Moodle 3 Administration - Third Edition

There are a number of different environments in which you can set up Moodle. The three main criteria that should dictate the choice of the correct setup are:

In addition to these three key criteria that usually influence the decision about the underlying infrastructure, there are other factors that will have an impact on your decision, such as in-house expertise, compatibility with other systems, personal preference, and existing resources.

We will cover the three most popular operating systems for hosting Moodle—Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. For other setups such as on a memory stick, in a virtualized environment, or a larger multi-server cluster, please consult your local Moodle Partner (https://moodle.com/). Some hosting companies offer quick one-click installations (often via the Fantastico installer, which usually doesn't contain the latest version). While the resulting Moodle system is sufficient for experimental sites, it is certainly unsuitable for production environments.

There are a number of hardware and software requirements that have to be satisfied before we can start installing Moodle.

Go to https://download.moodle.org/ and select Latest release in the Standard Moodle section:

By the time of reading, a newer version is likely to be available. If you wish to go with the 3.0 version this book has been written for, select Other supported releases on the right; otherwise, feel free to go with the latest stable build; most content in this book will still be applicable.

There are five types of builds available on Moodle's download site:

Each version is made available in the two compressed formats: TGZ (use the tar command to uncompress) and ZIP (requires unzip). You can either download them by clicking on the respective link or, if you have (secure) shell access, retrieve the file directly by using the wget command:

wget http://download.moodle.org/moodle/moodle-latest.zip

If you make use of Moodle Shell (MOOSH), which is described in more detail in Chapter 14, Moodle Admin Tools, you can use the following command to download the latest stable branch of Moodle:

moosh download-moodle

Once you have moved the file to the location where you want to install it on your web server (dirroot), extract the file using the unzip command (or tar xvfz if you downloaded the TGZ version). In a hosted environment, you might have to use the uncompressing method provided by the web administration interface (cPanel, Plesk, or any bespoke system):

unzip moodle-latest.zip
tar xvfz moodle-latest.tgz

If you place the entire folder in your web server documents directory, the site will be located at www.yourwebserver.com/moodle. To access your site from www.yourwebserver.com, copy the contents directly into the main web server's documents directory.

Once this has been successfully done, you have to create the database that Moodle uses to store its data.

Moodle requires a database where it can store its information. While it is possible to share an existing database, it is highly recommended to create a separate database for Moodle. This can either be done via a web interface, as provided for hosted servers, or via the Unix command line.

Using a hosted server

Most hosting providers provide a dedicated web interface to carry out basic database operations. Alternatively, you can use phpMyAdmin, an open source software that allows you to manage MySQL databases over the Web. It is part of most Linux distributions and many control panels, such as CPanel or Plesk. (phpMyAdmin is often configured not to allow new databases to be created. If this is the case, you have to create the database from the database manager in your control panel.)

Once you have started phpMyAdmin, go to the Databases section and create a new database using the UTF collation (utf8_general_ci collation). You don't need to create any tables; Moodle will be populating the database during the installation process.

While you can use an existing database user account, it is good practice to create a dedicated user for the Moodle database. This step is carried out in the Privileges section.

Tip

Do not use the MySQL root account for your Moodle database!

phpMyAdmin allows you to perform both steps—creating a database and adding a new user—in a single action, as shown in the following screenshot. We will create a user, book, and also check the Create database with same name and grant all privileges option:

mysqladmin -u root -p reload

order deny,allow
deny from all

The installer script performs two main actions—populating the database and creating the configuration file, config.php. The Moodle installer is initiated by entering the URL of wwwroot (the location where you copied Moodle) into your web browser; Moodle will recognize that it hasn't been installed yet and start the process automatically.

The Moodle installer has to set a session cookie. If your browser has been configured to trigger a warning, make sure you accept that cookie.

