FAQ

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What is this file?

A special file that's used by course teams to provide randomized questions/answers in a course. The ZIP contains several different randomization algorithms, along with actual problem data - numbers used to plug-in to a question/answer. This specially-named ZIP file is different per-course!

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How does the LMS and Studio know about this special file?

Via hard-coding here:
https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/blob/master/common/djangoappslib/xmodule/xmodule/util/sandboxing.py#L5
For all accesses of the file, search for "get_python_lib_zip" in the edx-platform codebase.

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The Python code in the file needed to be uploaded by the course team and needed to be different per-course. A course asset fulfilled both of these requirements.

Why was the file put in the contentstore where students could access it?

That fact was either overlooked -or- the file was thought to be secure enough via obscurity. We've since added an NGINX rule that disallows download of the archive - so now students cannot access it.