Sugarizer School Portal

Sugarizer is the open-source learning platform based on Sugar that began in the famous One Laptop Per Child project.

Sugarizer Server allows the deployment of Sugarizer on a local server, for example on a school server, so expose locally Sugarizer as a Web Application. Sugarizer Server can also be used to provide collaboration features for Sugarizer Application on the network. Sugarizer Server could be deployed in a Docker container or on any computer with Node.js 6+ and MongoDB 2.6+.

Sugarizer School Portal is a new tool in the Sugarizer family which was created as a part of Google Summer of Code 2020 program. It provides a way for schools interested by Sugarizer to host and manage themselves their Sugarizer deployment. It provides an on-demand (SaaS) Sugarizer Server deployment tool so that every school will be able to create a Sugarizer Server to host its own deployment without any technical skill in just a few clicks.

Under the hood, Sugarizer School Portal is a Kubernetes cluster that is able to create/manage on-demand new Sugarizer Server instances.

Install using Helm (SSP Server will be installed inside the cluster itself)

Sugarizer School Portal Chart can be used for setting up Sugarizer School Portal Server deployment on a Kubernetes cluster. Refer to this repository for setup and deployment instructions. You can also use the Setup to automatically set-up Sugarizer School Portal.

Currently, Sugarizer School Portal Chart supports three providers:

• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Install on a separate system (SSP Server will be installed on the system and it'll remotely access the cluster)

You can follow these steps to set-up Sugarizer School Portal Server on a system. You can either use Sugarizer School Portal Server with a Kubernetes cluster on an online provider (Like GKE, Azure and AWS) or you can set-up your own local Kubernetes cluster using MicroK8s.

Set-up Sugarizer-Chart environment

Sugarizer-Chart is a Helm Chart for setting up Sugarizer-Server deployment on a Kubernetes cluster. It currently supports four providers:

• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
• Microk8s (It basically provides a bare-metal Kubernetes cluster)

Clone the Sugarizer-Chart

git clone https://github.com/NikhilM98/sugarizer-chart

Set-up the environment depending on the provider you will be using. You also need to configure the values in values.yaml of the chart. Note that you don't need to set schoolShortName and hostName values as they will be overwritten.

Install MongoDB

You can follow MongoDB documentation to install MongoDB in your system.

Install Sugarizer School Portal Server

Make sure that you have correct Sugarizer-Chart environment set up and MongoDB installed on your system. To install Sugarizer School Portal Server follow these steps:

git clone https://github.com/NikhilM98/sugarizer-school-portal-server.git
cd sugarizer-school-portal-server
npm install

You need to make some changes in the configuration file before starting the Sugarizer School Portal. Update the [system] section in env/config.ini according to your system.

Running Sugarizer School Portal

After making the required changes in the configuration file. You can start Sugarizer School Portal by running this command:

npm start

To login to the Dashboard the first time, you will have to create an admin account using this command:

sh add-admin.sh admin password http://127.0.0.1:8080/auth/signup

Server Configuration

Sugarizer School Portal configuration is load by default from file env/config.ini. Following is the typical content of the configuration file:

[information]
name = Sugarizer School Portal
description = Web Interface for Sugarizer School Portal

[web]
port = 8080

[security]
min_password_size = 4
max_age = 172800000
https = false
certificate_file = ../server.crt
key_file = ../server.key
strict_ssl = false
salt_rounds = 10
verification = false
smtp_port = 465
smtp_host = smtp.sugarizer.org
smtp_tls_secure = true
smtp_user = username
smtp_pass = password
smtp_email = mail@sugarizer.tools

[database]
server = 127.0.0.1
port = 27017
name = schoolportal
waitdb = 1
replicaset = false

[collections]
users = users
deployments = deployments

[system]
helm_binary = helm
kubectl_binary = kubectl
chart_path = ../sugarizer-chart/
replicaset = true
databaseUrl = mymongodb
hostName = sugarizer.tools

[log]
level = 1

[webhooks]
slack_webhook_url = false

The [information] section is for describing your Sugarizer School Portal. It could be useful for clients connected to the portal.

The [web] section describes the settings of the node.js process. By default, the webserver is on the port 8080.

The [security] section regroup security settings.

• The min_password_size is the minimum number of characters for the password.
• The max_age is the expiration time in milliseconds of a session with the client. At the expiration of the session, the client should reenter its password. The default time is 172800000 (48 hours).
• Parameters https, certificate_file, key_file and strict_ssl are explained below. These are not required if SSP Server is to be installed inside a Kubernetes Cluster.
• The salt_rounds controls how much time is needed to calculate a single BCrypt hash. The default rounds is 10.
• The verification controls if Client Email Verification will be present or not. If verification is set to true then you need to provide the SMTP configuration by providing smtp_port, smtp_host, smtp_tls_secure, smtp_user, smtp_pass and smtp_email.

The [database] and [collections] sections are for MongoDB settings. You could update the server name (by default MongoDB run locally) and the server port. Names of the database and collections had no reason to be changed. The waitdb parameter allows you to force the server to wait for the database. If replicaset is set to true then the server will connect with the provided MongoDB Replicaset instead of classical MongoDB instance.

The [system] section indicates the system configuration:

• The helm_binary value determines the location of the helm binary file in the system. If you're using Microk8s, then setting helm_binary to microk8s.helm3 will be fine.
• The kubectl_binary value determines the location of the kubectl binary file in the system. If you're using Microk8s, then setting kubectl_binary to microk8s.kubectl will be fine.
• The chart_path value determines the location of the sugarizer-chart folder in the system.
• The provider value determines the Kubernetes cluster provider. It can be microk8s, gke, aws or azure.
• The replicaset value determines if MongoDB Replicaset is installed in the cluster. It can be set to true or false.
• The databaseUrl value determines the URL of the MongoDB database in the cluster. If replicaset is true then it is the name of the MongoDB Replicaset chart, like mymongodb. If replicaset is false then it is the local URL of the MongoDB database in the cluster, like sugarizer-service-db-mymongodb.sugarizer-mymongodb.svc.cluster.local.

The [log] section indicates how the server log access. If level value is greater than 0 or is not present, Sugarizer School Portal will log all access to the server on the command line.

The [webhooks] section indicates the additional webhooks that you can connect the server to. Currently it supports Slack. You can enter the slack_webhook_url of your slack channel to connect the server with the webhook. You can follow these instructions to create a webhook. Set slack_webhook_url to false if you do not want your app to connect with Slack. If the app is connected with slack, it'll send notifications to the channel if a deployment is created or destroyed.

Running Sugarizer School Portal securely using SSL (Optional and only required if SSP Server is installed externally on a server.)

Sugarizer School Portal could be run securely using SSL. Few parameters in the [security] section of the configuration file are dedicated to that.

• To run the server securely set https parameter to true.
• certificate_file and key_file are the path to certificate and key file to sign requests.
• strict_ssl should be set to false if your certificate is a self-signed certificate or is a certificate not signed by a trusted authority.

License

This project is licensed under Apache v2 License. See LICENSE for full license text.