Install Moodle on NS7

syntaxerrormmm · February 7, 2017, 9:11pm

Fine, completely understoodable [quote=“stephdl, post:20, topic:5029”]
I prefer on one word, not sure about side effects
[/quote]

Well, it should be a LDAP Common Name anyways, so spaces should be allowed. But I understand. How about replacing the space with an underscore, then?

Completely agree on the roadmap. Also injecting or not the configurations based on SSSD status would be a big plus, but it should be reversable anyways (maybe I don’t want to use LDAP users in a site in which I enabled LDAP).

How about creating a random one as it is done with LDAP or MySQL?

stephdl · February 7, 2017, 9:16pm

yes, doable but we need to let something to do at the enduser, it is also a matter to let a lot of contacts of the admin (name, email, phone etc)

Then the admin can disable the plugin manually in the configuration file, I don’t want to play too much on a database after the creation/installation.

In another hand it makes me think that the user can install moodle and see he miss about ldap or AD, so I might find a way to do an injection manually if needed.

syntaxerrormmm · February 7, 2017, 9:37pm

Mmh, this makes me think on the approach we are taking.

Do we prefer a complete administration of LDAP/AD integration from NS WebGUI (I second this one, really) or we want to leave the user in charge of everything on the inside of Moodle?

I would not do half of the first approach and half of the second if I can, because it is confusing to the final user. Maybe I would also devise something to deny the user to tamper with the settings done via injection, if we decide to take the first route.

So, if the nethserver-moodle package has to setup authentication based on SSSD, I would expect to disable it from the NS WebGUI and not mess with the options inside Moodle anymore.

For optional strings within Moodle (like the Names of the admin user), I don’t see a problem here: if a system administrator wants to customize it, fine for me. Please take into account that LDAP backend doesn’t have all the fields required to compile the information, although AD does.

stephdl · February 7, 2017, 10:30pm

Same for AD, some fields are missing @davidep @giacomo what about to set more fields in ldap/ad

surname
firstname
service
telephone
…

I don’t understand, you cannot (easily) manage moodle from a panel in nethgui, mainly because the settings are not file based, but database based

syntaxerrormmm · February 7, 2017, 10:38pm

That’s the main point. I would take one of this two options:

Devise an event nethserver-moodle-update to check and change SQL accordingly to user inputs (enable/disable integration in the WebGUI or following the status of the system when installing), thus satisfying the needs for manageability from the NS WebGUI;
Leave completely the integration of AD/LDAP to the sysadmin.

I do think also the first one is feasible, but I don’t want to leave all the fun to you
Unfortunately I have a queue of stuff to do (for BgLUG, for TDF, for some schools, for this community) that I really don’t know when I’m able to check for it. Do you happen to know someone that sells some ubiquity, an additional pair of hands or additional 24 hours a day?

stephdl · February 7, 2017, 10:42pm

No clues to buy days of 30 hours, I could sleep a bit :’(

davidep · February 8, 2017, 11:42am

The Server Manager Users&Groups page sets only a minimal set of attributes. Additional attributes could be managed by other clients, like “phpLDAPadmin”, “AD RSAT tools”, or - why not - moodle itself.

stephdl · February 8, 2017, 1:45pm

good idea, need to test it, but in the idea to get a real address book usable in a webmail, it could be nice to get if from start

stephdl · February 8, 2017, 2:03pm

lets drop, the phone field for what I tested is mysql based, so nothing is stored in ldap/ad.

mrmarkuz · February 12, 2018, 10:27pm

I was talking about Moodle with @robb and others recently so I just installed Moodle 3.4 which needs PHP 7 which I took from nethserver-php-scl by @stephdl :

tried postgres 9.6 from SCL without success, now mariadb with mariadb connector is used
PHP 7.1
custom template /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini/90moodle for PHP7.1 settings
/etc/my.cnf.d/moodle.cnf for mysql config

This is just for the installation of the new version, for extra settings like AD check the first post of @robb and following…just copy/paste the following to a terminal:

yum -y install http://mirror.de-labrusse.fr/NethServer/7/x86_64/nethserver-stephdl-1.0.6-1.ns7.sdl.noarch.rpm
yum -y install http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
yum -y install nethserver-mysql nethserver-php-scl php71-php-opcache php71-php-xmlrpc php71-php-intl
wget https://download.moodle.org/download.php/direct/stable34/moodle-latest-34.tgz
tar -xzf moodle-latest-34.tgz
mv moodle /var/www/html/
mkdir /var/www/moodledata
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/moodledata /var/www/html/moodle
mysql
create database moodle character set utf8mb4 collate utf8mb4_bin;
grant all privileges on moodle.* to moodle@localhost identified by 'SECRET';
exit;
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini/
cat << EOF > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini/90moodle
[opcache]
opcache.enable = 1
opcache.memory_consumption = 128
opcache.max_accelerated_files = 8000
opcache.revalidate_freq = 60
; Required for Moodle
opcache.use_cwd = 1
opcache.validate_timestamps = 1
opcache.save_comments = 1
opcache.enable_file_override = 0
[intl]
intl.default_locale = en_utf8
EOF
cat << EOF > /etc/my.cnf.d/moodle.cnf
[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4
[mysqld]
innodb_file_format = Barracuda
innodb_file_per_table = 1
innodb_large_prefix
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake
[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4
EOF
signal-event nethserver-php-scl-update
systemctl restart httpd
systemctl restart mysqld

