MNet FAQ

Warning: MNet has long been deprecated and is due to be completely removed from Moodle. Explore other options such as LTI.

Moodle 4.1 and up

Note: The installation of the XMLRPC PHP extension is not needed for the latest versions of Moodle core anymore. All MNet features continue working exactly the same, but using a PHP library instead (see MDL-76055 for details).

If you were using the webservice_xmlrpc plugin for integrations with other systems, be warned that it has been removed from core for Moodle 4.1 (see MDL-76052 for details). It's now available @ https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-webservice_xmlrpc and has been also published in the Plugins directory. Note that, if you want to continue using this plugin, then you will need, before starting the upgrade process, to:

1. Install the XMLRPC PHP extension, the webservice requires it.
2. Install the webservice_xmlrpc plugin, from the links in the previous paragraph, into the webservice/xmlrpc directory.
3. Then, and only then, start the upgrade process.

What is MNet?

MNet is the mechanism in Moodle for connecting to other Moodle (or Mahara) sites. It's short for "Moodle networking". See MNet for more information. At some point in the future, support for MNet will end. See this forum discussion on MNet.

It doesn't work. What do I do now?

• make sure that you have the latest version of Moodle installed.
• make sure xmlrpc is installed. Please go to your phpinfo page and search for --with-xmlrpc. If your php has not been compiled with xmlrpc then you need to address that! At present it appears that PEAR xmlrpc will not work.
• make sure that openssl is installed. Please go to your phpinfo page and search for openssl. If your php has not been compiled with openssl then you need to address that.
• make sure you have debugging turned on (Site Administration > Server > Debugging). This will greatly increase the chance of the underlying problem being reported.
• Note that MNET does not currently work on lighttpd. (MDL-14638) This should be fixed in lighttpd 1.5 when it is released.

I've set up the keys and configured Moodle Networking, but when I try to SSO into Mahara, it doesn't work

This problem could be due to a PHP bug in libxml2 2.7.1 (the same bug reported with version 2.7.2 and 2.7.3). check the server > PHP info page to see what version of libxml is installed - if you have one of versions mentioned - check out the FAQ here for details on how to fix it: Backup_FAQ#Restoring_a_course_results_in_broken_HTML_tags._What_can_I_do.3F

Moodle doesn't generate any keys on the networking pages

This could be because PHP cannot find the openssl.cnf file on your server - this is a very common issue on windows servers. To address this you must set the path to this file in your config.php file - first find the openssl.cnf file on your server then add it's location into your config.php file like this:

   $CFG->opensslcnf = 'C:/apache2/bin/openssl.cnf';

Note: this file could potentially be located anywhere on your server, just make sure the full path and name of the file is correct.

Note: this could also affect Mahara. On Mahara you can also added this to the config table in the database.

Note: this also happens on RHEL5 and RHEL5 based operating systems. The path the file is "/etc/pki/tls/openssl.cnf". RHEL is RedHat Enterprise Linux.

I obtain the error "The signature verification failed. It appears that this payload was not signed by you."

See error/moodle/rpcerror for how to fix the problem.

See also

• Moodle networking (MNet) forum on moodle.org

Forum discussions:

• Overview of public key
• Time Gap Error - Peer to Peer
• Replace local users with mnet users
• MNet remote enrollment does not work