There is a lot you can do without installing any software on your own machine. Using a browser, you can logon to the Expo online system ("the website", also known as "troggle") as user 'expo' at the Troggle User Login page. (Ask another expoer for the 'cavey:beery' password.) You can: +
There is a lot you can do without installing any software on your own machine. Anything with a web browser is an 'Expo Basic laptop'. +Using the browser, you can logon to the Expo online system ("the website", also known as "troggle") as user 'expo' at the Troggle User Login page. (Ask another expoer for the 'cavey:beery' password.) You can:
Documentation on how to actually do these things are in the data maintenance manual. +
Documentation on how to actually do these things are in the data maintenance manual.
+
Or use the "Search" box below the menu on the left-hand side of the page.
+
Or go to any of the troggle report pages and explore the menu of items across the top of the page:
+
+ 264 |
+ 290 |
+ 359 |
+ Survex |
+ All Survex |
+ Scans |
+ Upload Scans |
+ Drawings |
+ Upload Drawings |
+ Upload Photos |
+ 290 (FGH) |
+ 264 (Balkonhöhle) |
+
+ Data Issues |
+ tasks to do |
+ caves |
+ QMs |
+ ents |
+ expoers |
+ survey lengths |
+ statistics |
+ Wallets(2022) |
+ Expo(2022) |
+
And using email to send the results to an expo nerd, you can:
and of course using your phone or laptop you can update entries on expo antics on public forums such as ukcaving. -
If you also have Survex and Therion installed on the laptop, you can do nearly everything for initial cave survey data entry. See the -Survex, Tunnel and Therion installation instructions and the expo survey laptop installation instructions. -(These will be moved to a different page in the handbook soon). +
If you also have Survex and Therion installed on the laptop (which makes it an "Expo Survey Laptop"), you can do nearly everything for initial cave survey data entry. See the expo survey laptop installation instructions.
We are actively working on increasing the number of expo activities that can be done with just a browser and no, or minimal, installed software. @@ -43,83 +71,36 @@ browser. Many of these capabilities are not new, but they weren't documented and href="manual.html">these capabilities are documented, though writing better documentation is an unending job, and we have a data maintenance manual.
See the expertise sequence which lists what you can do at each stage. -
If you are new to expo and can't do what you want with just a browser and email, then please use the expo laptop in the potato hut first. You don't need to use your own laptop - which can take several hours to configure completely. -
To set up your own basic laptop for bulk cave data maintenance you need to do this:
-The expo laptop is a basic laptop configuration. It has everything for editing and testing survey files (survex, aven, cavern), drawings (tunnel, therion), scanned images of sketches and centre-lines, and photographs. The expo laptop in the potato hut is also physically connected to a flatbed scanner but you can use your phone camera instead and email the images to yourself on your laptop. +
If you are new to expo and can't do what you want with just a browser and email, then please use the expo laptop in the potato hut first. You don't need to use your own laptop - which can take a while to configure with survex, tunnel and therion. +
You may also need to install image editing software such as Irfanview or gimp. + + +
The expo laptop is a bulk update laptop configuration. It has everything for editing and testing survey files (survex, aven, cavern), drawings (tunnel, therion), scanned images of sketches and centre-lines, and photographs. The expo laptop in the potato hut is also physically connected to a flatbed scanner but you can use your phone camera instead and email the images to yourself on your laptop.
The expo laptop may also have some software for managing vector images (such as rigging guides), PocketTopo files, GIS digital maps and GPS tracks. See the full survey laptop configuration for details. -
Managing large sets of photographs and scanned images, and managing several folders of these on your laptop and on expofiles on the server is finicky and time-consuming. Many programmers use rsync to help them with this, but if you have never used rsync, now is not the time to learn. Use filezilla and FTP. It is at this point that if you are using a Windows machine, you really need to read about how expo uses hard and soft links and filenames on Windows. If things get screwed up badly, it will need someone on a Linux machine to sort it out. +
Managing large sets of photographs and scanned images, and managing several folders of these on your laptop and on expofiles on the server is finicky and time-consuming. Many programmers use rsync to help them with this, but if you have never used rsync, now is not the time to learn. Use filezilla on the expo laptop. It is at this point that if you are using a Windows machine, you really need to read about how expo uses hard and soft links and filenames on Windows. If things get screwed up badly, it will need someone on a Linux machine to sort it out. -
Once you have got all this working, and if it doesn't do what you want or you don't understand how to use it, -look at the full survey laptop configuration for everything else. -And please write some documentation for the next person in your situation. -
If you are just typing up logbook entries then you don't need any other software. If you are working with survey data download this software (short list): -
Follow this link to register a key with the expo server to get upload (i.e. read/write) access. -Do this first, Without it none of git, scp, ftp or rsync will work. - -
On a Windows machine you will need to configure pageant (the putty authentication agent) -to run at startup to load your key. -Note that you are loading your private key, the .ppk file, into pageant and that this key never leaves your laptop.
- -When using Windows please, please be excessively -careful when naming files and survex names and be exceptionally careful when using rsync. - -
It is necessary to use scp or sftp to manage large collections of files in 'expofiles' +
It is necessary to use Filezilla scp or sftp to manage large collections of files in 'expofiles'. Before you attempt this, talk + to a more experienced expoer. +
See Experts: Uploading files, Uploading files and Uploading GPS tracks. - Only machines which have done the key-pair setup process can do scp, sftp or rsync. + Only Bulk Data machines which have done the key-pair setup process can do scp, sftp or rsync or run Filezilla.
diff --git a/handbook/computing/bulkupdatelaptop.html b/handbook/computing/bulkupdatelaptop.html new file mode 100644 index 000000000..7f521be22 --- /dev/null +++ b/handbook/computing/bulkupdatelaptop.html @@ -0,0 +1,134 @@ + + + + +You will already have configured your laptop to do all the basic stuff using the +basic Expo laptop guide, +and you probably will also have installed the survey tools survex, tunnel, therion etc. +in configuring a survey laptop. + +
If you want to do software development instead, go to configuring a troggle development machine.
+This is an attempt at describing how to configure your laptop to do bulk file transfers to and from the server. If you are only managing one or two files at a time, you don't need this.
+
You need three kinds of software +
If you are only managing photos, GPS tracks or documents then you don't need the version control stuff. + +
If you are only managing survey data then you probably don't need the file-transfer stuff. + +
You may not need a full troggle software development machine if you are only fixing a small script. If you are, you need +
To set up your own laptop for bulk cave data maintenance you need to do this:
+Note that on a Debian or Ubuntu machine you should normally install the versions that come with the specific distro (e.g. v11 Bulleye for Debian, or Jammy Jellyfish 22.04 for Ubuntu) i.e. install using 'sudo apt install xxx', not by downloading things from the above sites. So installing everything you need should be as simple as: +
To install and configure Filezilla on your machine see FileZilla install instructions which will set you up pointing at the correct folder automatically.
+
+
+
Read the Detailed Windows Configuration Instructions for foconfiguring a Windows Bulk Update machine. + +
On a new machine you need to configure your git identity: +
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
+git config --global user.name "Your Name"
+git config --global pull.rebase true
+When maintaining the HTML files in the expo handbook (the :expoweb: git repository) a link-checker is useful to report bad URLs (links to external sites go bad regularly) and to find orphaned pages with no in-links. The website has about 2,000 internal URLs in just the Tunnel wiki section alone. +
-Before you do anything substantial you will probably need to -set up a basic expo machine and -then a survey data management configuration. This -can take several hours, but you don't need to install everything before +Your own laptop + web-browser is already a basic expo machine. +You will need to install cave survey software to make it a +then a survey laptop. This +can take an hour or so, but you don't need to install everything before you can contribute to fixing things in the Expo Systems To-Do List. +Once you have got a bit of experience with the how expo works, you can upgrade your laptop +to a bulk update machine. If you really want to get stuck into the code you will need a troggle software development configuration.
Finally, if that all sounds like too much hassle for you, were are in desparate need diff --git a/handbook/computing/keyexchange.html b/handbook/computing/keyexchange.html index b4ffbd6e8..46c589345 100644 --- a/handbook/computing/keyexchange.html +++ b/handbook/computing/keyexchange.html @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
You only need to do this if you need to do bulk updates of a lot of files to the server.
- Copying files from the server does not need this.
- - Only people updating or rearranging files on the server need this, e.g.
+ - Only people updating or rearranging files on the server with a Bulk Update Laptop, or programmers doing troggle software development need this, e.g.
OK, you have an uploaded and usable key and you can ssh into the expo server. If you want to connect from another machine (e.g. your phone) it's better to make another key than try to re-use the first one. You don't need a nerd admin now, you can do this yourself. But be extremely careful to follow this exactly. If you innocently rename the files to something that appears more sensible it won't work.
ssh-copy-id -i pulsifer_id_rsa.pub expo@expo.survex.com
+Note that by using sFTP like this we avoid having to use a text editor over ssh. If you know what you are doing you can do this of course, but the above process is less likely to cause problems for a Windows user setting up their phone as a second device where they are not experienced with vi or nano. +
Note that by using sFTP like this we avoid having to use a text editor over ssh. If you know what you are doing you can do this of course, but the above process is less likely to cause problems for a Windows user setting up their phone as a second device where they are not experienced with vi or nano. +