Installation FAQ

Any text I add with an apostrophe (') or a quote (") causes errors or comes up with a slash added

Problems caused by apostrophes are caused by incorrect "magic quotes" settings. Moodle requires the following settings (which are usually the default):

magic_quotes_gpc = On
magic_quotes_runtime = Off

Please see Installing Moodle for more details.

Email copies are not being sent from my forums

You must set up cron properly if you want Moodle to send out automatic email from forums, assignments etc. This same process also performs a number of clean-up tasks such as deleting old unconfirmed users, unenrolling old students and so on.

Basically, you need to set up a process to regularly call the script http://yoursite/admin/cron.php. Please see Installing Moodle set up cron.

Tip: Try the default setting in Moodle variables page. Leave the smtphost blank. This will be acceptable for the majority of users.

Error: database connection failed

If you get errors like "database connection failed" or "could not connect to the database you specified", here are some possible reasons and some possible solutions.

1. Your database server isn't installed or running. To check this for MySQL try typing the following command line telnet database_host_name 3306. You should get a cryptic response which includes the version number of the MySQL server.
2. You don't have the PHP mysql or postgresql extensions installed (please refer to FAQ re. whether PHP is installed).
3. You haven't created a database for Moodle and assigned a user with the correct privileges to access it. Or the database name, database user or database user password in your Moodle configuration file config.php are incorrect. Use phpMyAdmin to set up and check your MySQL installation.
4. You are using MySQL version 4.1 or higher, whose default password hashing algorithm is incompatible with that available in PHP versions 4.x.x. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/old-client.html for further information on how to deal with this.
5. You are using Fedora core 3 or some other Linux system with SELinux installed and enabled. See the following URL for information on how to disable SELinux: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/selinux/

I can't log in - I just stay stuck on the login screen

The most common cause for this is that your own computer (not your Moodle server) has a firewall that is stripping referrer information from the browser. Here are some instructions for fixing Norton firewall products.

The server admin can also fix this for everyone by changing the secureforms variable to 'No' in the security section of Administration >> Configuration >> Variables.

Another possible cause of this problem is that sessions are not configured properly on the server. You can test this by calling the script http://yourserver/moodle/lib/session-test.php.

I keep getting error messages about session_start

If you see errors like this:

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: open(/tmp\sess_d40f380d37d431fc1516e9a895ad9ce0, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in G:\web\moodle\lib\setup.php on line 123
Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: open(/tmp\sess_d40f380d37d431fc1516e9a895ad9ce0, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in G:\web\moodle\lib\setup.php on line 123
Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at G:\web\moodle\lib\setup.php:1) in G:\web\moodle\lib\setup.php on line 123

these are all related to the fact that PHP is failing to save "session" files on your hard disk (in a directory called /tmp). Usually the reason is that you don't HAVE a directory called /tmp on your computer. This is usually the case with Windows installations.

The solution is to fix the PHP setting for this path to point to a real directory. You can do this in your php.ini file:

session.save_path = C:\temp

or otherwise in a .htaccess file in your main moodle directory:

php_value session.save_path "/home/moodle/sessions"

I keep getting this error: Failed opening required '/web/moodle/lib/setup.php'

In your config.php, the setting that you use for the dirroot variable must be the complete path from the root of your server's hard drive.

Sometimes people only use the path from their home directory, or relative to the root of the web server directory.

I login but the login link doesn't change. I am logged in and can navigate freely.

Make sure the URL in your $CFG->wwwroot setting is exactly the same as the one you are actually using to access the site.

My pages show fatal errors such as : call to undefined function: get_string()

If you see errors like:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in c:\program files\easyphp\www\moodle\config.php on line 94 Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_string() in c:\program files\easyphp\www\moodle\mod\resource\lib.php on line 11

then it's likely you have left out a semi-colon or ending quote from a line in config.php (previous to line 94).

Another reason could be that you have opened config.php in a program like Word to edit it, and saved it as a HTML web page, instead of a proper text file.

PHP - is it installed and what version do I have?

Make a new file on your web site called info.php, containing the following text, and call it from your browser:

<?PHP phpinfo() ?>

If nothing happens then you don't have PHP installed. See the installation docs for some information about where to download it for your computer.

Uploaded files give "File not found"

For example: Not Found: The requested URL /moodle/file.php/2/myfile.jpg was not found on this server.

Your web server needs to be configured to allow the part of the URL after a script name to be passed directly to the script. This is usually enabled in Apache 1, but is usually disabled by default in Apache 2. To turn it on, add this line to your httpd.conf, or to a .htaccess file in your local directory (see Installing Moodle for more details):

AcceptPathInfo on

Note, this will ONLY work for Apache versions 2.x.

If you are not using Apache 2 and you still have this problem (unlikely) then you can switch Moodle to use an alternative method. The disadvantages are a slight loss of performance for your users and you won't be able to use relative links within HTML resources.

To use this alternative method, you should change the slasharguments variable in the Operating System section of Administration >> Configuration >> Variables. You should now be able to access your uploaded files.

When I go to the admin page, I get told to make dirroot blank!

If you see errors like this:

Please fix your settings in config.php: You have: $CFG->dirroot = "/home/users/fred/public_html/moodle"; but it should be: $CFG->dirroot = "";

then you have encountered a small bug that occurs on some servers. The problem is with the error-checking mechanism, not with your actual path. To fix it, find this line (line 66) in the file admin/index.php:

if ($dirroot != $CFG->dirroot) {

and change it to this:

if (!empty($dirroot) and $dirroot != $CFG->dirroot) {

When trying to add a resource I receive error messages

Assuming you are using Apache, then it's quite likely that your setting in config.php for $CFG->wwwroot is different from the actual URL you are using to access the site. Also try turning off the secureforms variable in the security section of Administration >> Configuration >> Variables.

Why are all my pages blank?

Check the dirroot variable in config.php. You must use complete, absolute pathnames e.g.

$CFG->dirroot = "d:\inetpub\sites\www.yoursite.com\web\moodle";

Another reason might be that PHP has not been configured to support MySQL. This is common on Redhat and OpenBSD installations. In this case, an error is generated, but since error displays are often disabled by default, all that is seen on the browser is a blank screen. To determine if this is your problem, insert this as the second line in your config.php file

phpinfo();

then reload the web page. Examine the output closely to see if MySQL is supported. If not look for a package you are missing.

Why do I keep getting error messages about "headers already sent"?

If you see errors like this:

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /webs/moodle/config.php:87) in /webs/moodle/lib/moodlelib.php on line 1322 Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /webs/moodle/config.php:87) in /webs/moodle/lib/moodlelib.php on line 1323 Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /webs/moodle/config.php:87) in /webs/moodle/login/index.php on line 54

you have blank lines or spaces after the final ?> in your config.php file. Sometimes text editors add these - for example Notepad on Windows - so you may have to try a different text editor to remove these spaces or blank lines completely.

Why doesn't my Moodle site display the time and date correctly?

Each language requires a specific language code (called a locale code) to allow dates to be displayed correctly. The language packs contain default standard codes, but sometimes these don't work on Windows servers.

You can find the correct locale codes for Windows on these two pages: Language codes and Country/region codes (e.g. "esp_esp" for spanish)

These new locale codes can be entered on the Administration >> Configuration >> Variables page, where they override the ones in the currently chosen language pack.