Installing Moodle: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:39, 2 March 2009

This page requires a review. Please do so and remove this template when finished.

Firstly, don't panic! :-)

This guide will outline how to install Moodle for the first time. Moodle can be installed on a wide variety of systems. When you see something of interest, be sure to click on the link for more details. Don't panic, once you know how to do it you can install Moodle in minutes!

If you have problems please read this page and its links carefully - most common issues are answered in Moodle documention. If you still have trouble, you can seek help from the Moodle community via moodle.org Using Moodle.

Installing Apache, MySQL and PHP(AMP) provide alternative instructions to install Moodle on many popular platforms.

Another option is to contact a Moodle Partner providing Moodle hosting who can completely maintain Moodle for you, so that you can ignore all this and get straight into educating!

Many Moodlers use a no frills Web Hosts service. You might have ended up here because these services typically will expect you to be the system and site administrator and provide helpful links to moodle.org. We will offer some advice to you as well.

If you want to run Moodle on your own computer, please see our guides on how to install one of Moodle's complete install packages for Windows or Mac OS. This will allow you to create a Moodle site but it will not be on the internet.

Requirements

Moodle was initially developed in Linux using Apache, MySQL and PHP (also sometimes known as the LAMP platform). It is also regularly tested with Windows XP/2000/2003 (WAMP), Solaris 10 (Sparc and x64), Mac OS X and Netware 6 operating systems. Support for PostgreSQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server is also available.

The requirements for Moodle are as follows:

Hardware

Disk space: 160MB free (min). You will require more free space to store your teaching materials.
Memory: 256MB (min), 1GB (recommended). The general rule of thumb is that Moodle can support 50 concurrent users for every 1GB of RAM, but this will vary depending on your specific hardware and software combination.
- This includes hosting limits of PHP or MySQL on a hosting service.
- The capacity can limit the number of users your Moodle site can handle. See Installing Moodle/User site capacities

Software

Web server software. Most sites use Apache as the web server software. Moodle should work fine under any web server that supports PHP, such as IIS on Windows platforms.
PHP scripting language. (Please note that there have been issues installing Moodle with PHP-Accelerator). There are currently two versions (or branches) of PHP available: PHP4 and PHP5. See the PHP Moodle version requirements here Installing Moodle/PHP settings by Moodle version.

Top

Download and copy files into server

There are two ways to get Moodle, either as a compressed package or via CVS for Administrators.

Download from compressed packages

There are two types of compressed packages at the download.moodle.org page: which offer a variety of version, operating systems and compression types.

The "Standard Distribution" (with Moodle only files) and
Several operating system "Complete Install Packages" (which contains programs to create a Moodle in a web environment). Please see Complete install packages for more information.

Most of these instructions are for the standard distribution, Download a compressed package and then unpack the archive into your file structure using either of these two commands:

tar -zxvf [filename]
unzip [filename]

Top

Download from CVS

To use CVS, helpful instructions are available at the CVS for Administrators page and the CVS for Everyone Else page. The full Moodle CVS repository is also available for browsing.

If you are using CVS, run the CVS Checkout command.

Directory created placement

After either of the above processes, you will now have with a directory called "moodle", containing a number of files and folders.

For the standard package, you can either place the whole folder in your web server documents directory, in which case the site will be located at http://yourwebserver.com/moodle, or you can copy all the contents straight into the main web server documents directory, in which case the site will be simply http://yourwebserver.com.

TIP: If you are downloading Moodle to your local computer and then uploading it to your web site, it is usually better to upload the whole archive as one file, and then do the unpacking on the server. Even web hosting interfaces like cPanel allow you to uncompress archives in the "File Manager".

For more information aobut the structure of the ../moodle directory see Installing Moodle/Moodle site moodle directory

Top

Setting-up your web server

To ensure that Moodle will install successfully, you need to check that the web server settings are correct, then create a blank database for Moodle to use and finally create a directory on your hard disk for Moodle to save your materials and other files you upload into your courses.

httpd.conf file

Firstly, make sure that your web server is set up to use index.php as a default page (perhaps in addition to index.html, default.htm and so on). In Apache, this is done using a DirectoryIndex parameter in your httpd.conf file. Mine usually looks like this:

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm

Just make sure index.php is in the list (and preferably towards the start of the list, for efficiency).