The first screen lets you choose the language to be used during installation. This is not the locale used for Moodle, only the language for the installation:

The following screenshot displays the expected values for Web address of the site (wwwroot), Moodle directory (dirroot) and Data directory (dataroot); you might have to modify the data directory entry if the location of your moodledata differs:

If dataroot cannot be located or does not have the correct permissions, an error message with details will be displayed. The same applies if dataroot is accessible directly via the Web and is hence, not secure.

In the following screenshot, you have to select which database you wish to use. On my system, only the drivers for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgresSQL are installed. To use other database systems such as Oracle or MS SQL Server, the respective driver has to be installed first.

This interface is using the configuration details previously established. The following screenshot will look slightly different if you have chosen a different database driver to the native MySQL:

Once you see the following screen, you will know the Moodle configuration file, config.php, has been successfully created. If the creation of the configuration file fails (usually because of incorrect permissions), the installer will display the content of the configuration file. You will have to copy the text from the screen and paste it to config.php in your dirroot.

Before Moodle can proceed with the installation, you have to agree to the GPL license agreement. You find the full license text at https://docs.moodle.org/dev/License.

Once you have accepted the license agreement, the Moodle installer checks to see whether certain components are installed. Not all the modules are compulsory—see the Moodle prerequisites section in this chapter and notice on screen. The installer also verifies the key PHP settings. If any of the tests are not passed, it is important that you go back to the Software requirements section to resolve any problems and restart the installation process after the issues have been fixed. Otherwise, some features may not work or the installer will not continue, depending on the importance of the module.

Two common issues that arise when using MySQL are the prerequisite to use the InnoDB Barracuda file format and file-per-table mode. In both cases entries have to be added to the [mysqld] section in /etc/mysql/my.cnf (innodb_file_format=Barracuda and innodb_file_per_table, respectively).

Once this screen has been confirmed, the Moodle installer will create all the tables in the database. This process might take a few minutes.

Once the table creation and population has been concluded, you will see the screen to set up the administrator account. The default Username is admin, which should be changed for security reasons. The self-explanatory fields you have to fill in are New password, First name, Surname, Email address, City/town, and Select a country. All other fields are explained in great detail in Chapter 5, User Management.

The last screen of the installation script asks you to enter some front page settings, namely, the Full site name, Short name for site and Front page description. These front page settings can be modified later (see Chapter 7, Moodle Look and Feel). Additionally, the installer allows you to turn on Self registration. Leave this disabled for now, until you have covered Chapter 5, User Management.

Once this information has been entered and the screen has been confirmed, you are ready to start using Moodle. However, it is recommended to finalize the installation and to set up the execution of the Moodle maintenance script.

To make sure that Moodle is running without problems, go to Notifications in the Site administration menu in the Settings block:

In the case of my installation, there are two issues—a PHP setting has a value that is not recommended (I have to change this in the php.ini file) and the so-called cron maintenance script has not run for at least 24 hours. We will solve that mystery after we have registered our site. Other messages might appear in the Notifications area, and you should resolve them in due course.

Moodle provides some statistics about its usage on https://moodle.net/stats/. To be included in these figures, you have to register your Moodle site. Registration(below the Notification link) with https://moodle.org/ (MOOCH) is optional and free, and you decide what information will be made public. Even if you opt out of providing any usage patterns for your site, it is still highly recommended to register, as you will get occasional notices, for example, advanced security alerts:

The settings for the registration screen are as follows:

Moodle has to perform a number of background tasks on a regular basis. The script that performs these tasks is known as a cron script, and is executed by the cron process. An entire page has been dedicated to this in the Moodle documentation; you can find it at https://docs.moodle.org/en/Cron. It is important that you set up the cron process; otherwise, any timed Moodle features, such as scheduled backups, sending forum notifications, statistics processing, and so on, will not work.

The script, cron.php, is located in the admin directory and can be triggered manually through a web browser (unless your security settings have been changed). Once executed, the output from the script (http://yoursite/admin/cron.php) is shown on screen and you have to navigate back to your Moodle system manually.

