Upgrading
This page explains in detail how to upgrade Moodle. For a summary of the process, see Upgrade overview.
Check the requirements
Before upgrading, check that your server meets all requirements for 5.0 in Site administration > Server > Environment.
See the Moodle 5.0 release notes for server and client software requirements.
Notes:
- You can only upgrade to Moodle 5.0 from Moodle 4.1.2 or later. If upgrading from earlier versions, you must upgrade to 4.1.2 as a first step.
Before upgrading
We advise that you test the upgrade first on a COPY of your production site, to make sure it works as you expect.
Consider setting the upgrade key for your site.
Backup important data
There are three areas that should be backed up before any upgrade:
- Moodle software (For example, everything in server/htdocs/moodle)
- Moodle uploaded files (For example, server/moodledata)
- Moodle database (For example, your Postgres or MySQL database dump)
See Site backup for more specific information.
Check for plugin updates
If you have Automatic updates deployment enabled, you will be able to update installed plugins automatically during the upgrade. Just make sure you check for available updates (via the button for it) at the Plugins check screen.
If you are updating plugins manually, it is a good moment now to check in the Moodle Plugins directory whether there is a 5.0 version available for any plugins (including themes) installed on your site. If so, download the plugin package. In the next step, you will copy it to the appropriate location in your Moodle code (see Installing plugins).
The upgrade of the plugin will then happen as part of the Moodle upgrade process.
If an out-of-date plugin causes your upgrade to fail, you can usually delete the plugin code rather than uninstalling it from within Moodle so that the data associated with it is not deleted.
Put your site into maintenance mode
Before you begin upgrading your site, you should put it into maintenance mode to stop any non-admin users from logging in. Then you should wait for any currently running cron processes to complete before proceeding.
Install the new Moodle software
You can download the latest release from Moodle downloads.
Standard install package
- Move your old Moodle software program files to another location. Do NOT copy new files over the old files.
- Unzip or unpack the upgrade file so that all the new Moodle software program files are in the location the old files used to be in on the server. Moodle will adjust SQL and moodledata if it needs to in the upgrade.
- Copy your old config.php file back to the new Moodle directory.
- As mentioned above, if you had installed any plugins on your site you should add them to the new code tree (Moodle directory structure) now. It is important to check that you get the correct version for your new version of Moodle. Be particularly careful that you do not overwrite any code in the new version of Moodle and that you place the plugin folders in the correct directory (the same directory that they are in in the current installation.)
- Your moodledata folder should be located separately to your Moodle code folder and, as such, should not need anything done to it. Moodle 3.0 will throw a warning if it is located in a web accessible folder and the moodledata should never be located in the Moodle code folder. If you are moving your installation to a new server or new location on your server, then you will need to follow the Migration documents.
Linux
mv moodle moodle.backup tar xvzf moodle-latest-5.0.tgz
Next, copy across your config.php, any custom plugins, and your .htaccess file if you created one (check that custom plugins are the correct version for your new Moodle first):
cp moodle.backup/config.php moodle cp -pr moodle.backup/theme/mytheme moodle/theme/mytheme cp -pr moodle.backup/mod/mymod moodle/mod/mymod
Don't forget to make moodle/config.php (and the rest of the source code) readable by your www server. For maximum security the files should not be writeable by your server. This is especially important on a 'production' server open to the public internet.
chown -R root:root moodle (Linux debian - or even create a user especially for moodle. Don't use the web server user, e.g. www-data) chmod -R 755 moodle
If you use cron, take care that cron.php is executeable and uses the correct php command:
chmod 740 admin/cli/cron.php (some configurations need chmod 750 or chmod 755) copy the first line from cron.php (if it looks like '#!/usr/local/bin/php' or '#!/usr/local/bin/php5.3', no need to copy '<?php')
if necessary. However, for a simple upgrade, there should be no need to change anything with cron.
Using Git
You can use Git for updating or upgrading your Moodle. See Git for Administrators for details.
Command line upgrade
On Linux servers, Moodle 5.0 supports running the upgrade from the command line, rather than through a web browser. This is likely to be more reliable, particularly for large sites.
Finishing the upgrade
The last step is to trigger the upgrade processes within Moodle.
If you put your site into Maintenance mode earlier; take it out now!
To do this just go to Site administration > Notifications.
Moodle will automatically detect the new version and perform all the SQL database or file system upgrades that are necessary. If there is anything it can't do itself (very rare) then you will see messages telling you what you need to do.
Assuming all goes well (no error messages) then you can start using your new version of Moodle and enjoy the new features!
Note: If you are running multiple servers or find some functionality missing (such as the filepicker not loading) then you should purge all caches manually (via Site administration > Development > Purge all caches) after completing the upgrade.
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded...
If your server uses a main language other than English, you may encounter a 'Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded' when you try to upgrade it. You can increase max_execution_time = 160 on php.ini to allow the scripts enough time to process the language update. Otherwise, you can switch to English as the default language before doing the upgrade and back to your original language after a successful upgrade. See the forum discussion at https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=119598.
