Upgrading to Moodle 1.6

Note: This page needs some more work. Moodle1.6

Since the changes for the upgrade from Moodle 1.5.x to Moodle 1.6 not only change the database structure, but also the database content, some considerations are important before you start.

Check the system requirements

Go to Administration >> Environment and choose Moodle 1.6 ;-) You will get a report of whether your server specs meet the requirements for Moodle 1.6 and what needs to be done.

Update the Moodle files

Perform a normal upgrade of your Moodle installation, taking special care when backing up the database. Take care to include ALL optional modules you have in your existing installation. Conversion of the data to UTF8 of these modules will not be possible if you forget this.

Database migration

Although not strictly necessary, it is highly recomended that you migrate your database to UTF-8 immediately after upgrading. If you run your site in one language only, select this option to save a lot of time on the migration. Otherwise, Moodle will figure out how to do the migration for every piece of data based on the language of the user, course and your Moodle site. Since the migration is a process which causes heavy processor and disk load and can take a long time to perform, you should choose the moment of the upgrade carefully. It might be good practice to do that on a test installation first if you have one.

The migration process places the Moodle installation in maintenance mode, so non-admins cannot login. In order to avoid having to restart the migration process, it is recommended that the value of max_execution_time in the php.ini file be set to 0 so that the process does not timeout. After the migration is completed, the execution time can be set back to your preferred setting. The migration process saves its current state frequently during its execution, so should it need to be restarted, it will begin near to where it finished. However, once started it needs to finish before the installation can be used by others.

Languages

An entirely new interface for languages has been designed. After the migration of the database, you can go to the language page in the admin menu and follow the 'Language Import Utility' link. You can select the desired language packs on the right pane and install them directly. Updating the language packs can now easily be done by following the update link.