-10am

2011-11-23T15:16:00.000-06:00

Due to UW-Stout campus network maintenance, webwork.uwstout.edu server might not be available Friday, November 25th, from approximately 4am-10am.

webwork.uwstout.edu will be offline 1pm-3pm this Sunday

2011-11-11T11:53:00.002-06:00

Our webwork server, webwork.uwstout.edu will be offline from 1pm-3pm this Sunday, November 13th.

Planned outage: 4am Monday, March 14th through 9am Tuesday, March 15th

2011-03-10T18:36:00.004-06:00

There will be a power outage in Jarvis Hall at UW-Stout starting at 5am Monday, March 14th due to some construction-related activities. WeBWorK server will go offline at 4am and most likely stay offline until about 9am Tuesday, March 15th

Intermittent network issues

2011-03-09T14:01:00.001-06:00

There seem to be intermittent network issues in Jarvis Hall Science Wing at UW-Stout, where webwork.uwstout.edu server is located. The network connectivity was unreliable since 7am this morning and the issue (if there is an issue) still appears to be unresolved.

Update (March 10th, 5:20pm): it looks like a defective switch was causing the connection issues. That should be fixed by now.

Issues with WeBWorK and Perl

2011-01-25T12:20:00.004-06:00

It appears that after the recent security upgrade of Perl (backend of WeBWorK) a lot of WeBWorK problems started producing errors.

Stout's WeBWorK server will be offline today starting at 12:15pm while the issue is being resolved.

Update: server should be back online and operational as of 2:44pm, January 25th.

Planned power outage for December 10th, at 6:30-6:50am

2010-12-09T15:32:00.002-06:00

There will be another power outage on campus December 10th at around 6:30am-6:50am. The server will go offline at about 6:25am, and, hopefully, be back online at about 8:30am or sooner.

Update: the power outage was over by 6:38am. WeBWorK server is up and running as of 8:45am.

Power outage

2010-12-09T15:26:00.004-06:00

We had a power outage in Menomonie, WI and on UW-Stout campus today. It looks like power was out between 4:39am-6:27am for the server, with another planned/emergency power outage at around 7:30-7:36.

There were some issues with WeBWorK database due to the first power outage, so I took the server offline at 7:25am until about 9am to recover database. It looks like a few indexes got out of sync with the actual data in the database due to some interrupted operations - that was fixed by 9am today.

New SSL certificate

2010-12-03T12:58:00.003-06:00

Thanks to support from Math, Stat and CS department at UW-Stout, our WeBWorK server got a brand new SSL certificate. The new certificate should now be recognized as a valid certificate which, in turn, should eliminate browser warnings.

WeBWorK server might be unavailable tonight

2010-09-27T13:08:00.003-05:00

WeBWorK server webwork.uwstout.edu might not be available tonight to anyone accessing the server from off-campus from 8pm Monday, September 27th until 8am Tuesday, September 28th due to some work being done on fiber connection, as was announced via email:

Campus Internet Outage

Off-campus Internet network resources will be unavailable from 8 tonight, through 8 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 28.

This outage is due to fiber maintenance being performed in the Eau Claire area.

Update:

This just in from our network administrator:
The fiber will be cut (and connectivity lost) at 1:30am Tuesday September 28th. Ours [Stout's] will be one of the first pairs reconnected. They expect the work to be completed on our segment at approximately 3:00am Tuesday September 28th, no later than 6:00am

Move is complete.

2010-08-23T19:05:00.003-05:00

The move seems to be complete. The webwork.uwstout.edu server got a new ip address, and seems to be operational.

MSCS Department is Moving

2010-08-18T10:15:00.004-05:00

Our department is moving into a newly constructed/remodeled building, which means that webwork.uwstout.edu server might go offline for a couple of days at any moment. More details will be posted when available.

Update: we've moved the server yesterday into the new building. Since there is a scheduled power outage for the whole weekend in the new building, the server is not available now. It should be back online Monday, August 23rd sometime in the afternoon.

Campus Network Outage: 10pm July 29th through 5am July 30th

2010-07-28T13:56:00.003-05:00

From UW-Stout Telecommunications and Networking:

Due to a fiber-backbone move taking place in Eau Claire, the campus will be without internet access from 10 p.m., Thursday, July 29, until 5 a.m., Friday, July 30.

I expect webwork.uwstout.edu to be unavailable during that time as well.

Server Reconfigured

2010-05-25T21:37:00.002-05:00

Our server (webwork.uwstout.edu) was reconfigured to run 32-bit operating system.

All courses were backed up Tuesday, May 24 at 2pm. They should be back online now.

It turns out that 64-bit operating system requires about 3x more memory than 32-bit OS to run WeBWorK efficiently.

Sunday Outage: 10:35am-12:17pm, May 02

2010-05-02T15:19:00.004-05:00

There was an outage this Sunday, May 02 between 10:35am-12:17am. My guess is that the power was down in the building where the server is housed.

WeBWorK server was not available until 10am

2010-03-14T09:53:00.003-05:00

Our WeBWorK server (webwork.uwstout.edu) seemed to be unavailable until 10am today. My guess is that the entire UW-Stout network was isolated from the rest of the internet due to some maintenance work.

An update will follow as soon as more information is available.

