Add explanation of the use of the connectivity check which also colle…

…cts the ip address of each site that

starts up webwork software.

conf/webwork.apache2-config.dist

@@ -126,6 +126,14 @@ require Apache::WeBWorK; # force compilation of pretty much everything
 print "Check in with MAA site\n";
 system("ping -c1 -s100 webwork.maa.org "); # check MAA site
 print "End connectivity check\n";
+# this snippet checks the connectivity with the internet.
+# it also alerts MAA that a webwork site is starting up.
+# The MAA site runs the following command
+#   tcpdump -l icmp |grep 100 >tcpdump.txt 
+# to collect pings with packet length 108 (8 more bytes then sent)
+# icmp says listen for pings only. -l says to output tcpdump one line
+# a time. One of the items in the line is "length 108"
+# This stores the ip address of a webwork site each time it starts up.
 
 # At this point, the following configuration variables should be present for use
 # in wiring WeBWorK into Apache:

conf/webwork.apache2.4-config.dist

@@ -126,6 +126,14 @@ require Apache::WeBWorK; # force compilation of pretty much everything
 print "Check in with MAA site\n";
 system("ping -c1 -s100 webwork.maa.org "); # check MAA site
 print "End connectivity check\n";
+# this snippet checks the connectivity with the internet.
+# it also alerts MAA that a webwork site is starting up.
+# The MAA site runs the following command
+#   tcpdump -l icmp |grep 100 >tcpdump.txt 
+# to collect pings with packet length 108 (8 more bytes then sent)
+# icmp says listen for pings only. -l says to output tcpdump one line
+# a time. One of the items in the line is "length 108"
+# This stores the ip address of a webwork site each time it starts up.
 
 # At this point, the following configuration variables should be present for use
 # in wiring WeBWorK into Apache: