Sage-based course for about 120 students

[Dima Pasechnik]

Here at NTU we'll start next week a semester-long course Experimental Maths, for our 2nd year majors.

It's going to be lab-based, with 120 people (should I say "w00t" here?)  sitting at the same time for labs (in 2 large computer labs with thin clients).

We'll be running two (or even four) multiprocessor VMs running Centos Linux (on VMWare ESX servers on big Intel boxes), to cope with the load. (And of course the servers will remain running for almost 24/7).

The team consists of Rado, Keshav, your humble servant, one more maths professor, and 3 more Sage-unaffiliated TAs.

 

Apart from the course material (in various stages of readiness), which will be shared with the world, we have managed

to fix an LDAP-based authentication to the servers, so that the undergrads log in using their regular university (Active Directory, duh...) accounts. 

We'll keep you posted---AFAIK no-one did such a large-scale thing before using Sage.

Dima

[David Joyner]

Thierry Dumont posted an email to sage-devel in Oct 2008 about a similar thing
with possibly 200 students in France. I don't remember how it worked out though.
Good luck.

> Dima
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[D.C. Ernst]

On Aug 6, 6:32 am, Dima Pasechnik <dimp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Apart from the course material (in various stages of readiness), which will
> be shared with the world, we have managed
> to fix an LDAP-based authentication to the servers, so that the undergrads
> log in using their regular university (Active Directory, duh...) accounts.

I'd like to hear more about this. (After much prodding) My university
now has a Sage server up and running. One of the reservations from my
IT department was the lack of integration with the students'
university accounts. Thanks.

Dana

[dimpase]

For the integration with (our) AD, one just needs python's ldap module.

Rado and Keshav hacked the corresponding patch in couple of hours, once it became

clear that this will suffice (we spent time looking at AD-based stuff, at Kerberos-based stuff etc, but then it was

realized that these are an overkill...).

Once the dust settles, hopefully some patches will be merged into nb.