WeBWorK server reboot at 4:30 today

2010-02-15T13:30:00.002-06:00

WeBWorK server will be unavailable for a few minutes today starting at 4:30pm CST due to reboot.

Short Outage Today: 10 minutes sometime between 4pm and 5pm

2010-01-29T16:37:00.000-06:00

Our WeBWorK server will be unavailable for a few minutes between 4pm and 5pm.

Update: the outage is over.

Networking Issues on Campus

2010-01-19T16:02:00.001-06:00

UW-Stout Campus had some issues with networking this morning. It appears that everything has been resolved already.

LDAP authentication for UW-Stout users

2010-01-18T19:34:00.002-06:00

It appears that LDAP authentication for UW-Stout users is not working as expected at the moment. Since I cannot sign on to Learn@UW-Stout system as well, it is safe to assume that the issue is with UW-Stout LDAP authentication servers. I hope the issue will go away by Tuesday.

Server is back online

2010-01-15T16:01:00.003-06:00

Our server should be back online with newer hardware up and running.

There are several minor updates and tweaks that we'll be working on for some time, so the server might be in and out for a few minutes at random moments.

An update will be posted when we're done.

Downtime

2010-01-14T15:16:00.002-06:00

We're changing server hardware. WeBWorK server webwork.uwstout.edu will be unavailable starting this Friday, January 15th at 6am and until further notice. The intention is to have everything back to normal by the end of the day.

Spring 2010/Winter 2010 Courses

2010-01-08T11:06:00.002-06:00

Spring 2010/Winter 2010 courses are now listed in the Current Courses section. Fall 2009 courses were moved into the Past Courses section of WeBWorK homepage.

Server is in and out for a few minutes: working with backup scripts

2009-11-15T16:24:00.003-06:00

WeBWorK server might be in and out for a few minutes at the moment. Some work is being done on backup scripts.

Scoring Page: Yet Another Update

2009-10-30T14:47:00.007-05:00

Since a few people prefer to make each problem set worth the same amount of points (regardless of the number of the problems), there is a new option on the scoring page:
The "Rescale Each Problem Set Totals To" option does exactly what the name says: student scores for each problem set get recalculated to reflect the same percentage out of the new total.

Scoring Tools Updated

2009-10-29T09:48:00.011-05:00

The Scoring Tools page was updated with a couple of new features.

As you can see from the screen shot above, there are two new options:

1. Only grand totals: this option will produce a table with total scores for students, without detailed scores for each problem set.

2. Format for import into D2L: this option makes sure that the .csv file is in the format expected by D2L. You might want to change the heading in the produced .csv file from
Online Homework Points Grade
to
[The name of D2L gradebook item] Points Grade
so that the scores are imported correctly.

Server rebooted at 10:22am today

2009-10-23T10:25:00.003-05:00

Server was rebooted at 10:22am today after an upgrade was complete. Sorry for any possible disruptions.

Campus Internet outage this evening

2009-08-27T10:47:00.000-05:00

It looks like webwork.uwstout.edu will be unavailable tonight between 6-6:30pm.

The campus Internet service provider, WiscNet, will be conducting an emergency outage from 6-6:30 p.m., this evening. During this outage there will be no Internet service available on campus.

Upgrade is complete

2009-08-24T11:09:00.003-05:00

Upgrade is complete, the server is up and running. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you notice anything weird or wrong with WeBWorK.

We are upgrading WeBWorK software

2009-08-24T09:52:00.001-05:00

We are upgrading WeBWorK software: webwork.uwstout.edu will be unavailable for some time.

Back to normal...

2009-08-23T11:48:00.001-05:00

webwork.uwstout.edu seems to be responding again

webwork.uwstout.edu is not responding again

2009-08-23T09:23:00.003-05:00

It's getting old: webwork.uwstout.edu is not responding again. If that is a consolation, uwstout.edu network seems to have troubles as well.

webwork.uwstout.edu seems to be online

2009-08-22T13:18:00.002-05:00

It looks like network troubles are over for now and webwork.uwstout.edu is responding.

webwork.uwstout.edu is not responding

2009-08-21T20:43:00.002-05:00

As of 8:45pm Aug 21st, webwork.uwstout.edu server seems to be unreachable. It looks like the whole uwstout.edu network is not responding. Most likely, the server is running but happens to be isolated from the rest of the world.

Feedback from Students

2009-07-28T16:34:00.008-05:00

A few weeks ago we solved the email problem we were working on. All feedback messages (the messages generated by WeBWorK when students click on Email instructor button) are now successfully delivered to Instructor's Stout email address.

I guess I should clarify that non-Stout email addresses, e.g. aprof@gmail.com or something else, could be used with WeBWorK as well. There were no issues with delivering feedback emails to non-Stout addresses to begin with.

All feedback emails are automatically archived: they are copied to some special email address. Should anything unexpected happen to a message, there is a good chance that we would be able to recover it from the archive.

New Default Page

2009-07-27T15:37:00.001-05:00

I've updated the default page of webwork.uwstout.edu server to provide more information than the previous minimalistic page. More updates to follow.

First Post

2009-07-15T14:51:00.000-05:00

This is an official blog of webwork.uwstout.edu server. Any news, updates, technical issues, and outages will show up on the blog.

If you use WeBWorK at UW-Stout for one of your classes, it is a good idea to follow this blog, just in case.