Copyright  CBT Systems Ltd 1999 All rights reserved
Trademarks
CBT Systems, CBTPlayer, CBTReporter, CBTWeb, LivePlay and WinTracs are trademarks of CBT Group PLC. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

March 1999

CBT Systems USA Ltd
900 Chesapeake Drive
Redwood City
CA 94063
USA
Tel +1 650 817 5900
Fax +1 650 817 5902 / CBT Systems Ltd
Belfield Office Park
Clonskeagh
Dublin 4
Ireland
Tel +353 1 218 1000
Fax +353 1 283 0379 / CBT Systems UK Ltd
5 Heathrow Boulevard
278 Bath Road
West Drayton
Middlesex UB7 0DQ
UK
Tel +44 181 283 1800
Fax +44 181 283 1801

Part no. ML001021

TECHNICAL SUPPORT HELPDESK
USA
Tel 1 800 938 3247
Fax +1 650 817 5056
UK
Tel 0 800 973 184
Fax +353 1 260 1923
International
Tel +353 1 283 0380
Fax +353 1 260 1923
Technical queries may also be e-mailed to the CBT Systems Technical Support Department at

Installation and Administration Guide

CONTENTS

1

Installation and Administration Guide

1Introducing CBTWeb1

What is CBTWeb?1

Benefits of CBTWeb1

Key concepts2

2Planning your CBTWeb installation3

Core and optional components3

The CBTWeb server4

HTML pages4

Courseware6

Setup programs6

CGI scripts6

Web server specifications7

The desktop client7

Client machine specifications8

FTP server8

FTP server specifications8

Remote courseware server9

The installation process9

3Installing CBT Systems courses13

Installing LivePlay courses13

Installing downloadable courses14

4Installing CBTWeb17

Installing CBTWeb on Windows NT17

Installing CBTWeb on UNIX19

5Configuring your web server for download23

Microsoft Internet Information Server23

IIS 2.0 and 3.023

Denying execute access to your site23

Creating an alias for the cbtlib directory24

IIS 4.025

Netscape Enterprise Server26

Editing the MIME types26

Netscape Enterprise Server 2.026

Netscape Enterprise Server 3.027

Editing the obj.conf file28

Lotus Domino29

6Installing PERL/CGI31

How does CGI work?31

Installing PERL on Windows NT33

The cgi-lib.pl library34

Configuring PERL on Windows NT34

File associations on NT 4.034

File associations on NT 3.5135

Log file attributes35

Installing PERL on UNIX36

7Configuring your web server for CGI37

Microsoft Internet Information Server37

Setting file and directory permissions37

IIS 2.0 and 3.038

Setting up a virtual directory for cbtdata38

Creating registry associations39

IIS 4.040

Creating application mappings for .cgi and .pl40

Editing the CGI scripts41

Netscape Enterprise Server42

Defining cbtdata as a shell CGI directory42

Editing the CGI scripts43

Lotus Domino43

Replacing the CGI scripts with PERL scripts43

Updating the download pages44

Configuring Lotus Domino for CBTWeb CGI45

8Tracking student progress47

Record return and LivePlay47

Preventing record return with LivePlay48

Record return and download48

Preventing record return with download48

Configuring your FTP server49

Installing the Directory Setup utility49

Running the Directory Setup utility50

Pre-registering users51

Turning off self-registration and zero access52

9Updating and customizing CBTWeb55

The admin.exe program55

Updating CBTWeb pages for new courseware56

Generating a custom page56

Remote courses57

Generating INI files for remote courses57

Updating CBTWeb for remote courses58

Generating cknet.ckn files59

Customizing CBTWeb pages60

Customizing the Getting Started page60

Customizing the CGI pages61

Using the CGI scripts to prevent self-registration61

Using the CGI scripts to require a password62

Installing the CBTPlayer on a network drive63

10Troubleshooting65

Error messages65

Web server error messages65

IIS 2.0 and 3.0 error messages65

IIS 4.0 error messages66

Netscape Enterprise Server error messages67

Lotus Domino error messages67

CBTWeb error messages68

Browser errors69

Other troubleshooting sources69

Appendix: Setup programs71

Index75

1

Installation and Administration Guide

1

Introducing CBTWeb

Welcome to CBTWeb™, the web-based courseware deployment solution from CBT Systems.

