Course backup: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 14:24, 3 September 2019

A course can be saved with some or all of its parts by using the course backup. Typically, the site administrator will set a schedule of automated course backups for the whole site. A teacher can create a backup or download an existing backup for safe keeping, or for use on another Moodle site.

Course backup: Moodle 3.6

Backing up a course

To backup a course

Go into the course.
Click the Backup link either in the gear menu or the Administration block (depending upon the theme).
Initial settings - Select activities, blocks, filters and other items as required then click the Next button. Users with appropriate permissions, such as administrators and managers, can choose whether to include users, anonymize user information, or include user role assignments, groups, groupings, user files, comments, user completion details, course logs and grade history in the backup.
Schema settings - Select/deselect specific items to include in backup, then click the Next button.
If desired, select specific types of activity to be backed up by clicking the link 'Show type options'
Confirmation and review - Check that everything is as required, using the Previous button if necessary, otherwise click the 'Perform backup' button
Complete - Click the Continue button

Backup settings

Back up screen with option to select all or none

Back up screen with option to select activity types

A backup file (with distinctive .mbz extension to avoid confusion with .zip files) is then saved in the course backup area. Backup file names are of the form backup-moodle2-course-coursename-date-hour.mbz, ending in -nu.mbz when backed up with no users and -an.mbz with anonymized names.

Tip: If you are satisfied with the default settings and don't wish to go through all the backup screens, you can simply click 'Jump to final step' to perform the backup.

Anonymizing user information

Anonymize user information is a backup feature which "protects user identities" by making each user anonymous. If this box is checked in the backup initial settings, Moodle will substitute aliases for real names, substituting @doesntexist.com email addresses and so forth. For example "Max Manager" might become "anonfirstname4 anonlastname4".

Backup via CLI for administrators

Site administrators can backup selected courses using a CLI script.

Options

--courseid=INTEGER (Course ID for backup.)
--courseshortname=STRING (Course shortname for backup.)
--destination=STRING (Path where to store backup file. If not set the backup will be stored within the course backup file area.)
-h, --help (Print out this help.)

Example

\$sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/php admin/cli/backup.php --courseid=2 --destination=/moodle/backup/

Tips and tricks

Lose content after a restore in Moodle 2.0 ? Do you see topic headings that say "Orphaned activities"? Solution: Go to course settings and increase the number of topic sections and things will return to normal.

Creative uses

The backup and restore processes can offer the teacher and administrators many creative solutions.

Duplicating courses or specific activities in one course to another course (similar to Import)
Updating a production Moodle site course, with material from a localhost site course
Transferring a course to a new Moodle site.
In earlier versions of Moodle, a way of rolling a course forward without past student activity
Creating a blank activity, save just that activity and then restore it to the course or another course one or more times.

General backup defaults

Default settings for course backups can be set by a site administrator in 'General backup defaults' in the Site administration.

Selected settings may be locked, so that they cannot be changed when creating a course backup.

By selecting a time in the "Keep logs for.." dropdown, it is possible to specify how long backup logs information is kept before being deleted. As this information may be very large, it is recommended the length of time chosen be quite short.

Course backup stops above 90%, not showing any errors

This has been reported to be caused by:

