The CAASPP Secure Browser version 6.5 for State testing in California is now available for installation from the ubermix repository.

The secure browser is used to administer the Smarter Balanced formative and summative assessments to all students in grades 3-8 and 11 throughout the State of California, and is quite a pain to install according to the "official" instructions, so having it as part of the ubermix ecosystem should make it significantly easier for schools and districts in CA to deploy.

Important note: at present, the installer in the ubermix repository only works with ubermix 2.x, not the "Lite" version. We'll add a special version for ubermix lite shortly. Now works with ubermix lite! And ubermix 1.x.

Installation Instructions

The CAASPP Secure Browser and its dependencies are well over 50 megabytes, so if your school is starved for bandwidth, you may want to plan accordingly.

GUI Method:

1. Click on Activities, then select Synaptic Package Manager under Administration.
2. When the Synaptic Package Manager window appears, click on the Reload button to update the package list for all of the online software repositories.
3. Once the reload is complete, use the Quick filter box to search for "secure-browser-ca". Once it appears on the list, click on the checkbox next to it and choose Mark for Installation.
4. Click on the Apply button, and Synaptic will download and install everything you need.
5. The CASecureBrowser6.5 icon should appear under Internet in the Activities menu. If it doesn't appear immediately, don't panic - it will after a restart.

Terminal Method:

1. Press ctrl-alt-t to open a terminal
2. Type  sudo apt-get update to update the package list for all of the online software repositories.
3. Type sudo apt-get install secure-browser-ca to install the browser.
4. The CASecureBrowser6.5 icon should appear under Internet in the Activities menu. If it doesn't appear immediately, don't panic - it will after a restart.

For those who are working with large deployments using an Auto-update Script, instructions will be posted here shortly.