Turnin-NG

This manual is for Turnin-NG (version 1.1, September 01 2010).

Copyright © 2009–2010 Ryan Kavanagh (ryanakca@kubuntu.org).

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.

1. Introduction to Turnin-NG

Turnin-NG is an assignment submission suite written in Python and composed of turnin and turnincfg. Students can use the turnin command to submit an assignment to a course. Professors and TAs (teaching assistants) can use turnincfg to manage submitted assignments, making them easier to grade.

2. turnin

turnin compresses your assignments using the tar and gzip formats before submitting them to be graded. If you feel so inclined, turnin can cryptographically sign your assignments using GnuPG to prevent someone from submitting an assignment in your name.

2.1 Invoking turnin

turnin was designed with ease of use in mind, all while retaining the functionality of the original turnin command.

The command line format for turnin is as follows.

turnin [ -vhlw ] [ --version ] [ -p project ] [ -C config ] [ -k keyid ] -c course files

You must provide the course name and a list of files to submit.

‘-v’, ‘--verbose’

Print a list of submitted files once they have been submitted.

‘-h’, ‘--help’

Print a help message.

‘-l’, ‘--list’

Print a list of projects, along with whether or not they are enabled and if the project is the default project.

‘--version’

Print turnin’s version.

‘-p’, ‘--project’

Set the project to which we’ll submit our assignments. The project must be enabled. If we do not pass this option, turnin will submit to the <Default> project listed by the ‘-l’ or ‘--list’ option.

‘-C’, ‘--config’

Path to an alternate configuration file.

‘-k’, ‘--keyid’

Cryptographically sign an assignment using gpg.

‘-c’, ‘--course’

Set the course to which we’ll submit our assignments.

‘-w’, ‘--legal’

Print warranty and license information.

‘files’

The files and directories we want to submit

2.2 Making turnin easier to use

You can use your shell’s built in alias command to reduce the typing required when using turnin. These aliases should be appended to your shell’s configuration file (‘$HOME/.profile’ for Bourne compatible shells). If you are only in one course, you could use the following alias:

alias turnin='turnin -c YOUR_COURSE'

If you are in multiple courses, the following aliases may be useful:

alias turnin-COURSE1='turnin -c COURSE1'
alias turnin-COURSE2='turnin -c COURSE2'
# ...
alias turnin-COURSEX='turnin -c COURSEX'

If you want to always sign your assignments before submitting them, you could use an alias like this one:

alias turnin='turnin -k E95EDDC9'

Just make sure to replace the text in capitals with the appropriate information and ’E95EDDC9’ with your GnuPG key id.

2.3 Examples

You want to submit an assignment, the files ‘bubblesort.hs’ and ‘radixsort.hs’ to the course ‘cisc2323’, but you aren’t sure of the project name. You start by finding the project list. To do this, you need to pass the ‘-l’ option to turnin, along with the required ‘-c coursename’ argument.

ryanakca@zeus:~$ turnin -c cisc2323 -l
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Enabled | Project      | Description                                             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| False   | searching    | Implement a binary search                               |
| True    | haskell_sort | Implement the bubble sort and the radix sort in Haskell |
| Default | bake         | Bake cookies for the professor                          |
| True    | museum_guard | Write a paper about the museum guard problem            |
| False   | packing      | Implement a packing algorithm                           |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You see that you want the ‘haskell_sort’ project. Since it is not the default project, we will have to pass the ‘-p project’ option, in this case, ‘-p haskell_sort’, to turnin when we invoke it.

We now proceed to submit our assignments.

ryanakca@zeus:~$ turnin -c cisc2323 -p haskell_sort bubblesort.hs radixsort.hs
Successfully submitted your assignment for grading.

If we want to make sure turnin did not forget a file, we can pass the ‘-v’ or ‘--verbose’ option when we invoke it.

ryanakca@zeus:~$ turnin -c cisc2323 -p haskell_sort -v bubblesort.hs radixsort.hs
Submitted files:
sort-ryanakca
sort-ryanakca/bubblesort.hs
sort-ryanakca/radixsort.hs

We decide that we had wanted to sign our submission, we can do so by passing the ‘-k KEYID’.

ryanakca@zeus:~$ turnin -c cisc-2323 -p haskell_sort -kD295EAC1 \
> bubblesort.hs radixsort.hs

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "Ryan Kavanagh <ryanakca@kubuntu.org>"
1024-bit RSA key, ID D295EAC1, created 2009-07-13

gpg: gpg-agent is not available in this session
Successfully submitted your assignment for grading.

If the project is still enabled and we want to resubmit our assignment, we may do so by rerunning the turnin command.

3. turnincfg

Turnin-NG’s turnincfg command retains most of the functionality of the original project command and seeks to make assignment management as easy as possible. To make file management and storage as easy and efficient as possible, each submission is compressed using the tar and gzip formats.

3.1 Invoking turnincfg

The author of Turnin-NG strived to make turnincfg as easy to use, all while retaining the used functionality of the original project command.

The command line format for turnincfg is as follows.

turnincfg [ -hdelripxvw ] [--version] [ -C config ] [ -c course ] [ --create-course course ] [ --delete-course course ] [ --archive-course course ] [ project name ]

‘--version’

Print turnincfg’s version.

‘-h’, ‘--help’

Print a help message.

‘-D’, ‘--perm-disable’

Permanently disable the current project and strip all unique suffixes. You will generally want to use this option instead of ‘--disable’.

‘-d’, ‘--disable’

Disable the current project.

‘-e’, ‘--enable’

Enable submissions for the current project and make it the default project.

‘-l’

Enable submissions for the current project but don’t make it default.

‘-r’, ‘--remove’

Remove the current project and all associated files.

‘-i’, ‘--init’

Initialize this project.

‘-p’, ‘--compress’

Compress this project using the tar and gzip formats.

‘-x’, ‘--extract’

Extract this project.

‘-v’, ‘--verify’

Verify GnuPG signatures on submitted projects.

‘-C’, ‘--config’

Path to an alternate configuration file. The default configuration file is ‘/etc/turnin-ng.cf’.

‘-w’, ‘--legal’

Print warranty and license information.

‘--create-course’

Create a course.

‘--delete-course’

Delete a course and all associated files.

‘--archive-course’

Archive a course using the tar and gzip formats to create a ‘.tar.gz’ file.

3.2 Administration

A course (or many!) needs to be created by an administrator before users can use the turnincfg and turnin commands.

There are two styles of course management: user managed and group managed. With user managed courses, all project management actions are done with a single account. With group management, project management actions are done by accounts in a UNIX group. The original project and turnin commands only supported user managed courses.

Due to the limited granularity of UNIX permissions, group managed courses permit submissions from all accounts.

The following example shows the creation of a user managed course.

root@zeus:~$ turnincfg --create-course cisc2323
Managing username [usually your UNIX login]: ryanakca
Full path to the course directory: /srv/submit/cisc2323
Managed by a User or Group [U/G]: U
Student group: students
Please make sure the account ryanakca is a member of the group students.
Successfully created the course cisc-2323.

This creates a directory with the permissions and contents:

ryanakca@zeus:~$ ls -lash /srv/submit/cisc2323
total 4,0K
   0 drwxr-xr-x  2 ryanakca students  60 19 Aug 13:01 ./
   0 drwxrwxrwt 17 root     root     400 19 Aug 13:12 ../
4,0K -rw-r--r--  1 ryanakca students 134 19 Aug 13:01 turnin-ng.cf

Submission subdirectories for enabled projects will have the permissions 0770 and an ownership of MANAGING_USERNAME:STUDENT_GROUP. Once disabled, they will have the permissions 0700.

