Moodle

#lang-php #self-hosting #web 

Moodle Moodle is an acronym for “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment”. It is a free and open-source learning management system (LMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. More information on Wikipedia or the official Moodle page.

Note

For this guide you should be familiar with the basic concepts of

License

All relevant legal information can be found here:

Prerequisites

We’re using PHP in the stable version 8.3:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools version show php
Using 'PHP' version: '8.3'
[isabell@stardust ~]$

MySQL

You’ll need your MySQL credentials. Get them with my_print_defaults:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ my_print_defaults client
--default-character-set=utf8mb4
--user=isabell
--password=MySuperSecretPassword
[isabell@stardust ~]$

We will create a separate database for Moodle:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ mysql -e "CREATE DATABASE ${USER}_moodle"
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Your URL needs to be setup:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace web domain list
isabell.uber.space
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Data directory

Moodle saves files and data into a directory for persistency. Create the data directory:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ mkdir ~/moodledata
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Installation

Download

First, download Moodle and extract it. For this, change into the ~/html directory of your Uberspace.

Then download the latest version (Moodle-Download page) of the tgz archive and extract it. It is recommended to select the stable version.

Note that the download link on the page is actually a redirect. So instead of the link behind the button, use the direct link, e.g.: https://download.moodle.org/download.php/direct/stable404/moodle-latest-404.tgz.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/html
[isabell@stardust html]$ wget -O moodle.tgz https://download.moodle.org/download.php/direct/stable404/moodle-latest-404.tgz
[isabell@stardust html]$ tar --strip-components=1 --gzip --extract --file=moodle.tgz
[isabell@stardust html]$ rm moodle.tgz
[isabell@stardust html]$

Moodle requires max_input_vars to be set to 5000 or higher. To configure this, create the file ~/etc/php.d/max_input_vars.ini with the following content:

max_input_vars=5000

Note

After setting this PHP parameter, restart PHP to activate the changes.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools restart php
Your php configuration has been loaded.
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Setup

Now you should be able to access the setup process of the Moodle instance.

Visit your Uberspace domain in the browser of our choice – in this case isabell.uber.space.

  1. Choose any language and click “Next”.

  2. For the Data directory, choose the directory you created: /home/isabell/moodledata.

  3. For the Database driver, choose “MariaDB (native/mariadb)”.

  4. For the Database Settings, enter your information:

  1. Database name: isabell_moodle

  2. Database user: isabell

  3. Database password: MySuperSecretPassword

  4. Database port: 3306

  1. Read the copyright notice and only accept if you truly do. 🙂

  2. All checks should be OK. At the end of the page, click “Continue”.

  3. This could take a while to finish. You should be redirected to the process page. Here you can watch the process while installing missing plugins. After all installations have finished, at the end of the page, click “Continue”.

  4. After that, you will be shown the admin user creation page. Enter your information here which you later will also use to login.

  5. Enter a full and short name for your Moodle instance.

  6. Et voilà, your Moodle instance is now installed.

Cronjob

You should configure a cron job for Moodle. This script is critical for several features of Moodle, e.g. sending notification emails. Edit your crontab using the crontab -e and put the following content inside the crontab:

PATH=/home/isabell/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
MAILTO=""
*/5 * * * * php /home/isabell/html/admin/cli/cron.php

This configures cron to execute the script every 5 minutes. If you want details on what exactly is executed, you can change the MAILTO variable to your email address.

Best practices

Documentation

Moodle has extensive documentation. Check it out under Moodle-Docs.

Moosh

Moosh exposes its functions/features via a CLI that you can use to perform several lower level tasks such as performing actions on the database. You can download Moosh from the Moodle plugins page.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/bin
[isabell@stardust bin]$ wget https://moodle.org/plugins/download.php/31885/moosh_moodle44_2024050100.zip
[isabell@stardust bin]$ unzip moosh_moodle44_2024050100.zip
[isabell@stardust bin]$

You can then either add the Moosh folder to your $PATH or execute Moosh via path. To use Moosh, you have to change into your Moodle installation folder, in our case ~/html. From there you can run moosh:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/html
[isabell@stardust html]$ php ~/bin/moosh/moosh.php
...
[isabell@stardust html]$

You can do a lot of things with Moosh. For more details, head over to Moosh_Documentation.

Plugins

Moodle has the feature of being extended by plugins. Check out the Moodle-Plugins page. Note that some plugins may require additional installation instructions.

Updates

Note

Check the update feed regularly to stay informed about the newest version.

Tested with Moodle version 4.4.1, Uberspace 7.15.15, PHP 8.3

Written by: Direnc <direnc99@gmail.com>