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Bitnami Moodle Stack

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Need a Moodle play ground on your personal computer? Try a Bitnami Moodle Stack: "BitNami stacks make it incredibly easy to install your favorite open source software. Application stacks include an open source application and all the dependencies necessary to run it, such as Apache, MySQL and PHP or Ruby. All you need to do is download the Stack, provide a few pieces of information when prompted by the installation wizard, and that's it. By the time you click 'finish', your new application will be ready to run."

http://bitnami.org/stack/moodle

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2083758/Bitnami-Moodle-Stack

Note: Bitnami will want port 80. If that's already taken, try entering port 81 or port 82 instead.


Moodlestack.jpg



Installing the BitNami Moodle Stack on a virtual drive like VMware or Virtual PC

One of the greatest benefits from installing on the virtual drive is the ability to take a snapshot of the virtual drive before making changes to the Moodle site. Taking the snapshot of a virtual drive only takes a few seconds and if the changes to the site fail, it only takes a few seconds to revert back to one of the snapshots. Typically computers obtain their network settings through a DHCP server/service. When a virtual drive is added with VMware or Virtual PC, the network settings are generally set by the software that allowed you to create the virtual drive. These settings can be modified to place the virtual drive on the same LAN segment as the rest of your computers.

First a brief IP address review. A network IP starting with 192.168.0._x_ (x=number between 1 and 254) with a mask address of 255.255.255.0 has 254 usable IP addresses starting with 192.168.0.1 and ending with 192.168.0.254. Any of the numbers from 1 to 254 can be statically assigned to an ethernet device as long as they are not being used by any other device on the LAN. Typical devices that have static IP addresses include routers, switches, access points, file servers and networked printers. All other network devices usually obtain their IP addresses through DHCP.

On a Windows computer you can see the network settings by opening a command window and typing the command IPCONFIG /ALL

On a Mac or Linux computer the command in a terminal window is IFCONFIG en1 (where en1 is the Ethernet interface you want to see the network settings)


Here is an example of a configuration of a typical virtual drive installation. First, a MacBook computer obtains an IP address of 192.168.0.100 from a wireless access point serving DHCP. This IP address changes depending on what is connected to the AP and the order they are added to the AP. The AP provides access to the Internet and serves as a DHCP server, assigning IP addresses to the computers connected to the AP. In this example the access point has a static IP of 192.168.0.1 with a mask of 255.255.255.0. The DHCP service on the AP is configured to give out IP addresses from 192.168.0.100 through 192.168.0.254.

The MacBook has VMware Fusion installed and a virtual drive with Windows XP Pro installed as the OS on the virtual drive. The BitNami Moodle Stack is installed on this virtual drive. The XP Pro virtual drive is assigned the static IP address of 192.168.0.10.


Ip config.jpg


The main config.php file must be modified to reflect the IP address given to the virtual drive. \BitNami Moodle Stack\apps\moodle\htdocs $CFG->wwwroot = 'http://192.168.0.10:80/moodle' ;


Config php.jpg


Edit config php.jpg



The Internet browser on the MacBook will access the Moodle site with http://192.168.0.10:80/moodle

A second computer is given a DHCP address of 192.168.0.101. This computer will access the Moodle site with http://192.168.0.10/moodle The :80 is left out as that is the default port for www services, if you changed the port on the ‘config.php’ file to :8080 then you would be required to add the :8080 to the URL when accessing the Moodle site (http://192.168.0.10:8080/moodle).

--Barry Williams 22:40, 26 February 2009 (CST)