dobedobedoh

Hi Little-Miss, What kind of functionality are you looking for - Professional Development, forums, or a space to share notes/files/etc? Mahara provides an easy-to-use interface for users to upload content (video, audio, graphics, documents, pdfs, etc) and arrange and share it easily (drag and drop interfaces with easy user-access controls). Mahara also offers support for external content (for example YouTube, vimeo, embedly, and Google Apps). Another key feature of mahara is it's Journal - typically users are encouraged to write journal entries as they work and to use those as a form of reflective learning, and it allows users to have multiple journals (e.g. one per project). There are also a number of additional plugins which allow you to extend Mahara further - things like Europass, Questionnaires, Continual Professional Development, FreeMind, Jmol, Chem2d, and Twitter. As Barney points out, you can also create groups which give, amongst other things, forum functionality -- in fact, the forums on mahara.org are a Mahara group with a forum. Mahara also supports various different authentication methods - you can hook it up to Moodle for example, or have users log in using their existing Active Directory credentials. We've even written a plugin to allow users to use their facebook login details. At Mahara UK 2011, there was quite a lot of talk on schools and universities using Mahara for staff professional development too - several people mentioned using the Journal feature as part of staff CPD for example. If you have anything specific that you want to see examples of, I can see if I can find specific examples, or failing that put something together to show you? I'm one of the core Mahara Developers, but I'm also interested in how Mahara is used. As Glennda suggests, we are indeed a Mahara Partner - we offer hosting, development, and consultancy. We'll also be hosting the Mahara UK 2012 conference. Andrew - LUNS

Users should not be asked for their username and password more than once. If using a browser which sends the NTLM authentication, then they shouldn't be asked at all. IIRC, Firefox doesn't pass through the NTLM auth from the Operating System and so users will be asked once for their username and password. If memory serves, this initial slowness was not actually caused by the NED itself, but a mis-configuration of a firewall in the core which was dropping connections instead of allowing them through. This caused the caching software to wait until the connection timed out before returning. Since most browsers are configured to only allow 4 connections to any one proxy server, this affects the whole browsing experience.

The log file download facility actually bunzip2s the logs on the fly and delivers you a plain text file so they're not really corrupt - they're just not bz2 and we weren't removing the extension. I should probably point out that this is really an issue with Windows and the way it disregards MIME types in favour of extensions. I've modified the Dashboard NED logging pages to adjust the file name upon download so these logs shouldn't be appearing as .bz2s any more. Andrew

In what way doesn't it resolve correctly outside of school? I get exactly what I expect when I point my PAC to http://wwwcache.cleo.net.uk - I get told to go DIRECT because the caches aren't available from home. What are you seeing?

In what way doesn't it resolve correctly outside of school? I get exactly what I expect when I point my PAC to http://wwwcache.cleo.net.uk - I get told to go DIRECT because the caches aren't available from home. What are you seeing?

bit is supposed to? You could request it through your support org? Chances are that no-one has asked for that through the proper channels so no-one knows that it's wanted.

As you say, this should be a non-issue with the NED and cachepilot if you're using the PAC. If you're not, things are more complicated. Interesting - I thought that this was fixed. I'll have a play tomorrow if I remember. IIRC this wasn't a NED or PAC issue in the end. As per design - that's one of the intended uses for the PAC. If the hotmail issue is resolved, that should make life easier?

Interesting... my understanding is that the NEDs are to be used for all content. They forward upstream requests to the relevant proxy (proxy.lancsngfl.ac.uk for Lancs or wwwcache.cumbria for Cumbria). There shouldn't be any case where you only need the NED for espresso - kinda defeats the point of having a Network Edge Device for caching doesn't it? The Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) is designed for use by all schools and should give out: The IP of the NED if a NED has been switched on for that school and has been seen recently (in the last 30 minutes I think); or The upstream proxy if the school has a NED which has not been seen recently; or The IP of a cachepilot if it's believed that a cachepilot exists for the school; or The upstream proxy details; or The DIRECT mechanism if you get the PAC from a non-CLEO IP (e.g. at home on your laptop). It should work for pretty much every situation. If your school has an alternative proxy server, or a cachepilot not listed in the PAC, get in touch with your support org to request the change.