Faculty give access to TAs to grade assignments. In the past, all TAs were added to a group called “submit”, so they could access assignment submissions. This has various problems:

• Faculty often want to leave the original data inside course submit directories untouched.
• The labtest version of web submit writes files as group “labtest”. TAs are not allowed in group labtest. This means that tech needs to manually copy the submission data to another folder in the course hierarchy to make it accessible to TAs. These copies take many hours of tech time. In addition, this secondary copy of the submit data occupies additional backup and archive space.
• By placing TAs in the submit group, this gives them access to the submit directory for ALL courses. Submit may be used for courses cross listed for grads. Grads may obtain access to submit data for courses they may be taking.
• When TAs are sharing files in a submit folder, and one TA writes files as their own user ID, the files may be written as group “grad” and without write access to the other TAs.
• Undergrads are TAing now. Being in group submit would give undergrads access to submit data for other courses that they may be taking now, and in the future!

In order to solve these problems, a new solution, “gsync” (grading sync) has been developed. Gsync includes:

• An on-demand, limited access grading account and group created for each course
• The Faculty member who owns the course directory has complete control over who can access the grading account
• A simple, on-demand, and efficient method to sync ALL the data from the course directory to the grading directory
• All the files and directories in the grading directory will be owned by the user who created the course directory, and will be the group of the grading account.
• All the files in the grading area will be completely readable and writable by the course directory owner, and the grading account owner.

In order to use gsync, follow these easy steps:

After you've created your course directory in /eecs/course, give gsync the list of TAs for your course. You do this using the gsyncu command.

To add users: gsyncu add <course> user1 … userN

To remove users: gsyncu remove <course> user1 … userN

To list users in the access list for your course: gsyncu <course> list

NOTE: Don't forget to add yourself to the access list as well.

NOTE: <course> refers to the course name as it is listed in the course directory. It is a case sensitive name and not a full path.

About an hour after you create the gsync user list for your course, an account and group will be automatically created. The account and group will be named: ta<course directory name>. For example, for the course directory “3311”, the account name is ta3311 and the group is ta3311. If additional letters are added to your course directory name (eg. 3311Z), then those letters will also be added to the account and group for your course.

Login to the grading server (grade1.eecs.yorku.ca) with your own account. For example:

indigo% ssh grade1

NOTE: The grading server is intended to be used for grading assignments. Any other use is forbidden.

In order to access the course grading account, use the “bu” (become user) command. For example, if your course is EECS3311:

grade1% bu ta3311

Note that the grading account is only accessible from the grading server, grade1. It's only accessible with the “bu” command. Your access list determines who can access the account. No passwords are required.

After you've logged into the grading account, run the “gsync” command to sync the data from your course directory to the grading directory. gsync knows which course account you're logged into, so you don't need to tell it which course to sync:

grade1% gsync

The first time you run gsync, it copies down all the data from your course directory to the grading directory. Subsequent syncs will copy only changed files.

The /eecs/grading hierarchy is arranged by session, term, and course, similar to the course directory hierarchy. For example, if your course is EECS3311 in 2018-19 fall, then the grading directory will be:

/eecs/grading/2018-19/F/3311

By default, gsync will not overwrite data in the grading directory. This allows you and your TAs to modify files in the grading area as part of grading without the risk that running gsync again would clear their changes. If you want to allow gsync to overwrite files in the grading directory with files from the course directory, use the “-o” (ovewrite) option:

grade1% gsync -o

If you want gsync to delete files and directories from the grading directory that do not exist in the course directory, use the “-c” (clean) option:

grade1% gsync -c

Note that -o and -c options can be combined. Using both -o and -c will result in the grading directory being an identical copy of the course directory.

ATTENTION Both -o and -c options are destructive. Never use the -o or -c options without consulting with the other members of your grading group. The grading area is not backed up, and any files that you erase from the grading area are not recoverable (unless you want to recover the original version of the file from the submit directory).

A few final notes on gsync:

• The grading area is NOT BACKED UP. It is a duplicate of the data in the course directory. As a result, tech cannot restore deleted files from the grading area.

• The grading area will be cleared once per term (on a date to be set). Once the data is cleared, it cannot be restored.

• Remember that the grading account is only accessible on the grading server, grade1.

• gsync only copies data from the course directory to the grading area. If you want to copy data from grading area back to your course directory, faculty must do this manually. For example, to copy the “feedback” directory from the grading directory for course EECS3311 in 2018-19 Fall back to the course directory:

  grade1% cp -pr /eecs/grading/2018-19/F/3311/feedback /eecs/course/3311

• Ugrad TAs will need to have an alternate account setup with access to grade1 before they can access the grading account. Please consult with tech.

• Any use of the grading server, grade1 for any other task than grading is strictly forbidden.

• If you have any questions about gsync, please inform tech.