Tutor: the docker-based Open edX distribution designed for peace of mind

Tutor is a docker-based Open edX distribution, both for production and local development. The goal of Tutor is to make it easy to deploy, customize, upgrade and scale Open edX. Tutor is reliable, fast, extensible, and it is already used by dozens of Open edX platforms around the world.

Do you need professional assistance setting up or managing your Open edX platform? Overhang.IO provides online support as part of its Long Term Support (LTS) offering.

A note to US users

Dear US voters,

At the risk of stating the obvious, the coming election that will happen in your country will deeply affect you as well as the rest of the world. We are all waiting in anguish, hoping that you will not re-elect a dangerous, racist maniac that borders on fascism.

Please do not fuck this up. Thank you.

Régis Behmo, principal Tutor maintainer

Features

• 100% open source

• Runs entirely on Docker

• World-famous 1-click installation and upgrades

• Comes with batteries included: theming, SCORM, HTTPS, web-based administration interface, mobile app, custom translations…

• Extensible architecture with plugins

• Works with Kubernetes

• No technical skill required with the 1-click Tutor AWS image

• Professional support and premium plugins available with Tutor Long Term Support (LTS)

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User testimonials

“Tutor simplifies the deployment of Open edX, so that we can directly focus on customizing our platform. Thanks a lot.” – Shashi Kiran G M

“Tutor is an absolutely fabulous initiative” – Lionel Meinertzhagen, Learning engineer - Université Libre de Bruxelles

“Tutor just keeps on giving” – Stephen Brewer, Project Leader - IT Consulting

“Tutor has been a Godsend” – Micah L.

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Quickstart (1-click install)

1. Download the latest stable release of Tutor and place the tutor executable in your path. From the command line:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/overhangio/tutor/releases/download/v10.4.0/tutor-$(uname -s)_$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/tutor
sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/tutor

2. Run tutor local quickstart

3. You’re done!

That’s it?

Yes :) This is what happens when you run tutor local quickstart:

1. You answer a few questions about the Configuration of your Open edX platform.

2. Configuration files are generated from templates.

3. Docker images are downloaded.

4. Docker containers are provisioned.

5. A full, production-ready Open edX platform (Juniper release) is run with docker-compose.

The whole procedure should require less than 10 minutes, on a server with a good bandwidth. Note that your host environment will not be affected in any way, since everything runs inside docker containers. Root access is not even necessary.

There’s a lot more to Tutor than that! To learn more about what you can do with Tutor and Open edX, check out the What next? section. If the quickstart installation method above somehow didn’t work for you, check out the Troubleshooting guide.

User guide

• Getting started
  • Concepts
  • Quickstart (1-click install)
  • Install Tutor
  • What next?
• Running Open edX
  • Local deployment
  • Kubernetes deployment
  • Open edX development
• Configuration and customisation
  • Configuration
  • Custom Open edX docker image
• Plugins
  • Commands
  • Existing plugins
  • Plugin development
• Extra features
  • Web UI
  • Mobile Android application
• Troubleshooting
  • Logging
  • “Cannot start service nginx: driver failed programming external connectivity”
  • “Couldn’t connect to docker daemon”
  • “Running migrations… Killed!” / “Command failed with status 137: docker-compose”
  • Help! The Docker containers are eating all my RAM/CPU/CHEESE
  • “Build failed running pavelib.servers.lms: Subprocess return code: 1”
  • “ValueError: Unable to configure handler ‘local’”
  • The chosen default language does not display properly
  • When I make changes to a course in the CMS, they are not taken into account by the LMS
• Tutor development
  • Install requirements
  • Run tests
  • Code formatting
  • Bundle tutor executable
  • Generating the documentation
  • Releasing a new version
• FAQ
  • What is Tutor?
  • What is the purpose of Tutor?
  • What’s the difference with the official “native” installation?
  • What’s the difference with the official devstack?
  • Is Tutor officially supported by edX?
  • What features are missing from Tutor?
  • Are there people already running this in production?
  • Why should I trust software written by some random guy on the Internet?

Source code

The complete source code for Tutor is available on Github: https://github.com/overhangio/tutor

Support

To get community support, go to the official discussion forums: https://discuss.overhang.io. For official support, please subscribe to a Long Term Support (LTS) license at https://overhang.io/tutor/lts.

Contributing

We are very much open to new ideas and features for Tutor. If you have an improvement idea, feel free to first discuss it on the Tutor forums. If you are not quite familiar with Open edX or if you need technical advice, the forums are a great place to start, too. Did you find an issue with Tutor? Please first make sure that it’s related to Tutor, and not an upstream issue with Open edX. Then, open an issue on Github. Pull requests will be happily examined, too!

License

This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).

The AGPL license covers the Tutor code, including the Dockerfiles, but not the content of the Docker images which can be downloaded from https://hub.docker.com. Software other than Tutor provided with the docker images retain their original license.

The Tutor plugin system is licensed under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.

The Tutor Web UI depends on the Gotty binary, which is provided under the terms of the MIT license.