a non-standard course_format. Try replacing the course format.
not enough server RAM. Adding more RAM to your server is usually the first performance recomendation.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{Course admin}}
+{{Backup}}
+A course can be saved with some or all of its parts by using the course backup.  Typically, the site administrator will set a schedule of [[Automated course backup|automated course backups]] for the whole site.  A teacher can create a backup or download an existing backup for safe keeping, or for use on another Moodle site.
-Generally, you will not have to worry about '''course backups''', as the primary Moodle administrator will have set a schedule of site wide backups. However, as a teacher with editing privilages, it is good practice to download a recent backup to your own computer for additional protection.
+{{MediaPlayer | url = https://youtu.be/wGxj6Pl6VBQ| desc = Course backup: Moodle 3.6}}
-==Backups Moodle 1.6.x==
-{{Moodle 1.6}}
-Moodle 1.6 supports granularized backup, in addition to the previous versions features.  For example, individual activities may be selected for backup, with an option to include student data for each activity. See [[Backup_restore|"backup restore" for 1.6]], for a more detailed description of these features.
-==Older versions==
+==Backing up a course==
-Generally, you will not have to worry about '''course backups''', as the primary Moodle administrator will have set a schedule of site wide backups. However, it is good practice to perform a course backup at regular intervals, and to store this backup locally on your computer.
+To backup a course
-After clicking the Backup link you will see options for specific activities you wish to backup. If you want to back up all the course activities you should choose 'All' above the activities listed. Similarly, if you want to include User Data with each backed-up activity, choose 'All' on the right-hand side of the field.
+# Go into the course.
+# Click the Backup link either in the gear menu or the Administration block (depending upon the theme).
+# Initial settings - Select activities, blocks, filters and other items as required then click the Next button. Users with appropriate permissions, such as administrators and managers, can choose whether to [[Backup of user data|include users]], anonymize user information, or include user role assignments, groups, groupings, user files, comments, user completion details, course logs and grade history in the backup.
+# Schema settings  - Select/deselect specific items to include in backup, then click the Next button.
+# If desired, select specific types of activity to be backed up by clicking the link 'Show type options'
+# Confirmation and review - Check that everything is as required, using the Previous button if necessary, otherwise click the 'Perform backup' button
+# Complete - Click the Continue button
-Below the list of activities you will find five other fields to define:
+{|
+[[File:backupgroups.png|thumb|Backup settings]]
+|
+|[[File:26backuprestore1.png|thumb|Back up screen with option to select all or none]]
+|
+|[[File:26backuprestore2.png|thumb|Back up screen with option to select activity types]]
+|}
-* Metacourse - If you are backing up the content of a [[Metacourses|metacourse]], you may enable this option so that that relations between the courses will be exported and the restore process will try to rebuild them in the destination server.
+A backup file (with distinctive .mbz extension to avoid confusion with .zip files) is then saved in the course backup area. Backup file names are of the form ''backup-moodle2-course-coursename-date-hour.mbz'', ending in ''-nu.mbz'' when backed up with no users and ''-an.mbz''  with anonymized names.
-* Users - Whether you want to backup the content concerning all the registered students in your site, only course students or no students at all.
-* Logs
-* User files - If you enable this option, it will export, for now, user photos (as they are all the files related to one user currently).
-* Course files
-After choosing what you want to backup, click on Continue. You will receive a notice with the backup details showing the total number of items within each category/module to be backed up. Scrolling to the bottom and clicking Continue, you will back up your course materials. You should see, again, the backup details followed by a message "Backup completed successfully." Clicking on Continue, you will receive a list of all the backup files in your course.
+Tip: If you are satisfied with the default settings and don't wish to go through all the backup screens, you can simply click 'Jump to final step' to perform the backup.
+==Anonymizing user information==
+Anonymize user information is a backup feature which "protects user identities" by making each user anonymous. If this box is checked in the backup initial settings, Moodle will substitute aliases for real names, substituting @doesntexist.com email addresses and so forth. For example  "Max Manager" might become  "anonfirstname4 anonlastname4".
+==Backup via CLI for administrators==
+Site administrators can backup selected courses using a CLI script.
+===Options===
+* --courseid=INTEGER (Course ID for backup.)
+* --courseshortname=STRING (Course shortname for backup.)
+* --destination=STRING (Path where to store backup file. If not set the backup will be stored within the course backup file area.)
+* -h, --help (Print out this help.)
+===Example===
+\$sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/php admin/cli/backup.php --courseid=2 --destination=/moodle/backup/
+==Tips and tricks==
+* Lose content after a restore in Moodle 2.0 ?  Do you see topic headings that say "Orphaned activities"?  Solution: Go to course settings and increase the number of topic sections and things will return to normal.
 ==Creative uses==
 The backup and restore processes can offer the teacher and administrators many creative solutions.
-*Duplicating courses or specific activities in one course to another course
+*Duplicating courses or specific activities in one course to another course (similar to Import)
 *Updating a production Moodle site course, with material from a localhost site course
+*Transferring a course to a new Moodle site.
 *In earlier versions of Moodle, a way of rolling a course forward without past student activity
+*Creating a blank activity, save just that activity and then restore it to the course or another course one or more times.
+==General backup defaults==
+Default settings for course backups can be set by a site administrator in 'General backup defaults' in the Site administration.
+Selected settings may be locked, so that they cannot be changed when creating a course backup.
+By selecting a time in the "Keep logs for.."  dropdown, it is possible to specify how long backup  logs information is kept before being deleted. As this information may be very large, it is recommended the length of time chosen be quite short.
+==Course backup stops above 90%, not showing any errors==
+This has been reported to be caused by:
+* a [[Course_formats#Contributed_Course_Formats|non-standard course_format]]. Try replacing the course format.
+* not enough server RAM. Adding more RAM to your server is usually the first [[Performance_recommendations|performance recomendation]].
+==Course backup capabilities==
+*[[Capabilities/moodle/backup:anonymise|Anonymise user data on backup]]
+*[[Capabilities/moodle/backup:backupcourse|Backup courses]]
+*[[Capabilities/moodle/backup:backupsection|Backup sections]]
+*[[Capabilities/moodle/backup:backuptargetimport|Backup for import]]
+*[[Capabilities/moodle/backup:configure|Configure backup options]]
+*[[Capabilities/moodle/backup:downloadfile|Download files from backup areas]]
+*[[Capabilities/moodle/backup:userinfo|Backup user data]]
 ==See also==
-*[[Backup restore]]
-*[[Restore]]
-*[[Backup FAQ]]
-*[[Roll courses forward]]
-*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=59581 Location of Backup Files] forum discussion
-[[Category:Teacher]]
+*[[Course restore]]
+*[[Backup of user data]]
+*[[Activity backup]]
+* Administrators can use [http://moosh-online.com/commands/#course-restore MOOSH] to bulk backup and restore courses from CLI
+[[de:Kurssicherung]]
+[[es:Respaldo del curso]]
+[[eu:Ikastaroaren_Segurtasun-kopia]]
 [[fr:Sauvegarde de cours]]
 [[ja:コースバックアップ]]

Documentation