CaSS

Competency and Skills Service -- Competency Management

Release Candidate: 1.5.56
Supported: 1.4
Supported: 1.3
Supported: 1.2

High level documentation
Developer documentation

Purpose of this Document

This document is intended to act as a technical guide to the installation of CaSS.

This installation of CaSS will provide several components that operate to provide a working system. It is composed of:

• The CaSS Repository, a Java application that runs in a Servlet Container, such as Tomcat.
• The CaSS Library, a Javascript library that provides an interoperability layer between web applications and the CaSS Repository.
• CaSS Embeddable Apps, a set of iframeable applications for branded web applications.
• CaSS Adapters, an adapter that interprets xAPI statements and asserts competence, and an adapter that synchronizes competencies and frameworks to and from Moodle.

CaSS Libraries

From GitHub

https://github.com/cassproject/cass-npm

NPM

https://www.npmjs.com/package/cassproject

Installation

Ubuntu/Fedora Linux:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cassproject/CaSS/master/scripts/cassInstall.sh
chmod +x cassInstall.sh
sudo ./cassInstall.sh

During the installation, you will be asked to select a version to install. Versions are listed at the top of this document.

Docker

Docker images for standalone instances (based on Ubuntu) and distributed/scalable instances (based on Alpine Linux) can be found at:

https://hub.docker.com/r/cassproject/cass

Post Installation

To support open linked data, it is important that the objects created in CaSS have public, reliable URLs. For this:

• Assign this server a domain name.
• Enable HTTPS.
• (Optional) Use a reverse proxy to control the endpoint closely.

Running Locally

After cloning this repository (ensure you use git clone with --recurse-submodules!), you can run CaSS locally.

Dependencies: Docker (will pull and run elasticsearch on port 9200)

Getting things up and running

• git clone --recurse-submodules -b <branch> https://github.com/cassproject/CASS - Get the code.
• npm i - Install dependencies.
• npm run dev - Starts server, restarts server on-save.

In a separate command line, if you want unit tests:

• npm run automocha - Runs both cass-npm and cass unit tests, runs them again on-save.
• npm run automochafast - Runs cass unit tests, runs them again on-save.
• npm run mocha - Runs cass-npm and cass unit tests.
• npm run mochafast - Runs cass unit tests.

Generating documentation

Will be deposited in /docs

• npm run docs

Running in myriad environments (requires Docker)

Where flavors are: ubuntu16, ubuntu18, ubuntu20, ubuntu18:13to15, standaloneWindows, standalone, testReplication

• npm run buildRun:<flavor> - Wipes previous test container, builds and starts flavor container.
• npm run buildRun:kill - Stops the running container.

Running it like it's in prod

• npm run run:cassbase - Starts PM2 on localhost:8080/cass (used by cassInstall.sh)
• npm run run:standalone - Starts PM2 on localhost/ (used by Docker installs)
• npm run run - Starts PM2 on localhost:8080/
• npm run logs - Tails logs.
• npm run stop - Stops all PM2 services.

To get the process to restart when your linux machine restarts, run npm run pm2startup, run the command the process tells you to, and run npm run pm2save. For Windows, an additional library is needed to configure this.

A note on Elasticsearch and 1.5

Due to the performance improvements in the 1.5 version of CaSS, we highly recommend using Elasticsearch 7 with it as it's better configured to handle the load than previous versions.

Release Process

• npm upgrade --save Review dependencies, autocomplete version numbers
• Increment version number in package.json and src/main/swagger.json and docker-compose*.yml
• Increment elasticsearch version number (in Dockerfile and docker-compose) to latest minor/revision in docker/standalone/DockerFile (https://hub.docker.com/_/elasticsearch)
• npm install
• npm run testWithCoverage
• In another command window, npm run test:mocha - Must not fail any tests.
• In another command window, npm run openapi:validate - Must not fail any tests.
• In the command window running testWithCoverage, ctrl+c. Record the output of the code coverage for the tests in codeCoverage.md.
• Update src/main/webapp to point at the appropriate gh-pages commit.
• Update CHANGELOG.md
• Update README.md
• Run npm run buildRun:standaloneTest to ensure the container can build.
• docker scout cves cass-test > scan-standalone.txt
• Use Docker Desktop or the previous output to resolve any high or medium priority (6.0 CVSS and above) issues.
• In another command window, npm run test:mocha - Must not fail any tests.
• Run docker-compose up --build to ensure the container can build.
• docker scout cves cass-cass > scan-node.txt
• Use Docker Desktop or the previous output to resolve any high or medium priority (6.0 CVSS and above) issues.
• In another command window, npm run test:mocha - Must not fail any tests.
• Commit with release notes.
• Tag commit with version number.

FIPS:

FIPS is supported both client-side and server-side in CaSS. Here is the relevant compatibility table.

Sources: https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2023/05/29/FIPS-3-0-8/

--> Server -->	< 1.5.35	>= 1.5.35 with OpenSSL 3.0.8 and --force-fips	>= 1.5.35 with OpenSSL 3.0.8 and --force-fips and env REJECT_SHA1=true
Client/Library
< 1.5.35	SHA-1 (no FIPS)	SHA-1 (Verify only)	Incompatible
< 1.5.35 and OpenSSL 3.0.8 and env FIPS=true	SHA-1 (partial FIPS)	SHA-1 (Verify only)	Incompatible
>= 1.5.35	SHA-1 (no FIPS)	SHA-1 (Verify only*), SHA-256 (FIPS)	SHA-256 (FIPS)
>= 1.5.35 and env FIPS=true	SHA-1 (partial FIPS)	SHA-1 (Verify only*), SHA-256 (FIPS)	SHA-256 (FIPS)
>= 1.5.35 and --force-fips	Incompatible	SHA-256 (FIPS)	SHA-256 (FIPS)

To get FIPS, it is recommended to use the docker container builds.

Partial FIPS means that we are still violating FIPS by using SHA-1 hashing. All other cryptographic operations are using the FIPS module.

Verify only uses the exception that permits SHA-1 verification but not generation.

Verify only* may fall back to SHA-1 verification if SHA-256 negotiation failed, but typically will not use SHA-1.