Moodle Setup and Configuration
Installation
  • Setup database in MySQL:
    % mysql -u root -p
    mysql> CREATE DATABASE moodle;
    mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodle.*
           TO moodleuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
    mysql> quit
    % mysqladmin -p reload
  • Copy files. Download the latest package from http://www.moodle.org
  • Edit config.php. First make a copy of config-dist.php to config.php, then edit with the required settings.
  • Configure system. Point your browser to http://support.example.com
  • Change language files to fit industry.
    • Make a copy of lang/en to lang/en_example
    • Edit all the lang/en_example files to modify strings to show “product forum” instead of “course”. NOTE: do not modify constant names, only the string associated with the constants.
  • Deliver forum mail. Create a cron task to include the following (run task every 5 min).
    • Create directory /etc/cron.5min
    • Edit /etc/crontab and add:
      */5 * * * * root run-part /etc/cron.5min
    • Create script /etc/cron.5min/moodle and add:
      #! /bin/bash
      wget -q -O /dev/null http://support.example.com/admin/cron.php
Settings
  • LongTimeNoSee: 360 days
  • LogLifeTime: 180 days
  • SlashArguments: file.php?file=/pic.jpg
  • Set default to “Don't automatically subscribe me to forums”. Go to the mdl_user table and change the default of the autosubscribe field to 0 (zero). This means that profiles have “Don't automatically subscribe me to forums” unless it is consciously changed by the user.
Regular Maintenance
  • Creating user accounts. Go to the login screen (top right) on your site, and let the user click on “New User” and fill the details.
  • Creating new product forums (courses). Login as admin and go to Product Forums (Courses). Select the category, and then click on the Add New Product Forum (Course) button.
    • Category: department to which product forum (course) belongs.
    • Full Name: CODE + Name of product forum (course).
    • Short Name: CODE
    • Summary: Bulletin course summary.
    • Format: Topic
    • Product Forum (Course) Start Date: Sunday of 1st week of semester (always user Sun, otherwise weeks become confusing).
    • Enrollment key: enter password for product forum (course) if required (to give to students who have registered).
  • Deleting product forums (courses). Login as admin and go to Product Forums (Courses). Click on the X beside the product forum (course) to be deleted.
Troubleshooting

Cannot upload files greater than 500KB 1).

Fix: If you upload a file that is bigger than 500k you can get back an error from your server.

Just adjusting the following php settings, it ignores it:

upload_max_filesize, post_max_size

I did a bit of searching on the net and found the following message on the PHP.net site and after setting some of his suggestions, I had no problem uploading bigger files.

FILE UPLOAD FROM FORM 2) A little note recording to save some users some time with: upload_max_filesize ignored, post_max_size ignored and memory_limit doesn't matter.

While troubleshooting a file upload issue with the IMP webmail system. I first looked to my php.ini and started adjusting these settings to no avail. My actual problem was a file httpd/conf.d/php.conf which contained:

SetOutputFilter PHP
SetInputFilter PHP
LimitRequestBody 524288

The httpd/errorlog file showed:

  "Requested content-length of 2172475 is larger than the configured limit of 524288"

After adjusting the LimitRequestBody configuration directive there to 8000000, I was still unable to complete the attachment and send of a 2.4 meg zip file through the webmail system.

After a few hours of tweaking numbers and searching for more clues, I found the settings of

upload_max_filesize = 8000000
post_max_size = 8000000
memory_limit = 30000000
max_execution_time = 240

It worked to upload

Then the function from IMP which was timing out or memory_limiting out on my server:

chunk_split(base64_encode($contents))

Cut and Paste using Firefox

There are two ways of performing Cut and Paste in Moodle's editor:

  1. Simply use < Shift >< Ins > to paste.
  2. Configure the Firefox browser to handle Cut and Paste within editor. Modify prefs.js, or create user.js file in directory C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.y3l
user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.Clipboard.cutcopy", "AllAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.Clipboard.paste", "AllAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.sites", "http://moodle.org" "http://www.mysite.com");
user_pref("capability.policy.default.Clipboard.cutcopy", "AllAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.default.Clipboard.paste", "AllAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "allowclipboard");
1)
Marcel Berteler. Moodle.org Forums: “General problems > Create file problem & upload problem”, Friday, 9 May 2003, 06:48 PM.
2)
greg at getnetez dot com, http://za.php.net/manual/en/configuration.directives.php, 11-Feb-2003 05:11.