Possible issues that may affect you in Moodle 5.0
Course subsections
Course subsections are enabled by default for upgraded sites and new installs. If you don't want to use subsections on your site, they can be disabled in Site administration > Plugins > Manage activities.
Quiz and question banks
There has been considerable work in improving the functionality of Quiz question banks to simplify the management and sharing of questions within Moodle. This is a major change in functionality, and as a result, if question bank sharing is commonly used at a category or system level, please ensure that you fully understand the impact to your processes before upgrading.
Additionally, a new option has been created that allows institutions to pre-create quiz attempts before the student commences the quiz. This has been designed to help mitigate database loads when Moodle is used for large-scale synchronous exams. Use of this is optional and needs to be enabled in the administration settings; however, if it is enabled, this will affect events appearing in the logs and potentially other reporting that utilises data from the quiz attempt tables.
Removed plugins
The following plugins have been removed from Moodle 5.0:
- Chat activity
- Survey activity
- Atto editor
- CAS authentication
- MNet plugins - MNet hosts block, MNet authentication, MNet enrolment, Mahara portfolio, MNet service enrol
Oracle database support
Oracle Database support has been removed from Moodle 5.0, and community members who are currently using Oracle will need to migrate their database to a supported system before upgrading. This decision was made due to the lack of ongoing support for Oracle in PHP and the very low usage of the platform within the Moodle community. Oracle has not been a recommended platform since prior to Moodle 3.0.
Legacy course formats
With the work being done to modernise the Moodle course look and feel, support for some legacy course formats libraries will be deprecated in Moodle 5.0. All course formats that still depend on libraries from Moodle 3.11 and prior will be deprecated. This is primarily to remove the use of YUI from Moodle but also to allow the code to be cleaned up and made more maintainable for the future. From Moodle 6.0, the deprecated libraries will be completely removed. Details on migrating a course format from the 3.11 libraries can be found in the dev doc Migrating 3.11 formats.
Bootstrap 5
Moodle 5.0 will be the first version of Moodle to use Bootstrap 5. This is a big change, but a lot of work has been put into making this as seamless as possible. The team has invested in creating a compatibility layer between Bootstrap 4 and Bootstrap 5 to ease the transition, however, the complexity of this change will mean for many with custom themes and other customisations that it is recommended that these are checked prior to upgrading. The dev doc Bootstrap 5 migration provide guidance on the major changes between Bootstrap 4 and 5 and how to migrate between them.
MimeTex removal
MimeTex is being removed as an option for TeX filters. The underlying 3rd party library that is used was added as a fall back option if other TeX filter options were not available, the library has not been maintained for an extremely long time and as a result is becoming a security and stability concern. If your installation uses TeX filters please ensure that an alternative such as MathJax, LaTeX, or another is installed to ensure the proper functionality is maintained.
Enrolment on payment custom instance name visible to students
In 5.0 the Enrolment on payment custom instance name is visible to students on the course enrolment page. To prevent unintentional disclosure of information previously intended only for teachers, all existing instance names have been migrated to the "Description" field.
Teachers can still see the old instance names on the "Enrolment methods" page, but they are no longer displayed on the course enrolment page.
At the same time, this update introduces greater flexibility in customising how students see "Enrolment on payment" information. For example, teachers can now create multiple instances of this method, each with unique pricing and enrolment conditions.
See also the list of upgrade_notes-labelled issues and ui_change-labelled issues and the Moodle 5.0 developer update and the announcement Important changes in the upcoming Moodle 5.0.
New capabilities in Moodle 5.0
- gradepenalty/duedate:manage
- aiplacement/courseassist:explain_text
- moodle/ai:viewaipolicyacceptancereport
- moodle/ai:viewaiusagereport
- moodle/course:viewoverview
- mod/qbank:addinstance
- mod/qbank:view
- moodle/reportbuilder:configurecustomfields
- tiny/accessibilitychecker:use
- tiny/autosave:use
- tiny/equation:use
- tiny/h5p:use
- tiny/html:use
- tiny/link:use
- tiny/media:use
- tiny/noautolink:use
- tiny/recordrtc:use
- tiny/premium:use
- tiny/premium:usea11ychecker
- tiny/premium:useadvtable
- tiny/premium:useautocorrect
- tiny/premium:usecasechange
- tiny/premium:usechecklist
- tiny/premium:useeditimage
- tiny/premium:useexport
- tiny/premium:usefootnotes
- tiny/premium:useformatpainter
- tiny/premium:uselinkchecker
- tiny/premium:usemath
- tiny/premium:usepageembed
- tiny/premium:usepermanentpen
- tiny/premium:usepowerpaste
- tiny/premium:usetableofcontents
- tiny/premium:usetinymcespellchecker
- tiny/premium:usetypography
Moodle 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 upgrading notes
Depending on which version you are upgrading from, please see the section 'Possible issues that may affect you' in the documentation:
- Upgrading to Moodle 4.1
- Upgrading to Moodle 4.2
- Upgrading to Moodle 4.3
- Upgrading to Moodle 4.4
- Upgrading to Moodle 4.5
Any questions about the process?
Please post in the Installing and upgrading help forum on moodle.org.