What is CBTWeb?

CBTWeb allows you to provide students with access to CBT Systems’ library of interactive training courseware using your organization’s intranet.

To students, CBTWeb looks like a typical web site, with HTML pages linked so that they can navigate their way around the product easily. The HTML pages are stored on your web server along with the CBT Systems™ courseware. All students need to do is use a browser to access CBTWeb, and navigate through its graphical pages as they would any web site until they find the course they want.

CBTWeb is designed to

  • allow students and administrators to access current CBT Systems curricula and course information using a web browser
  • provide students with an easy method of downloading CBT Systems courses or running them online over their organization’s intranet
  • allow students to download utilities that will remove courses from their workstation, and send their course progress back to the training department
  • enable training administrators to keep all students up to date with CBT Systems courseware, reduce training administration costs, and keep records of and produce reports on student progress

Benefits of CBTWeb

CBTWeb is designed to give students easy access to the courses available to them over their organization’s intranet. Students can download and install courses on their workstation, or take courses online over the intranet. They can plan their study by viewing the contents of the CBT Systems library, curriculum planners, and detailed course descriptions.

CBTWeb facilitates training administration by reducing the need for training departments to copy and ship diskettes and CD-ROMs to students. It allows administrators to keep records of students’ progress. Students who have been working on courses installed on their workstations can return their progress to the training administrator. If a student has been working online, their progress is automatically returned to the administrator when the student exits the course. Administrators may also opt to keep records of student download activity.

Key concepts

As you read through this guide, you will come across a number of concepts that are central to understanding how CBTWeb works. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with these terms now, before you start planning your CBTWeb installation.

LivePlay

CBT Systems’ LivePlay™ capability allows students to run CBT Systems courses online over their organization’s intranet. When you install CBTWeb on your server, you can choose to provide students with LivePlay courses, downloadable courses, or both.

Download

As well as LivePlay courses, CBTWeb can deploy downloadable courses, which students can download to their hard drive and play from there. Students download and run a self-extracting EXE file to install the full course on their hard drive. Once they have finished with a course, they remove it from their machine using either the Courseware Remove utility or the Remove/Record Return utility.

CGI

When you install CBTWeb, you can choose to be informed every time a student downloads a course from the server. CBTWeb uses the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) specification to track student download activity and the PERL programming language to interpret CGI scripts.

CBTPlayer

Before students can run a course, they need to download the CBTPlayer™ from the CBTWeb site and install it on their machine.

Record return

CBTWeb provides training administrators with the option to monitor how far students have progressed in the CBT Systems courses they have taken, and how they have performed in the tests that every course contains. For this, administrators will need an FTP server to store student records. When students exit a LivePlay course, their progress records are returned to the FTP server automatically. For downloadable courses, students need to upload their records to the FTP server using the Remove/Record Return utility.

1

Installation and Administration Guide

2

Planning your CBTWeb installation

Before you install CBTWeb, you need to decide which types of course you want to make available to your students and which, if any, of CBTWeb’s reporting capabilities you want to use.

For example, do you want your students to be able to run LivePlay courses, downloadable courses, or both? If you opt for LivePlay, you may need to consider the bandwidth implications of a large number of students taking LivePlay courses over your network at the same time.

On the other hand, do your students’ machines have the hard disk space needed to accommodate CBT Systems courses, some of which can be larger than 15MB? If not, then you should consider offering your students LivePlay courses only.

