Oracc News

Piwik is back

2012-01-14T21:29:00.001Z

I've now re-installed Piwik on Oracc, for all projects. I'm afraid it wasn't possible to save old access data, so viewing figures start again today.

If you run one or more Oracc projects and would like a Piwik account, please email me with your preferred login name and password, and which project(s) you want data for. The password doesn't have to be super-secure as Piwik is not a security risk.

New project passwords

2011-12-29T14:37:00.000Z

If you are the manager of a project, please contact your liaison to obtain a new Oracc password. You will not be able to log into your Oracc project without it. There is no hurry to do this: please wait until you need to use your project account again.

Choosing a password

Your liaison will help you choose a strong password. It must be:

at least eight characters long
composed of a mix of upper and lower-case letters and/or digits and/or punctuation (i.e., at least 3 of these 4)

When you have agreed on a suitable password, your liaison will set it for you.

Logging in again

Even if you and your project editors normally access your Oracc project using Emacs or Aquamacs, the first time that each of you logs in after the password change you must use Terminal or PuTTy in order to initialise the secure connection. Instructions are on the Project Management through Emacs page.

In addition, depending on your computer's security systems, Terminal or PuTTy may tell you to delete your known_hosts file, and will tell you where to find it. To delete this file it is easiest to useEmacs: type ctrl-x ctrl-f and enter the filename (on Macs it is~/.ssh/known_hosts). Simply delete the contents of the file, save and close it. Then go back to Terminal/PuTTy and try the log-in again.

If you have any problems or questions with the initial log-in, please contact your liaison.

Piwik

Piwik log-in isn't yet functional but will be soon. More to follow...

Oracc website back online

2011-12-29T13:19:00.001Z

The Oracc website is back--please report any glitches to stinney@sas.upenn.edu.

User accounts will be back soon.

Oracc down again

2011-12-23T06:52:00.002Z

This evening I have updated the server operating system with the result that everything is down for the moment. Over the next few days Oracc will come back online, first the website and then projects' access to logins. Stay tuned for further updates.

Oracc up

2011-12-20T09:57:00.002Z

Oracc is working again. Passwords have been reset, so you will not be able to access your Oracc workspace until you are contacted with new log-in instructions. That will happen soon, I promise!

Oracc down

2011-12-19T17:17:00.000Z

I'm afraid Oracc will be down for the next 24-48 hours or so, because it has been the subject of a malicious hack which will take a little while to deal with.

Everything is backed up though, both within Philadelphia and to a server in Cambridge, so your project data is safe. But this does mean that all Oracc project passwords will have to be reset.

We will post again as soon as Oracc is back up, with instructions for project managers on what to do about passwords.

Meanwhile, do email me or your project liaison if you have any questions or concerns.

Documentation updates

2011-05-09T07:43:00.000+01:00

We've added a few useful odds and ends to the Oracc documentation over the past few months, which I thought it would be useful to summarise here:

How to report a new sign value to Niek when the ATF checker complains of an unknown value;
How to search the Qcat (catalogue of compositions) and request new entries;
A list of Akkadian roots;
How to add linguistic annotations to project glossaries;
Fuller information about discourse divisions;
And several new options for the oracc command.

As always, just ask if you have any questions or problems - or any suggestions for correcting, improving or adding to the documentation.

NEW: portal site software

2011-05-07T20:08:00.000+01:00

Would you like to build a portal website for your Oracc project along the lines of Knowledge and Power or Assyrian Empire Builders? Now you can!

Just this week we have finished testing and documenting ESP, an Oracc version of the electrostatic programme written by George McKerron for the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge. In order to use it, you will need to know the basics of HTML and how to use Emacs (but most of us use Emacs for Oracc text editing anyway).

Instructions for use are on the Oracc website. The range of options for Oracc portal sites (including but not only ESP) is here.

As always, if you would like any advice or help, just ask me.

new Aquamacs

2011-05-03T16:37:00.001+01:00

If you use Aquamacs (Emacs for Mac) to edit files on the Oracc server, you'll be delighted to know that the new release of Aquamacs does not require the endless retyping of passwords that the older versions do. I've been using Aquamacs 2.3 for several days now and strongly recommend it.

To install it, just open your current version of Aquamacs, choose "Check for updates..." on the Aquamacs menu, and follow the instructions you are given. Alternatively, you can go to http://aquamacs.org/download.shtml and download it from there.

