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
toconfig.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:
- Simply use < Shift >< Ins > to paste.
- Configure the Firefox browser to handle Cut and Paste within editor. Modify
prefs.js
, or createuser.js
file in directoryC:\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");