If you make downloadable courses available through CBTWeb, do you want to be informed when a student downloads a course? If you do, you need to install CGI scripts and a PERL interpreter on your CBTWeb server and configure your system accordingly.

Do you want to track how your students are performing in the tests that are included in CBT courses? If the answer is Yes, you will need to set up and configure an FTP server to receive student progress reports.

Core and optional components

Before you start planning your CBTWeb installation, you should consider what components you will need to install, as well as the specifications for your server and client machines.

The compulsory components of any CBTWeb installation are

  • the CBTWeb server
  • the desktop client

The optional components are

  • an FTP server
  • a remote courseware server

The CBTWeb server

The CBTWeb server stores the following components:

  • HTML pages
  • courseware
  • setup programs
  • CGI scripts

HTML pages

To students, CBTWeb looks like any other web site, with a home page and various other links off it.

The Getting Started page is where students go to download the CBTPlayer and, if necessary, the Courseware Remove utility or the Remove/Record Return utility.

The Courseware page is where CBTWeb stores the CBT Systems Catalog, curriculum and course planners, and links to the courses themselves.

The About CBT page contains some information about CBT Systems, and the Strategic Partners page gives details of CBT Systems’ alliances with key players in the information technology industry.

The Customer Support page provides links to the CBT Systems Technical Support home page, as well as to a list of frequently asked questions and a support database.

The Feedback page gives you some details of where to address your comments about CBT Systems courseware and deployment products. Finally, the What’s New page tells you what courses have been added to the CBT Systems courseware library in a particular month.

Web page options

The web pages that your students can access will vary according to the options you select during CBTWeb Setup.

For example, the installation CD contains a number of different versions of the Getting Started page. Only one version is installed on the CBTWeb server, depending on whether you have opted to provide your students with LivePlay courses, downloadable courses, or both.

So if you decide to offer your students downloadable courses, Setup will install a Getting Started page from which students can download both the CBTPlayer and the Remove/Record Return utility. The utility allows students to remove courses from their hard drive once they’ve finished with them and to upload their progress records to an FTP server.

On the other hand, if you choose to provide LivePlay courses only, Setup will install a Getting Started page that offers the CBTPlayer alone for download. With LivePlay courses, student records are automatically returned to the FTP server—so long as you have chosen to track student progress during CBTWeb Setup.

Courseware

CBT Systems courses are stored in a directory called cbtlib under the root of your web server.

You need to have courses installed on your server before you install CBTWeb. To see how to do this, refer to Chapter 3, “Installing CBT Systems courses”.

Setup programs

During CBTWeb installation, a number of setup programs are installed in a folder called cbtweb\cbtutili under the root of your web server. These setup programs install the CBTPlayer and, if necessary, the Remove/Record Return utility on students’ machines.

Students can download the setup programs by accessing the CBTWeb Getting Started page. The links on this page vary according to the type of course you want them to run. Students can choose to download 16-bit or 32-bit versions of the setup programs, and they can opt to download the CBTPlayer and the Remove/Record Return utility in one go or as separate files.

Optional setup programs

As well as the setup programs that are installed during CBTWeb installation, there a number of optional setups which you can provide for your students by customizing the Getting Started page. These programs are stored in the support\cbtutili directory of the CBTWeb installation CD and include the following:

  • a no-upload version of the CBTPlayer—make sure that students download and install this version if you want them to run LivePlay courses, but don’t want their student progress automatically returned to an FTP server
  • a version of the CBTPlayer which does not require you to pre-register your users
  • the Courseware Remove utility—students should download and install this if they are running downloadable courses and you don’t want them to upload their students progress to an FTP server
  • no-upload versions of the CBTPlayer combined with both the Courseware Remove and Remove/Record Return utilities

Note: For details of the different self-extracting EXE files available with CBTWeb, refer to the appendixon “Setup programs”.