The following example shows the creation of a group managed course. In this case, we’ll set the managing username to the professor’s account and the managing group to the group containing the course’s professor and TAs.

root@zeus:~$ turnincfg --create-course cisc2323
Managing username [usually your UNIX login]: ryanakca
Full path to the course directory: /srv/submit/cisc2323
Managed by a User or Group [U/G]: G
Managing group: cisc-2323
Successfully created the course cisc-2323.

This creates a directory with the permissions and contents:

total 4,0K
   0 drwxrwxr-x  2 ryanakca cisc-2323  60 19 Aug 13:25 ./
   0 drwxrwxrwt 18 root     root      420 19 Aug 13:25 ../
4,0K -rw-rw-r--  1 ryanakca cisc-2323 121 19 Aug 13:25 turnin-ng.cf

Submission subdirectories for enabled projects will have the permissions 0777 and an ownership of MANAGING_USERNAME:MANAGING_GROUP. Once disabled, they will have the permissions 0770.

Once a course has finished, you may remove it from the global configuration file and delete all files in its directory by running the command turnincfg --delete-course COURSENAME. If you would rather keep its files and still remove it from the global configuration file, you can run turnincfg --archive-course COURSENAME. This will create a ‘.tar.gz’ file containing the course directory.

3.3 Examples

You’re the professor for the course cisc2323 and want to create the project ‘haskell_sort’ for your students, enable submissions for it and make it the default project (the default project is the project to which turnin submits assignments if the student doesn’t pass the ‘--project PROJECT’ option when invoking turnin).

ryanakca@zeus:~$ turnincfg -i haskell_sort
[Optional] Project description: Implement a bubble sort and the radix sort using Haskell
Successfully created the project haskell_sort in the course cisc2323
ryanakca@zeus:~$ turnincfg -e haskell_sort
Successfully enabled and set default the project haskell_sort

In the previous example, we created the project ‘haskell_sort’ by running the command turnincfg -i haskell_sort. Finally, we enabled it and set it default by running turnincfg -e haskell_sort.

We want to close submissions for the project ‘haskell_sort’ and compress it at 24:00 UTC, September 15 2009. We can do this using the at command.

ryanakca@zeus:~$ at 2400 UTC Sep 15 2009
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
at> turnincfg -c cisc2323
at> turnincfg -D haskell_sort
at> turnincfg -p haskell_sort
job 92 at Tue Sep 15 19:00:00 2009

For more details on at’s time format, please see it’s man page. In this case we passed the turnincfg -D haskell_sort command instead of the turnincfg -d haskell_sort command since we do not want the long suffixed file names in the archive, we want them in the ‘username.tar.gz’ format.

4. Distributing Turnin-NG

Turnin-NG is Copyright © 2009–2010 Ryan Kavanagh (ryanakca@kubuntu.org). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

4.1 GNU General Public License version 2

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright © 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software—to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors’ reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

1. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The “Program”, below, refers to any such program or work, and a “work based on the Program” means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term “modification”.) Each licensee is addressed as “you”.

   Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

2. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

   You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

3. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
   1. You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
   2. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
   3. If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

   These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

   Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

   In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

4. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
   1. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
   2. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
   3. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

   The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

   If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

5. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
6. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
7. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
8. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

   If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

   It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

   This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

9. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
10. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

    Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

11. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
12. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
13. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Appendix: How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) yyyy  name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than ‘show w’ and ‘show c’; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items—whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License.

Table of Contents

About This Document

This document was generated by root on February 6, 2011 using texi2html 1.82.

The buttons in the navigation panels have the following meaning:

where the Example assumes that the current position is at Subsubsection One-Two-Three of a document of the following structure:

• 1. Section One
  • 1.1 Subsection One-One
    • ...
  • 1.2 Subsection One-Two
    • 1.2.1 Subsubsection One-Two-One
    • 1.2.2 Subsubsection One-Two-Two
    • 1.2.3 Subsubsection One-Two-Three     <== Current Position
    • 1.2.4 Subsubsection One-Two-Four
  • 1.3 Subsection One-Three
    • ...
  • 1.4 Subsection One-Four

This document was generated by root on February 6, 2011 using texi2html 1.82.