Moodle Installation and Configuration
Admission: - Many of the steps in this how-to are shamelessly lifted from the how-to by Mark Drone and the documents shared by Mark Drone, Abe Loveless, Bill Butts, and other TGeeks in their SME and Linux help posting and documents. The steps below are tested and have reproduced successful results several times. With the current versions of SME 7.3 and Moodle 1.84 as of June21, 2008 REFERENCE Sites: How to Install Moodle (from Moodle Docs) http://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_Moodle How to Upgrade Moodle (from Moodle Docs) http://docs.moodle.org/en/Upgrading Mark Drone – howto and SME Template Modifier (created for Moodle 1.4 & SME 6.0.1 but still works) http://www.tech-geeks.org/contrib/mdrone/moodle/ HOW TO INSTALL: 1) Install SME 7.3 and assign a static IP # Patch SME 7.3 to latest version with all security patches yum update For Reference SME 7.x Strong Passwords required # config setprop passwordstrength Users none # config setprop passwordstrength Ibays none 2) SME Server Manager http://www.yourserver/server-manager Set TimeZone, Time Sync, OLD - smeserver.pool.ntp.org NEW – ntp.uiuc.edu (works better for me) Security Allow remote access ALLOW (public) Allow SSH access with admin tools YES Allow standard passwords YES (Secure Shell Access = Public Internet with Admin Command Line and Standard Passwords) WILL NOT use a standard Ibay to store web pages for Moodle (security on IBays causes problems) INSTALLING 3) Create the directory structure to hold the moodle files: Moodle Management Sullivan 2008
mkdir -p /opt/moodle/html mkdir -p /opt/moodle/moodledata chmod -R 777 /opt/moodle/moodledata 4) Get the tarball from http://download.moodle.org/ cd ~ wget http://download.moodle.org/stable19/moodle-latest-19.tgz - site may change OR download and use WinSCP to copy to the SME server. Unpack the tarball. It will create a "moodle" directory under the folder you extracted it from. tar -xvzf moodle-latest-19.tgz will unzip several hundred small files 5) Move the contents of the "moodle" directory created by untarring the file into the prepared moodle ibay webspace. cd moodle mv * /opt/moodle/html/ 6) Get into moodle space created: cd /opt/moodle 7) Grab the SME-template4moodle.tar.gz file from the TG server: wget http://www.tech-geeks.org/contrib/mdrone/moodle/SME-template4moodle.tar.gz
8) Unpack the tarball: tar -xvzf SME-template4moodle.tar.gz There should be 3 files: 99moodle, add-moodle-template.sh config.php 9) Run the "add-moodle-template.sh" script to add the proper template fragment to the httpd.conf file: ./add-moodle-template.sh (that starts with period-slash) it will apply permissions to the moodle folder, rebuild httpd.conf and then restart the httpd daemon. 10) Edit the provided "config.php" file and change the WEB SITE LOCATION variable using your favorite editor (vi or pico): pico -w config.php Look for the following line: $CFG->wwwroot = 'http://www.edseek.org/moodle'; Change it to match your server (no trailing slash) Save the file (ctrl-x) 11) Copy the config.php file into the /opt/moodle/html directory: cp config.php /opt/moodle/html
Moodle Management
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12) Create the moodle database and dbuser/dbpassword combo: Using the mysql tools:
# mysql mysql> CREATE DATABASE moodle; mysql> ALTER DATABASE moodle DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci; mysql> grant all privileges on moodle.* to moodle@localhost identified by 'moodlepass';
mysql> exit 13) Configure your moodle site, create database tables, and update as needed Visit “http://www.yourserver/moodle/” and run through the database population and system configuration screens. The first time it will auto run the admin config scripts (all php files) www.yourserver/moodle/admin this is where the admin scripts are at but it will default there The “installer” will create, update, and initialize all tables. It will inform of any issues needing corrected. 14) When these tasks have been completed, try http://www.yourserver/moodle/ Login with: username: admin password: admin <<----- default value; use whatever you configured 15. Need to configure the “scheduler” or set a crontab job to call a specific PHP file This is to run regular tasks in moodle. http://www.yourserver/moodle/admin/cron.php
Linux Command Line - Create a crontab job crontab –e Vi editor “i” to insert “esc” to stop inserting “:wq” to save and exit “:q!” to NOT save, but do exit ADD the line below: */30 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null http://www.myserver/moodle/admin/cron.php
16. All regular management of moodle is down with a browser Security policies, Module security, Notifications, and Anti-Virus Server – policies Site – theme and layout Modules – Activities, Blocks, Filters Moodle Management Sullivan 2008
17. Users Authentication (self, manual, LDAP) Accounts Permissions – Roles Batch Upload Users 18. Courses Categories Courses Enrollment and enrollment options BACKUPS 19. Logs
20) Practice and configure to suit your needs. Read the Guides Use Moodle Docs Practice Standard Disclaimer: Use at your own risk. Not responsible for damages.
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