If you have any problems with this, as always, let me know.

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Piwik upgraded

2010-09-20T11:47:00.000+01:00

Piwik, the programme we use to monitor Oracc's access statistics, has been upgraded. You'll see many nice new features, including a map view of your project's users.

However, the upgrade involved resetting project passwords to the usual default—just for Piwik, not on Oracc itself. So I recommend logging in to Piwik now and changing your password to something more secure (but not your main Oracc project password!).

This post tells you more about Piwik on Oracc if you need it.

As always, just leave a comment or email me direct if you need help or have any questions.

CAMS is changing

2010-09-13T12:33:00.001+01:00

Over the weekend, the structure of the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship changed, in order to make way for new CAMS subprojects. This affects you if your non-CAMS project uses the CAMS glossaries as its lemmatisation base, and/or if you proxy texts from CAMS. In both cases, you will need to edit your 00lib/config.xml file.
1. To update your proxies, change <proxies>cams</proxies> to <proxies>cams/gkab</proxies>
2. To update your base glossary, change <option name="lem-system" value="cams"/> to <option name="lem-system" value="cams/gkab"/>
Have a look at the Oracc project configuration documentation for more information, and do ask for help if you need to.

Qcat overhauled

2010-08-23T15:15:00.001+01:00

The Qcat—the catalogue of compositions—has now been radically rationalised, tidied up and documented. In particular, the naming conventions for the designations (the prose equivalents of the Q-numbers) have been standardised.

If your project uses the Qcat, you may find that you will need to revise your project's Q designations accordingly. If you use a Filemaker database or similar for your catalogue, I can send you a list of new designations to import, overwriting the old ones. Just email me.

If and when your project needs new Q-numbers, send me a list of your proposed designations and other relevant fields (as per the documentation); or ask me for a clone of the Filemaker Qcat database, to fill in and email back to me.

If you ever notice mistakes, duplicates or omissions in the Qcat, or have any questions about it, please email me about that too.

Oracc Home Page Fixed for IE7 and IE8

2010-08-20T03:20:00.003+01:00

I have fixed the home page for IE7 and IE8 -- I have tested it on Windows 7 64 bit
professional running IE 8 in standards mode and in compatibility mode, and on
an XP machine running IE7.

The one difference IE7 users will notice (or IE8 users if they put the browser
into compatibility mode) is that the Oracc logo will not be visible descending
majestically from the top of the screen.

Please let me know of any problems with IE7 or above; I don't plan to support
IE pre-7.

I've also tested the new page with Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

If your project page loses its styling ...

2010-08-17T15:51:00.003+01:00

There is a problem with the redirection the Oracc server currently does that
I can't fix for the moment, but there is a straightforward solution.

The problem only affects projects whose pages contains relative links.
In such pages, you will see a different behaviour depending on whether you
ask for:

http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/dcclt/

or

http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/dcclt

The first version, with the trailing /, works correctly; the second fails to find
styling, images and any other relative links.

The solution is to specify the URL base explicitly in the home page (and
any other pages this problem affects). This is quite straightforward: just
add the <base> tag to the <head> part of the page; in the href
attribute, give the path with trailing slash. Here is what the header of
the DCCLT home page now looks like:

<head>
<base href="http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/dcclt/"/>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
"text/html; charset=us-ascii" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="dcclt.css" />
<title>DCCLT - Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts</title>
</head>

I have already fixed this in several projects (HBTIN, SAA, DCCLT), but
I haven't checked all projects to see if they need the fix.

A note about configuration options

2010-07-13T17:17:00.002+01:00

Looking over the posts on the blog and a few e-mails I realized that some comments about the configuration file might be helpful.

The configuration system is in flux and has grown rapidly and organically, particularly over the last nine months. Oracc software can access the configuration file, config.xml, via several interfaces, and some of the programs ignore options that don´t apply to them while others complain about misunderstood or illegal options.

In general, if you see an error message about a configuration option, just check that you haven´t mistyped an option or value name. Otherwise, leave suspicious options in the config.xml because some program or other may be secretly using them.

If you change 00lib/config.xml you need to use at least:

oracc config

To update the installed version. You may need to do:

oracc web

Or even:

oracc rebuild

Before you see the effects of your changes.

After the remaining to-do list items are dealt with, the configuration system will get a complete review. Some things that cannot be configured in config.xml will be added (like the buttons SAAo uses); others will be documented; others will be rationalized as there are a few places where multiple options do very similar things.