Secondly, if you are using Apache 2, then you should turn on the AcceptPathInfo variable, which allows scripts to be passed arguments like http://server/file.php/arg1/arg2. This is essential to allow relative links between your resources, and also provides a performance boost for people using your Moodle web site. You can turn this on by adding these lines to your httpd.conf file. (NB: This setting, or any equivalent, is not required in Apache 1)

AcceptPathInfo on

php.ini file

Moodle requires a number of PHP settings to be active for it to work. These were given in the Requirements section and On most servers these will already be the default settings. However, some PHP servers (and some of the more recent PHP versions) may have things set differently, so it is useful to double-check that the settings are correct. These are defined in PHP's configuration file (usually called php.ini) or in the Apache .htaccess file:

register_globals = 0         ;(necessary)
safe_mode = 0                ;(necessary)
memory_limit = 40M           ;(varies: minimum 16M, 32M Moodle v1.7, 40M Moodle v1.8, 128M large sites)
session.save_handler = files ;(unless you are using another handler, e.g. mm)   
magic_quotes_gpc = 1         ;(preferred but not necessary, 0 will be highly recommended in 2.0)
magic_quotes_runtime = 0     ;(necessary)
file_uploads = 1
session.auto_start = 0       ;(necessary)
session.bug_compat_warn = 0

Max file size settings

You may also want to set other, optional php.ini file settings while you are already editing it. For instance, you may want to reset the maximum upload size of file attachments, which usually defaults to 2M(egabytes). For instance, to set these to 16 Megabytes:

post_max_size = 16M
upload_max_filesize = 16M

Alternative to php.ini and httpd.conf files

If you do not have access to your php.ini or httpd.conf files on you web host, see Installing Moodle/Creating .htaccess file.

Create empty database

You need to create an empty database (eg "moodle") in your database system along with a special user (for example "moodleuser") that has access to that database (and that database only). You could use the "root" user if you wanted to for a test server, but this is not recommended for a production system: if hackers manage to discover the password then your whole database system would be at risk, rather than just one database.

For more help with this see Installing Moodle/Creating a Moodle site database.

If you are using a webhost, they will probably have a control panel web interface for you to create your database.

The cPanel system is one of the most popular of these. To create a database using cPanel:

Click on the MySQL Databases icon.
Type moodle in the New Database field and click Create Database.
Type a username and password (not one you use elsewhere) in the respective fields and click Create User.
Note that the username and database names may be prefixed by your cPanel account name and an underscore, and truncated to 16 characters. When entering this information into the Moodle installer - use the full names.
Now use the Add Users to Databases button and give this new user account ALL rights to the new database.

Continue with Creating the data directory

Different methods of creating databases

See Installing Moodle/Creating a Moodle site database

For help using the command line see
PostgresSQL database
SQLite Moodle 2.0 offers experimental support for SQLite3 database installations

Step-by-step instructions on installation for Ubuntu(Debian)

Creating the data directory

Moodle will also need some space on your server's hard disk to store uploaded files, such as course documents and user pictures. The Moodle installer tries hard to create the moodledata directory for you but if it fails then you will have to create a directory for this purpose manually.

Security warning: For security purposes, it is CRITICAL that this directory is NOT accessible directly via the web. The easiest way to do this is to simply locate it OUTSIDE the web site root directory (it is the folder that the main part of your URL -that is, the part up to the first single / - points to; for example, in http://your.domain.com/moodle/admin/cron.php, it is http://your.domain.com/).

If you don't protect the data directory from direct web access, anybody will be able to impersonate any user of your Moodle site (including the admin user!!!), and all of your course materials will be available to the web at large.

See Installing Moodle/Creating a Moodle site data directory for more information about security in creating a data directory in

CPanel in webhosts
Moodle's config.php file

Top

Start Moodle install

There are two basic ways to install Moodle: Most Moodlers are used to the installer script but with Moodle 2.0 you may install it from the command line.