CGI scripts

If you want to track course download activity, you will need to install and configure PERL/CGI on your CBTWeb server. You should refer to the chapters on “Installing PERL/CGI” and “Configuring your web server for CGI” to see how this is done.

Web server specifications

CBTWeb runs on the following web servers and operating systems.

Web server / Operating system
Microsoft® Internet Information Server 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 / Windows® NT 4.0
Netscape® Enterprise Server™ 2.x / Windows NT 3.51, UNIX®
Netscape Enterprise Server 3.x / Windows NT 4.0, UNIX
Apache Web Server 1.2 / UNIX
Lotus® Domino™ Server / Windows NT 4.0
Novell® NetWare® Web Server 2.51 / IntraNetWare™, NetWare® 4.11

The web server hardware you need will depend on a number of factors, including the number of students you expect to be accessing the CBTWeb server at any one time and the speed of your network links.

Before you choose your web server hardware, you should consult your MIS department for recommendations based on your network infrastructure.

These are the minimum requirements for installing CBTWeb:

  • Pentium® Pro processor (200 MHz)
  • 128MB RAM
  • 4GB hard drive—this figure depends on the number of courses you plan to install on your CBTWeb server

The desktop client

The desktop client includes the following components:

  • a web browser—Netscape Navigator® 3.0 or higher and Microsoft® Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher are supported.
  • an appropriate Windows environment—the student side of CBTWeb runs on Windows® 3.x, Windows® 95, and Windows® NT.
  • the CBTPlayer—every client machine needs a CBTPlayer before the student can play courses either over the intranet or from their local hard drive. Students can download the CBTPlayer from the CBTWeb Getting Started page.
  • either the Courseware Remove utility or the Remove/Record Return utility. Both these utilities remove CBT Systems courses from students’ machines once they have finished with them and so are only required if you opt to provide your students with downloadable courses. The Remove/Record Return utility is also used to send students’ test results back to an FTP server if you have enabled this option during CBTWeb Setup.

Client machine specifications

The following is the minimum machine specification for client machines:

  • 486 processor (33 MHz)
  • 8MB RAM
  • 20MB of hard disk space

Our recommended machine specification for client machines is as follows:

  • Pentium processor (90 MHz)
  • 16MB RAM
  • 20MB of hard disk space

FTP server

The FTP server is an optional component which stores all student progress records. When a student runs a LivePlay course, their progress is automatically returned to the FTP server when they exit the course. When a student runs a downloadable course, they use the Remove/Record Return utility to return their progress to the server.

You can import the data stored on the FTP server into CBT Systems’ WinTracs™ or CBTReporter™ programs to produce training progress reports.

If you choose to make LivePlay courses available to your students, you will be asked for the IP address of your FTP server during CBTWeb Setup. So if you plan to use an FTP server, you should designate a machine and take a note of its IP address before you install CBTWeb.

Students running downloadable courses will be asked to provide details about the FTP server when they install the Remove/Record Return utility on their local machine.

For more on the FTP server, refer to Chapter 8, “Tracking student progress”.

FTP server specifications

The FTP server may be run from the same machine as the web server or from another machine.

The specification for a separate FTP server machine will depend on the number of simultaneous users and the speed of your network links. However, we recommend the same hardware specifications for an FTP server machine as for the web server machine.

Note: The FTP server does not require the same hard disk space as the web server. A single record upload is 1KB in size. However, you should remember that you might want to use the FTP server for other internal file transfers.

Remote courseware server

Courseware can take up a large amount of space on your server. For example, if you want to store the entire CBT Systems library in both LivePlay and downloadable format, you’ll need 12GB of hard disk space. As a result, you may need to store additional courses on another (remote) server. For details of how to update CBTWeb for remotely held courseware, see Chapter 9, “Updating and customizing CBTWeb”.

The installation process

Once you have decided which options you want to use with CBTWeb, you are ready to install the CBT Systems courseware and then CBTWeb itself. The following chapters in this guide will take you through the installation process.