| http://www.cs.toronto.edu/oct2/ |
This guide gives instructions for using OCT2, as implemented for the CVPR 2003 conference.
1. File Structure 2. Getting Started 3. Configuring OCT2 For Your Conference 4. Staying Out of Trouble 5. Extending OCT2 6. For More Information
Setting up requires editing a few files. You should edit all files as the octadmin user. When you login as "octadmin", the directory, aolserver/servers/oct contains subdirectories named tcl and pages. The "pages" directory contains the actual Web pages (or the tcl scripts that directly generate them). The "tcl" directory contains more tcl scripts that contain general utilities used by scripts in the "pages" directory.
The "tcl" directory can be thought of as a main "control" directory of OCT2. Most of the files that need to be modified to configure OCT2 for use at a new conference lie in this directory. In addition, commands for switching between reviewing phases lie in this directory as well.
Changes made to files in the "pages" directory appear immediately, but changes made to files in the "tcl" directory do not appear until you kill (which automatically restarts) the Web server software by going to the "aolserver" directory and typing:
Note that killing the server would interrupt any file uploads or downloads in progress, so it's not a good idea to do it an hour before your paper submission deadline!./kill
If you completed successfully the OCT2 installation, the system should now be in the abstract submission phase, waiting for users to register.
First you need to make yourself an OCT2 administrator. To do this, edit the file /scratc/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/pages/admin/config/admins.txt. This file should contain the email addresses of each user who will have administrator priviledges (one email address per line). You can enter just your email address for now---additional administrators can be added later. Here is an example of that file:
bla@cs.toronto.edu
Visit the Web site and register yourself, using the same email address as the one appearing in the admins.txt file. Because you included your email in the "admins.txt" file, it will automatically promote you to admin and you will have an "Admin" link in the right margin that isn't visible to other users. Go there to see your command and control center.
The Administrator Menu includes detailed help information about each phase and about the individual administrator functions. Be sure to read the help page for the Abstract Submission Phase before proceeding any further. In particular, you will need to perform the actions listed under the "Preparations BEFORE This Phase Begins" heading of that help page before moving on.
OCT2 allows configuration of a few basic scripts that control the information displayed to users (authors, reviewers, etc). With the exception of one file discussed below, all user configurations are done by editing files in the "tcl" directory.
The basic steps are as follows:
cd /scratch/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/tcl ./configure_oct cvpr.cs.toronto.edu
These configuration files can be modified even after OCT2 switches out the Abstract Submission Phase. To update the AOLserver while preserving the current reviewing phase, execute as octadmin the following commands (with cvpr.cs.toronto.edu replaced by the hostname of your machine):
cd /scratch/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/tcl ./configure_oct_noreset cvpr.cs.toronto.edu
CAUTION: Some of the configuration files contain words surrounded by two or more XX's (eg., XXHOSTNAMEXX). These words are reserved and should NOT be modified or removed.
Edit the pages/index.adp.etempl file with author instructions for your conference. This is the first page that visitors to your site will see. Typically, the Program Chair would edit this file using the HTML editor of his/her choice.
The file isn't actually an HTML file, it's an ADP file, which means that it's an HTML file with 2 additional lines at the top and bottom that generate the page's header and footer. Depending on the Chair's editor, you may need to delete these 2 lines and rename the file as "index.html" before editing it. When finished, remove any HTML headers and footers that the Chair's editor may have added, and replace them with the original 2 lines, which are:
<%=[Header Instructions]%> <%=[Footer]%>
Edit the html files tcl/Email_Accept.html and tcl/Email_Reject.html. These pages are displayed to authors of accepted and rejected papers, respectively, when final decisions are made (i.e,. when OCT2 switches to the 'Results' phase).
Edit the files tcl/Email_Confirm_Author_Submission.txt and tcl/Email_Confirm_Submission_By_Admin.txt. The first file is the email sent to authors when they have successfully uploaded their pdf file on the server. The second file is the email sent to authors when their pdf file has been successfully uploaded by the administrator (e.g., in cases where authors cannot access the web directly and send their pdf file to the program chairs via email).
Note: Do not modify any of the words preceeded by a '$' in these files as they are reserved tcl variables and are used by OCT2.
