Course Deletion using portainer?

crivet · May 22, 2019, 7:18pm

as per request by @regis i’m generating a discussion to help resolve this issue or generate a strategy for deleting courses.

Referencing the following issue from github:

Is there current example of deleting of a course?

in attempting to replicate this (tutor v3.3.4, and running a custom fork of the edx-platform branched from ironwood.master with very view modifications)
(with tutor running a local functional instance)

i’ve started up portainer to gain access to the running containers
connected to both the lms & cms containers respectively attempting to run the delete_course command, but regardless when attempting to perform the described action am greeted by the following:

command:
./manage.py cms delete_course course-v1:testing+1+2019

output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./manage.py", line 123, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line([sys.argv[0]] + django_args)
  File "/openedx/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 364, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/openedx/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 356, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/openedx/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py",line 283, in run_from_argv
    self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
  File "/openedx/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py",line 330, in execute
    output = self.handle(*args, **options)
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/cms/djangoapps/contentstore/management/commands/delete_course.py", line 69, in handle
    if not modulestore().get_course(course_key):
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/django.py", line 316, in modulestore
    settings.MODULESTORE['default'].get('OPTIONS', {})
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/django.py", line 298, in create_modulestore_instance
    **_options
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/mixed.py", line 176, in __init__
    signal_handler=signal_handler,
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/django.py", line 298, in create_modulestore_instance
    **_options
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/split_mongo/split.py", line 707, in __init__
    self.db_connection = MongoConnection(**doc_store_config)
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/split_mongo/mongo_connection.py", line 278, in __init__
    retry_wait_time=retry_wait_time, **kwargs
  File "/openedx/edx-platform/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/mongo_utils.py", line 50, in connect_to_mongodb
    **kwargs
  File "/openedx/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pymongo/mongo_client.py", line 425, in __init__
    raise ConnectionFailure(str(e))
pymongo.errors.ConnectionFailure: [Errno 111] Connection refused

I’ve attempted to run this command from the following containers:

tutor_local_lms_1
tutor_local_cms_1 (the suggested container to perform the command from)
tutor_local_lms_worker_1
tutor_local_cms_worker_1

Additionally, I’ve tried activating the virtual environment before performing the operation as well.

I’m assuming this has something to do with how i’m attempting to perform the operation.

@regis suggested checking that the mongodb container is running, which it appears to be. It’s listed in portainer, and i’m able to access its console through that interface in a currently running in a local instance. so i’m at a loss.

Also, it’s worth noting that I’m fairly new to both docker, and openedx. so go easy on me…

regis · May 23, 2019, 9:02am

Hi @crivet! Thanks for taking the time to move your question here.
I managed to reproduce your issue. Here is the “tl;dr” solution:

 ./manage.py cms --settings=tutor.production delete_course course-v1:testing+1+2019

And now for the longer explanation: the problem comes from the fact that when we launch a console in the cms container with Portainer, the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable is not defined. As a consequence, the manage.py commands loads the platform settings from its defaults: lms.envs.devstack_docker. These defaults do not work with Tutor. In particular, the mongodb connection credentials are incorrect, causing the above error. To solve this issue, we need to manually specify which settings we want to load, hence the --settings tutor.production option.

But why is the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable undefined? With Portainer, launching a console is like running docker-compose exec .... When we exec into a running container, we skip the container entrypoint. In Tutor, it is the openedx container entrypoint that defines the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE.

To better understand this, you can run:

tutor local run cms bash
echo $DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE

This should print cms.envs.tutor.production, showing that the default settings are well defined.

But if we run the following:

tutor local exec cms bash
echo $DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE

Then nothing is printed.

crivet · May 23, 2019, 1:25pm

Awesome, just ran a few test deletions on my test instance and it worked using the additional settings flag. Thanks for the help @regis, greatly appreciated.

lmeinert · June 21, 2019, 8:27am

My question seems stupid enough to me not to open a new topic… but I can’t find the answer : how to delete a course without using portainer ? I did multiple failed imports and I would like to delete those.
Thank a lot in advance !

regis · June 21, 2019, 10:26am

@lmeinert You can run any command in a docker container with tutor local run <service name> <command>. So, to delete a course, run:

tutor local run cms ./manage.py cms --settings=tutor.production delete_course course-v1:testing+1+2019

sbrewer · December 7, 2019, 3:32pm

@regis can I recommend you add your statement about running any open edx command using 'tutor local run to the documentation on the main tutor site? It took me quite a while to find the solution to running open edx commands as I didn’t see that in the docs tutor site.

cacciaresi · December 7, 2019, 6:22pm

Hi @sbrewer I think that @regis already updated the documentation with this commit: https://github.com/overhangio/tutor/commit/0fb9bfe008362fddfb2e0ebd26a4d9cf246c4390#diff-648700f3f6b608fa165d43af94f0d0c9R111 but it seems that is not yet deployed in the documentation site.

regis · December 9, 2019, 8:00am

Yes @sbrewer, the command will be published in the docs in the next release. Thanks @cacciaresi for answering!

More generally, I feel like the docs should be re-organized. There is a lot of information and it’s difficult to separate the tutorials from the howtos and the reference guides. We should follow the model used by the Django docs and separate the practical/theoretical and working/studying info. See: https://www.divio.com/blog/documentation/

momer · November 16, 2022, 8:09am

Can you please let me know about deleting the course? I have used the command

tutor local run cms ./manage.py cms --settings=tutor.production delete_course course-v1:Test+Test101+2022
It deleted the course from studio. After that, the occurrence was left in coure_overview. I deleted it from the admin panel but still I can see the course in /courses page. It is not working but I want its all occurrences to be deleted.
I clear the Redis cache by
docker exec -it tutor_local_redis_1 redis-cli FLUSHALL
but still, the issue was not resolved.