I am also hoping (expecting, even) to create a web interface with an easy form for managing config.xml that has the documentation built in to it and drop-downs with the valid option values etc.

So, this pain with config.xml is transient. I am expecting to have the new configuration system in place by the end of September.

Directory names have changed!

2010-07-04T09:43:00.003+01:00

If you are struggling to do project management through emacs, it may be because you are still using the old (CDL) directory names. For instance:

old sources/ is now 00atf/
old lib/ is now 00lib/
old cat/ is now 00cat/
old websources/ is now 00web/
old backups/ is now 00bak/

See Project Management through Emacs for step-by-step instructions and Project Files for a more systematic overview.

As always, do ask for help if you need it, but I may not be as speedily responsive as usual over the next few days (up to and including Wednesday), as I'll be doing tablet work in Berlin. I will have broadband access in the hotel though, so I'll be checking in at least twice a day.

Logging in into Oracc for the first time

2010-07-02T21:20:00.000+01:00

If you're trying and failing to login to your Oracc project for the first time since the move, the problem might have one or more of the following causes:

All project passwords were reset to the default on the move. Try logging in with the default (if you don't know what I mean, please email me) and then change your password to something more secure, by typing passwd at the prompt and then following the instructions. Your new password should mix uppercase and lowercase letters, and use non-letter characters too.
If you are running Win32Emacs, you need to trash your old atf-mode files before you install the new ones: see here.
Before you can use Emacs for project work, you will need to initialise the secure connection by following the instructions here.

If these three solutions fail, email me. (Steve is away until August now.)

Oracc bug-free :)

2010-07-01T07:25:00.002+01:00

I have resolved all the known user-visible issues in the transition from CDL to Oracc.

Please report remaining bugs as comments to this post, and please read the comments
to this post before reporting bugs to reduce the number of multiple reportings of the same bug.

When you report a bug, please be specific so that I can reproduce, diagnose and fix the bug.

Oracc projects

2010-06-29T17:07:00.003+01:00

All Oracc projects should have been migrated--let me know if I missed you!

If you find that your password does not work, it is probably because the project has been reset to the default password--you can log in and rest the password again to a more secure one.

Webservices

2010-06-29T16:08:00.002+01:00

The webservices are now operational and can be reached from the home page.

Oracc status

2010-06-29T02:55:00.003+01:00

All public projects have now been restored though a few bugs remain.

A handful of projects which are not yet advertised have not yet been restored; if your project is not functional by Noon GMT 2010-06-29 please e-mail me as soon as possible.

The web services (ATF checker, Cuneify, etc.) have not yet been restored, but they should be functional by Tuesday morning.

New doco structure

2010-06-28T21:26:00.001+01:00

As you'll see, the Oracc documentation is much fuller and more systematically organised than the old CDL doco. It's fully searchable from the Oracc home page.

You'll also find that visitors to your website can access all the user help from the [HELP] link at the left of every Page View and Item View header on your corpus pages.

But if you think anything is missing, or needs further explanation, please let me know.

Oracc access statistics with Piwik

2010-06-28T21:19:00.002+01:00

I have just set up Piwik Web Analytics to monitor access statistics to Oracc project websites. If you are a project manager, once your project has migrated to Oracc you can view its access stats from

http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/piwik

and log in with your (lowercase) project name and the default new-project password. (If you don't know what I mean, please email me.) Please change the password to something more personal as soon as you can.

Piwik is multilingual, so if you prefer to read your access stats in German or Hungarian you can do so by choosing from a drop-down list at the top centre of the page.

The user interface is, I hope, self-explanatory but just ask if you need any help.

Transitioning to Oracc

2010-06-28T13:18:00.000+01:00

Please read the document CDL is now Oracc for information about how to make the transition from using the CDL server to the new Oracc server. If anything is unclear you can comment on this thread or e-mail me.

You can test whether your project is up yet by trying the project URL.

Oracc DNS progress

2010-06-28T12:48:00.003+01:00

The old IP address which was causing access problems for oracc.museum.upenn.edu
has been deleted, and name resolvers are starting to show only the correct address,
130.91.80.31. You can visit whatsmydns.net to see this.

CDL down; Oracc soon ...

2010-06-27T16:52:00.001+01:00

All cdl.museum.upenn.edu services are currently down and are being replaced by services on oracc.museum.upenn.edu. I will post updates as Oracc becomes operational over the next few days.