Edit the files tcl/Email_Review_to_Author.txt and tcl/Email_Review_to_Reviewer.txt. The first file is the message sent to authors in an email, along with their paper reviews, when the author response phase begins. The second file is the message sent to reviewers in an email, along with all the reviews of a paper they are reviewing, when the discussion phase begins.
Note: Do not modify any of the words preceeded by a '$' in these files as they are reserved tcl variables and are used by OCT2.
Edit the file tcl/make_forms to customize the review form for your conference. The file contains instructions about how to apapt the questions of the review form to the needs of your conference.
To update the OCT2 files and bring the server to the Abstract Submission Phase, execute the following commands (with cvpr.cs.toronto.edu replaced by the hostname of your machine):
cd /scratch/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/tcl ./configure_oct cvpr.cs.toronto.edu
To update the OCT2 files but preserve the server's current reviewing phase, execute as octadmin the following commands (with cvpr.cs.toronto.edu replaced by the hostname of your machine):
cd /scratch/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/tcl ./configure_oct_noreset cvpr.cs.toronto.edu
The installation process protected your Web site from software failures (if it hangs, it will be automatically restarted), but not hardware failures (power or network outage). If you want to be notified when your machine goes down, use the free service at http://uptime.arsdigita.com/uptime/
Run the scripts oct_backup_host,oct_restore_host,oct_reset_host from a remote host to backup and transfer all important files (server files, papers, supplements, database files, etc) to the remote host.
See the wrapper scripts backup-zeus and restore-zeus-from-zeus for examples of their use. For CVPR'03, backups were performed by simply executing the following command from a remote host:
This script creates a directory called zeus.datestamp.timestamp containing all backed up files. In addition to those files, the directory contains a log called .oct_backup_host.zeus.cs.toronto.edu.log that lists all files that were backed up.backup-zeus
In addition to the remote backup, every time the oct_backup_host (or backup-zeus) script is run, OCT2 creates a local, timestamped copy of all backed up files in the /scratch/oct/aol_backup and /scratch/oct/db_backup directories. This means that the hard drive containing the /scratch/oct hierarchy MUST contain sufficient space to allow backups to proceed. CAUTION: Repeated backups can quickly consume the disk of the AOLserver machine. Be sure to monitor the contents of the aol_backup and db_backup directories to make sure there is sufficient space for backups and paper uploads.
If something ever did go wrong, so that you needed to restore a dump:pg_dump octdb > filename
See the PostgreSQL Administrator's Guide for more information.psql octdb < filename
The PDF and supplementary files need to be backed up separately, and you'll find them in the directories:
The Web server keeps 2 types of logs. The Access Log reports every Web page access, and you can view the results from the "Admin" page under the "Access Logs" menu. This is useful when a user complains of a problem and you want to see his/her click trail to determine where the mistake was made.
The other type of log records all errors that occur. Almost all errors will result in serving an error message page to the user and sending an email to the admin. The admin should then read the location of the error from the log, which is appended chronologically. The best way to access it is to go to the aolserver directory and open the log with the command
Then use the ">" key to jump to the end of the file (where the recent entries are), and use the "b" and "f" keys to page back and forth.less log/oct.log
To add your own reports to the "Admin" page:
You may need to perform operations that don't have a handy dandy tool on the "Admin" page. To access the database directly, enter the interactive terminal by typing the following as the octadmin user:
psql octdb
If you change the data model (such as by adding columns to a table), also update the pages/admin/sql/model.sql file to maintain a reference of your model.
Here are some useful examples of database queries you may want to run:
Get an email list of Area Chairs:
select email from oct_users where clearance = 3;
Delete a review of paper #30 by reviewer #45 (because a reviewer discovered that they would be partial):
delete from oct_reviews where paper_id = 30 and reviewer_id = 45;
Assign a review (even though there is a tool on the "Admins" page) to paper #100 by user #50:
insert into oct_users (paper_id, reviewer_id) values (100, 50);
Add name of institution to the users table:
alter table oct_users add institution varchar(100);
Delete paper #200 and all of its reviews. Be sure to include the "where..." clause or you will delete ALL papers! (It's a good idea to do a database dump beforehand in case you mess up).
delete from oct_reviews where paper_id = 200; delete from oct_papers where paper_id = 200;
See the help pages of the Administrator Menu for information about how to prepare for each reviewing phase and how to switch between phases.
OCT2 is an extension of the OCT system. See the OCT User Guide for additional information.