Set php version to 7.1 in php settings in web UI
Browse to https://NETHSERVER/moodle
DB Type is MariaDB
db user moodle, password SECRET

robb · February 13, 2018, 2:09pm

Thanks a lot @mrmarkuz!
I also tried to install Moodle3.4, but did another approach: instead of installing in /var/www/html, I created a vhost and installed in /var/lib/nethserver/vhost/
Pro for this approach is tou can choose php7.x from netgui. I ran into problems that look liked a CSS problem. Con was that even though I changed permissions of the vhost to apache, the configuration script of Moodle during web install part went sour…

If php-scl can be used when installing in /var/www/html by using a custom template (wish I could create them… would love to get some insight info on that) It will be a lot easier to install.

In the previous version of Moodle (3.1, created by @areguera) there is a nice way of creating a custom url. Can this code be re-used for Moodle 3.4?

mrmarkuz · February 13, 2018, 2:32pm

I noticed that Moodle writes a wwwroot property to its config file. When you connect via http at install it writes http to config and if you connect via https afterwards you have the CSS problem.

Here is the creation of the custom template for PHP7.1. I copied the content from the Moodle homepage.
It’s described here.

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini/
cat << EOF > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini/90moodle
[opcache]
opcache.enable = 1
opcache.memory_consumption = 128
opcache.max_accelerated_files = 8000
opcache.revalidate_freq = 60
; Required for Moodle
opcache.use_cwd = 1
opcache.validate_timestamps = 1
opcache.save_comments = 1
opcache.enable_file_override = 0
[intl]
intl.default_locale = en_utf8
EOF

I assume yes but I’ll have a look at it…

robb · February 13, 2018, 3:20pm

Just had your Howto a go and I can confirm it installs perfectly on a clean and updated NS7.4 server.

just 1 remark: if you want to do it 100% syntax correct, you need to add a

flush privileges;

between grant command and exit command in the create database section of the howto.

/edit: just tried to install Moodle on my VPS. Install process seems to go fine, but when I try to reach the webinterface I get a :

Not Found
The requested URL /moodle was not found on this server.

On both name and ip adress of the VPS
Wonder where I messed up…

mrmarkuz · February 13, 2018, 8:15pm

I am not a dbadmin and didn’t know that before I read the article but the GRANT command invokes a FLUSH. I know it’s used in plenty of tutorials but it seems to be obsolete.

Please check if the directory /var/www/html/moodle exists.

You simply could run the whole procedure again, existing db is kept.

robb · February 14, 2018, 8:55pm

Well, obviously I am no DBA either… thnx for the pointer…

the moodle dir exists (as I copied the untarred moodle dir to the /var/www/html dir…) and changed permissions…
I will go over the whole procedure again to see what happens…

mrmarkuz · February 14, 2018, 9:07pm

It could also be a one interface/VPS problem, I’ll try it on my VPS too.

EDIT: same problem on my VPS

robb · February 14, 2018, 9:15pm

Weird… why is there no problem on a VM and a VPS gives a problem…

/edit: looking at /var/log/httpd/error_log:

[autoindex:error] [pid 21378] [client 191.101.125.46:59795] AH01276: Cannot serve directory /var/www/html/: No matching DirectoryIndex (index.html,index.php,index.php,index.php,index.php) found, and server-generated directory index forbidden by Options directive

mrmarkuz · February 14, 2018, 9:21pm

Maybe we have to change some apache virtualhost config directives…I’ll play around with that and report back

robb · February 14, 2018, 9:35pm

In /var/log/hhtpd/ssl_access_log I see several attempts to access the moodle directory by me:
213.49.121.74 - - [13/Feb/2018:16:46:27 +0100] “GET /moodle/ HTTP/1.1” 404 205

404 means:

404 Not Found
The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

205 means:

205 Reset Content
The server has fulfilled the request and the user agent SHOULD reset the document view which caused the request to be sent. This response is primarily intended to allow input for actions to take place via user input, followed by a clearing of the form in which the input is given so that the user can easily initiate another input action. The response MUST NOT include an entity.

mrmarkuz · February 14, 2018, 9:45pm

It’s accessible in a virtualhost but with faulty CSS