AICC test suite doesn’t work on XP SP2 by default

by admin on March 19, 2007

I spent about 2 hours this morning trying to install the AICC/CMI test suite to do a test of some AICC based content. It has been over a year since I installed it last, and I was getting completely confused because it wasn’t working after I installed it.

The AICC/CMI test suite is a great application to test AICC based content in a simulated AICC environment. It allows you to log all information that is sent from the content to the LMS.

It is extremely difficult to find any information on how to install and get it working, so I wanted to post install instructions here in case it helps anyone else out, and so I have a record of how I installed it when I need to install it again next year.

Detailed AICC/CMI Test Suite Installation Instructions for Windows XP SP2

  1. Follow the instructions on the AICC site for downloading the test suite:
    http://www.aicc.org/pages/aicc_ts.htm
  2. Download and install an Apache web server from the following site:
    http://httpd.apache.org/

    Note: Any version will do. The docs for the AICC test suite specifically mention 1.3.3, but I am running 2.xx and I have not run into issues yet)

  3. Install the AICC test suite downloaded in step number 1
  4. Copy “wrapper.exe” that was installed in the AICC test suite folder
    (by default it should be installed to: c:\CMI_TST)
  5. Paste “wrapper.exe” into the cgi-bin folder on the Apache web folder
    (by default it should be here: C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\cgi-bin)
  6. Copy the following files from C:\CMI_TST
    aicc_launcher.dll
    done.html
    index.html
    ltest0000.aas
    ltest.aam
    ltest.html
  7. Create a folder named AICC in the webroot folder of the Apache web server
    (by default it should be here: C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs)
  8. Paste the files from step 6 into the folder created in step 7
  9. Right-click on “My Computer”
  10. Select Manage
  11. Double click ‘Services and Applications’
  12. Double click ‘Services’
  13. Double click on ‘Apache2′
  14. Select the ‘Log On’ tab
  15. Important: Select ‘Allow service to interact with desktop’
  16. Click OK and restart the computer

After I did this I was able to use the AICC test suite. The reason it was failing for me earlier is that I didn’t have the option selected to ‘Allow service to interact with desktop’.

I’ll write a follow-up post to this as soon as I get some time on how to actually use the test suite. Using it is about as simple as installing it (which isn’t saying much).

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October 14, 2009 at 11:59 am

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

LMS Guy March 22, 2007 at 3:00 am

I don’t install Apache to run as a webservice. I rarely use Apache (typically just for testing AICC content in the AICC Test Suite, actually), so I would rather not have it running as a service. I launch the DOS box manually, when I’m ready to test AICC content/apache. There might still be a step where you have to launch the AICC CMI Test Suite (exe) before web-based content will launch/work in XP.

Paul May 31, 2007 at 6:02 am

If you are running your web server on anything other than the default port (80) then you will have to edit index.html so the the links have the port number appended to them i.e. 127.0.0.1 becomes 127.0.0.1:8080 for port 8080

Mike Taylor March 30, 2009 at 8:06 am

Thanks Dave. This worked great to get the AICC Test Suite running. But I’m a little lost on HOW to run the darn thing. Do you know if there are any instructions anywhere with some step by step “how to” type info? I can’t figure out what files to point to in which places etc.

THANKS!!!
Mike

mozealou March 30, 2009 at 8:23 am

Hey Mike,

Good question. It has honestly been over 2 years since I used the AICC Test Suite, so I don’t recall how to use it. I do remember that the AICC test suite does a really poor job of testing content. What I do now to test AICC content is use an AICC based LMS to test. In the past I have had access to Saba’s LMS for testing AICC content, but for some reason Saba now thinks it is a good idea to charge us $5,000 to verify our content works in their LMS. Now I use moodle to test content (more info on getting moodle cheaply here. Then I use a program called HTTPAnalyzer to actually watch the communication that is happening between the content and Moodle.

Prabu May 17, 2009 at 12:32 am

Hi Dave,

i have been trying to install the AICC test suite in our machine to test the AICC WBT course. i have installed the apache server and copied all the files as mentioned.When i run the test am getting error like “file not found 404 error”.

I am able to perform the course structure test and all the problem is i amd not ablet to launch the AU’s using the Weblauncher .
Http://127.0.0.1/aicc/index.html wheni clicked this am able to see thelinks but dono how to proceed and whether the procedure is correct or not.

Please help me to achieve this.

Thanks
prabu R

mozealou May 18, 2009 at 6:58 am

Hi Prabu,

Not exactly sure as it has been years since I used the test suite…but you might want to try launching via http://localhost instead of 127.0.0.1…for some reason I recall that it had a problem with IPs.

Lokesh May 31, 2009 at 5:49 am

Hi..

The entire thread was very useful. I want to use AICC test suit with Tomcat server instead of Apache. Because I want to emulate the case sensitive unix environment of our eLearning courses?

Is it possible to configure AICC test suit with Tomcat. I tried, copying all the six files into root directory of tomcat. But, I didn’t have clue what is equivalent for cgi-bin in tomcat. I couldn’t find cgi-bin folder in the tomcat directory.

Any inputs greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much.

Lokesh.

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