Installing the Plom Server

The instructions here are for the installation of a Plom server. This not required by your markers; they only need to install the Plom client.

You can either use containers to run a server or install Plom from source.

Container images

Use either Podman or Docker to download the latest container image and launch it:

docker pull plomgrading/server
docker run -it --rm -p 41984:41984 plomgrading/server

By default, this will launch the demo server.

The data for the test is in /exam inside the Docker image. You can use your own local directory with -v:

mkdir my_test
docker run -it --rm -P -v $PWD/my_test:/exam plomgrading/server

(here -P will use a random high port on the host).

You can override the default command, for example:

docker run -it --rm -v $PWD/my_test:/exam plomgrading/server plom-build new --demo
docker run -it --rm -v $PWD/my_test:/exam plomgrading/server plom-server init
docker run -it --rm -v $PWD/my_test:/exam plomgrading/server plom-server users --demo
docker run -it --rm -P -v $PWD/my_test:/exam plomgrading/server plom-server launch

Alternatively you can get a shell and work inside the image:

docker run -it --rm plomgrading/server /bin/bash
plom-build new --demo

You can also connect a shell to a running image using exec:

docker exec -it <name> /bin/bash

where <name> can found using docker ps; its something like ornery_colin.

Installation using pip

In theory this should be simply:

pip install plom

but in practice, there are some caveats:

• you may need to upgrade your pip, especially if your system if a few years old. Try python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip.

• your system may need additional dependencies from your system package manager (dnf, apt, etc).

Note

TODO: it would be good to document this better! For now, see Installing from Source. It may also be useful to examine the Containerfile in the source code.

After installing, you should be able to run the various Plom commands. Try running plom-server and you should see something like:

$ plom-server --version
plom-server 0.8.11