Running the demo

Currently we must run the demo from the plom_server directory, by running

python3 Launcher/launch_scripts/launch_plom_demo_server.py

This runs the entire demo through to reassembling papers. You should probably run it with a --wait-after option:

  • ‘users’ - will wait after creating demo-users

  • ‘spec’ - wait after a demo-spec is uploaded

  • ‘papers_built’ - wait after paper pdfs are built

  • ‘rubrics’ - wait after bundles are uploaded and system+demo rubrics set up - useful for playing with the client

  • ‘randomarker’ - wait after papers are marked and ID’d by the rando-marker

To stop the demo type “quit” and press enter.

Problems

If the demo crashes (or you force quit out of it) then you may have lingering huey tasks floating about that you’ll need to terminate before running again. On Unix systems, one way to do this is:

pkill -KILL -f manage.py

This will terminate any user process that includes “manage.py”, which is (basically) all running django related stuff…. not just those associated with the demo. Use with care.

Databases

The new Plom server needs a database, which must be setup before launching the server or the demo.

Commands below have been tested with Podman on a Fedora 40 laptop.

SQLite

Currently not functional. TODO: document how to try it.

PostgreSQL

Start a local container:

docker pull postgres
docker run --name postgres_cntnr -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -p 5432:5432 -d postgres

By default, things seem to want to use a socket instead of TCP/IP to talk to the database. For testing, I can connect with psql -h 127.0.0.1 -U postgres To make Django use TCP/IP, I put the “127.0.0.1” as the host in settings.py.

To stop the container:

docker stop postgre_cntnr
docker rm postgre_cntnr

MariaDB / MySQL

TODO: connect this to Plom.

Start a local container:

docker pull mariadb
docker run --name mariadb_cntnr -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=mypass -p 3306:3306 -d mariadb

Check that we can connect to the server:

mysql -h localhost -P 3306 --protocol=TCP -u root -p