Available update notifications
Update notifications
An administrator can configure update notifications for both Moodle core code and any contributed plugins installed on the site (from the plugins directory) in Settings > Site Administration > Server > Update notifications.
If the automatic check for available updates is enabled and there is a new update available, a notification will be sent to all site admins via email and/or popup message (according to the admin's messaging preferences in their profile settings).
In Moodle 2.4 onwards, updates deployment i.e. the option to update installed plugins from within Moodle may be enabled by ticking the updateautodeploy checkbox. When updates are available, Install this update buttons are shown on the Plugins overview page (Settings > Site Administration > Plugins > Plugins overview). See Automatic updates deployment for more details.
An administrator can specify the required code maturity (stable, alpha, beta or release candidate) for update notifications, also whether notifications of new builds (normally released each week) are sent.
An admin can also check for available updates for contributed plugins installed on the site using the 'Check for available updates' button in Settings > Site Administration > Plugins > Plugins overview. Any updates available are highlighted, with further information and a download link in the notes column opposite the plugin.
Available updates for core code can also be checked via Settings > Site administration > Notifications.
How it works
- The information about available updates are available as a web service at download.moodle.org.
- When the 'Check for available updates' button is pressed (or daily via cron), your Moodle site fetches information about available updates from the web service and stores it locally.
- The list of installed plugins is compared with the list of available updates. If a newer version of Moodle or a plugin is available, site administrators are notified.
When calling the web service, your site must provide its own version and the list of all installed add-ons. No sensitive data (such as the location of your site, any user data etc) are submitted.
Disabling update notifications
In a few circumstances (such as completely managed servers, which may have a lot of local modifications) it is desirable to not have the check for updates active. The feature may be disabled completely by adding the following code to the config.php file:
$CFG->disableupdatenotifications = true;
Errors and exceptions
If you obtain an error, please turn debugging on to obtain additional information about the cause of the error.
Unable to fetch available updates data - unexpected cURL error
See the debug info for the actual cURL error number and the error text.
- cURL error 7 couldn't connect to host
- Make sure that the site http://download.moodle.org is up and running at the moment. If it is down, your site can't call the web service to fetch the available updates info. Wait for http://download.moodle.org to be up again then re-check.
- cURL error 60 (SSL certificate problem)
- This suggests problems with the validation of the SSL certificate of the remote (moodle.org) site. This is also a known problem in Moodle Windows 7 servers running the Moodle package for Windows. See SSL certificate for moodle.org for more info.
- This error can also be due to your Moodle site being configured to run behind a misconfigured proxy server.
Unable to fetch available updates data - unexpected HTTP response code
See the debug info for the actual HTTP response code. On success, the HTTP response code is 200. All other response codes throw this error.
Unexpected version of the response format
This could happen if you check for updates during the major Moodle upgrade. Please try to re-check for available updates once you finish upgrading your Moodle site.
