#1 Signed submission receipt

[Jeronimo Pellegrini]

Hello.

Filesub is quite a nice system! Easy to install, and
works very
well.

I'd suggest that the system generates a receipt for the
student.
It could work like this:

1. Instructor uploads (via SSL) a signing key (could be
a GPG
key, for example), and enables signed receipt per
assignment;
2. Student uploads assignment A;
3. The system calculates teh MD5(A), and generates the text
"Thank you, $NAME. The md5 of your assignment
$ASSIGNMENT submission $FILENAME on $DATE is
$MD5";
4. The system signs the above text, and presents it to the
student. If the student wants, he may go there
again and
get the receipt (in case he looses it). Not sure if a
passwords for students would be necessary. probably
not.

First obvious use: this would avoid problems with students
claiming to have submitted the assignment when they
didn't (and
instructors loosing assignment and later claiming that
the student
didn't submit them).

Secont, not-so-obvious: if a catastrophe happens and the
instructors' HD (or server) blows up, the students may
still
show him the files with signed MD5 hashes. The instructor
would only need to keep his public key in a safe place, so
he can verify the signatures and accept the late (but
unmodified)
versions of the files.

J.

[Tom Bennet]

Logged In: YES
user_id=780790

Glad you like it.

That's an interesting idea, and would seem not an
unreasonable amount of work, but I really can't promise much
this semester.

Filesub does record dates, names and md5 sums in its log
file when something is submitted. This gives some of what
you want, though it is obviously not secure from system
hacking. And is more trouble to check.