Install with installer script

To run the installer script (install.php), just try to access your Moodle main URL using a web browser, or access http://yourserver/install.php directly.

(The Installer will try to set a session cookie. If you get a popup warning in your browser make sure you accept that cookie!)

Moodle will detect that configuration is necessary and will lead you through some screens to help you create a new configuration file called config.php. At the end of the process Moodle will try and write the file into the right location, otherwise you can press a button to download it from the installer and then upload config.php into the main Moodle directory on the server.

Along the way the installer will test your server environment and give you suggestions about how to fix any problems. For most common issues these suggestions should be sufficient, but if you get stuck, check in the Installation Forum for more help.

Top

Go to the admin page to continue configuration

Once the basic config.php has been correctly created in the previous step, trying to access the front page of your site will take you to the "admin" page for the rest of the configuration.

The first time you access this admin page, you will be presented with a GPL "shrink wrap" agreement with which you must agree before you can continue with the setup.

Now Moodle will start setting up your database and creating tables to store data. Firstly, the main database tables are created. You should see a number of SQL statements followed by status messages. You should see SUCCESS next to each one until you see "Main databases set up successfully."

TIP: If you don't see these, then there must have been some problem with the database or the configuration settings you defined in config.php. Please see Installing Moodle/Moodle install with installer script for more details and issues.

Scroll down the very bottom of the page and press the "Continue" link.

You should now see a form where you can define more configuration variables for your installation, such as the default language, SMTP hosts and so on. Don't worry too much about getting everything right just now - you can always come back and edit these later on using the admin interface. The defaults are designed to be useful and secure for most sites. Scroll down to the bottom and click "Save changes".

Next you will see more pages that print lots of status messages as they set up all the tables required by the various Moodle module. As before, they should all be green.

Scroll down the very bottom of the page and press the "Continue" link.

The next page is a form where you can define parameters for your Moodle site and the front page, such as the name, format, description and so on. Fill this out (you can always come back and change these later) and then press "Save changes".

Finally, you will then be asked to create a top-level administration user for future access to the admin pages. Fill out the details with your own name, email etc and then click "Save changes". Not all the fields are required, but if you miss any important fields you'll be re-prompted for them.

Make sure you remember the username and password you chose for the administration user account, as they will be necessary to access the administration page in future.

(If for any reason your install is interrupted, or there is a system error of some kind that prevents you from logging in using the admin account, you can usually log in using the default username of "admin", with password "admin".)

Once successful, you will be sent to the home page of your new site! Please note the Site administration block on the left with links. These items are only visible to you because you are logged in as the admin user. All your further administration of Moodle can now be done using this block.

Top

Installing Moodle using command line

Template:Moodle 2.0

Installing Moodle using command line is just as easy as installing Moodle using the web browser. Change your current directory to the moodle root directory the admin directory for example:

$cd /var/www/html/moodle/admin

More information about the options can be found using

$php cliupgrad.php --help

When you choose non interactive mode without any options all the default values are assumed.

Top

Last tasks

These are optional but it is a good idea to get these done before saying the site is up and running.

Set up cron

Moodle's background tasks (e.g. sending out forum emails and performing course backups) are performed by a script which you can set to execute at specific times of the day. This is known as a cron script. Please refer to the Cron instructions.

Set up backups

Please refer to the backup instructions. #Top

Test install with new course

Now that Moodle is running properly, you can try creating a new course to play with.

Select "Create a new course" from the Admin page (or the admin links on the home page).

Fill out the form, paying special attention to the course format. You don't have to worry about the details too much at this stage, as everything can be changed later by the teacher. Note that the yellow help icons are everywhere to provide contextual help on any aspect.

Press "Save changes", and you will be taken to a new form where you can assign teachers to the course. You can only add existing user accounts from this form - if you want to create a new teacher account then either ask the teacher to create one for themselves (see the login page), or create one for them using the "Add a new user" on the Admin page.

Once done, the course is ready to customize, and is accessible via the "Courses" link on the home page.

Top

Documentation