Presentation from Adam Hirst from VLE Middleware

1. Moving to Moodle 2
Technical Upgrade Paths and
Considerations
01562 744348 http://www.vlemiddleware.com

2. Introduction
• Moving to Moodle 2 can be rather daunting
experience for any VLE Administrator
• Planning and Testing are extremely paramount
during this transition period to make sure
everything goes as smoothly as possible.

3. Server Specification
• PHP 5.3.2 or later required!
- Enabled extensions:
soap, intl, mysql, iconv, mbstring, curl, openssl, tokenizer, x
mlrpc, ctype, zip, gd, simplexml, spl, pcre, dom, xml, json
(red: Must be installed)
• MySQL 5.0.25 or later
- INNODB engine recommended
• PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
• MSSQL 2005 or later

4. Fresh Install vs Progressive
Upgrade
• Once you have deemed your server suitable
for running Moodle 2.x.x you must decide
which upgrade route you plan to follow.
– A Fresh Install
– Or a Progressive Upgrade of your existing site
• There are pro’s and con’s to both routes which
we will discuss further

5. Fresh Installation, Pros!
• A good time to do housekeeping
• Less Errors
• Cleaner Build (Moodle 2.x.x code only)

6. Fresh Installation, Cons!
• Time taken to migrate courses
• Which courses are you going to backup?
• Shared Hosting, can you adjust PHP settings?
• Shared Hosting, do you have access to server
to upload backup files?

7. Progressive Upgrade, Pros!
• No need to manually recreate courses and
categories.
• Won’t lose any site news, site settings, users.
• Faster turnaround than fresh install.
• Moodle will be exactly the same

8. Progressive Upgrade, Cons!
• Possibility of errors!
• Keeps the ‘clutter’ of existing Moodle
• Possible corruption of data
• Skills need to perform the upgrade
• Need server space to run and test ‘test
upgrade’
• Time spent testing ‘test’ upgrade

9. How to perform an upgrade?
• Take a copy of moodledata folder (/var/moodledata)
• Take a copy of moodle web folder (/var/www/html)
• Take a copy of database using mysqldump & restore to a new database
• Download Moodle 2.x.x files
• Copy Moodle 2 files over the top of your copied moodle web folder.
• Rename config.dist.php to config.php and populate fields with paths to
your moodledata copy / copy database / location of moodle web files.
Note, the $CFG->passwordsalt variable MUST be the same!
• Change collation of your copy database to utf8_general_ci;
• Visit URL of where your new moodle web files are located in web browser
(ie http://localhost/moodle2)
• Follow onscreen instructions
• Correct any errors as they occur

10. Common Problems & Solutions
• PHP Timeouts – The upgrade script can take a
long time to run. Can you adjust your
max_execution_time settings?
• Number of Quiz attempts – Generally if you
have less than 10,000 quiz attempts Moodle
will upgrade fine, if not you will need to use
the ‘Question Upgrade Helper Plugin’

11. Common Problems & Solutions
• Moodle Log table to big – the mdl_log table
may need truncating.
• Database collation issues – Moodle 2 requires
UTF8 collation on database tables and fields.
In order to perform this change download the
Phoca collation tool from
http://www.phoca.cz/phoca-changing-
collation

12. • Extract the tool and move to the root of your
webserver. Access the tool through the
browser. Fill in database credentials and run.

13. Common Problems & Solutions
• Database Field Types – sometimes may need
changing ie, INT(5) may need increase to
INT(10)
• Missing fields in database tables – these may
need adding to database schema of tables to
proceed with upgrade.
• Missing database tables – The tables and their
schema may need to be created.

14. InnoDB Conversion
• Moodle provides built in scripts to convert
your database to use the InnoDB engine over
MyISAM.
• Running the following command will do the
legwork for you:-
/usr/bin/php admin/cli/mysql_engine.php --engine=InnoDB
c:phpphp.exe c:apache2htdocsadminclimysql_engine.php –engine=InnoDB

15. Problem Blocks & Mods
• Various Moodle 1.9 blocks are incompatible with
Moodle 2.x.x. A comprehensive list is as follows:-
– Mod hotpot
– Mod journal
– Block loancalc
– Block admin
– Block admin bookmarks
– Course report logs
– Course report stats

16. Problem Blocks & Mods
– Course report participation
– Filter easyview
– Other 3rd party mods / blocks / filters / question types
And most importantly Moodle 1.9.x Themes!
These blocks/mods/filters can be removed from their
respective folders to proceed with the upgrade. If
Moodle 2 versions of these blocks exist you will
generally find you can recover any data associated
with them as it will still exist in the database, and will
be populated once the block is re-added to Moodle.