Most control panels allow you to set up scheduled tasks via a cron job management tool. Bear in mind that this is not part of Moodle but a part of your hosting package. The following screenshot is from the widely used Plesk system, which executes the script every five minutes:

There are a number of ways to call the cron script. The most popular option in a Linux environment is wget –q –O /dev/null http://<yoursite>/admin/cron.php (see Command in the preceding screenshot). However, if this does not suit your setup, check out https://docs.moodle.org/en/Cron for alternatives.

The interface shown earlier creates an entry in crontab, a file located in the /etc directory that contains all the system-wide cron entries. This file can also be edited manually using crontab -e, but be careful to get the syntax right!

This concludes the installation process for Moodle in a LAMP environment. If you have come across any problems that have not been covered in these instructions or if your setup differs from the one described, go to https://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_Moodle, where more installation details are provided and exceptions are covered in great detail.

The high-level process for updating a Moodle system manually is as follows:

If you are updating from a previous version of Moodle, the process is the same. However, double-check the Upgrading document at https://docs.moodle.org/en/Upgrading for any version-specific issues.

If you are still on version 1.9 or on a dinosaur release that is even older, you will need to get to version 2.0 first, before upgrading to 2.2, and then to the latest version.

Running the update script

Once you go to the location of your Moodle site and log in as administrator, the system will recognize that a new version is available and kick off the installer automatically.

The first screen displays the build of the new version (here, 3.0) and asks you to confirm that you wish to go ahead with the upgrade:

Next, a screen is displayed that provides a link to the release notes and performs the same server check as the one described during the installation.

Moodle plugins, whether core (Standard) or third-party (Additional), sometimes cause problems when upgrading Moodle. The Status column highlights any actions required or problems found. You should resolve any issues that have arisen. Refer to Chapter 8, Moodle Plugins, for more details.

Once this screen has been confirmed, the actual installation starts, during which new database fields are created and data is modified if and when necessary. Any new system settings that have been added to Moodle are shown and can be changed straightaway. For example, in the following screenshot, a new Always send email from the no-reply address parameter has been added:

Once the upgrade process has been completed, make sure you check the Notifications page as earlier. Also, don't forget to turn off the Maintenance mode!

As you would expect, Moodle updates can also be run using the already-discussed CLI. Once you have backed up your data and updated to the latest version, all you need to do is run the following script:

sudo –u www-data /usr/bin/php admin/cli/upgrade.php --non-interactive

Updating Moodle via CLI is even more powerful when combined with the Git checkout of the Moodle source code. That is what we look at next.

An alternative approach exists to keep a current version up-to-date. It uses an open source versioning system which is supported by Moodle, namely Git. All checked-in Moodle code is made available via this method, which allows you to update only the modules that have actually changed.

Setting up Git is a cumbersome process, which is beyond the scope of this book. You can find details at https://docs.moodle.org/en/Git_for_Administrators. However, once set up, Git is a very streamlined system to use, particularly, in conjunction with the CLI we discussed earlier. The following is a sample script which gets the latest version of the source code, puts Moodle in maintenance mode, merges the old code with the new, runs the upgrade script, and disables the maintenance mode:

git fetch
sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/php admin/cli/maintenance.php
--enable
git merge origin/cvshead
sudo -u www-data/usr/bin/php admin/cli/upgrade.php
sudo -u www-data/usr/bin/php admin/cli/maintenance.php
--disable

If you have changed any core code, potential conflicts might arise and will have to be resolved (Git will prompt you to do so).

You might also come across some conflicting advice on whether to use Git for production sites or not. The advantage is that your system is always up to date and that the updates are carried out automatically. The disadvantage is that the update process might require intervention to resolve any conflicts or it might fail, especially when a lot of third-party add-ons have been employed.

Update notifications

Moodle can notify you about a newly available version. In order to support this feature, you will need to change the Enable updates deployment settings in Server | Update notifications as follows:

Once this has been changed, you will be notified of any updates (system as well as plugins), and options will be shown in Notifications: