Installation quick guide

2017-11-27T18:13:22Z

DanBennett: /* Getting Moodle */ Corrected command which was causing confusion

{{Installing Moodle}}
''This page is intended for administrators who are experienced with installing web server applications and are in a hurry to get up and running. Otherwise please see [[Installing Moodle]]''.

==Basic Requirements==

* You will need a working web server (e.g. [[Apache]]), a database (e.g. [[MySQL]], [[MariaDB]] or [[PostgreSQL]]) and have [[PHP]] configured. See the [{{Release notes}} release notes] in the dev docs for software requirements.
* Moodle requires a number of [[PHP]] extensions. However, Moodle checks early in the installation process and you can fix the problem and re-start the install script if any are missing.
* If you want Moodle to send email (you probably do) you need a working Sendmail (Unix/Linux) on your server or access to an SMTP mail server.

==Getting Moodle==

You have two basic options:
* Download your required version from http://moodle.org/downloads ... OR
* Pull the code from the Git repository (recommended for developers and also makes upgrading very simple):
<pre>
git clone -b MOODLE_34_STABLE git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git
</pre>
...this fetches a complete copy of the Moodle repository and then switches to the {{Version}} Stable branch.

See [[Git_for_Administrators|Git for Administrators ]] for details on using Git to install Moodle code.

Note: Only download Moodle from one of the moodle.org sources. Other versions (e.g. control panel based installers, Linux distribution repositories) cannot be guaranteed to work properly, be upgradable or be supportable.

==Create a database==

* Using your chosen database server, create a new empty database. The default encoding must be UTF8. For example, using MySQL:
<pre>
CREATE DATABASE moodle DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
</pre>
* Create a user/password combination with appropriate permissions for the database. For example (MySQL again):
<pre>
mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodle.* TO 'moodleuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
</pre>

Notes: It is important to GRANT ON moodle.* as the database name including the '.*' and not just the bare database name. Save this password you use for the Moodle user, since you will need it later in the install.

==Create data directory==

* Create an empty directory to hold Moodle files. It '''must not''' be in the area served by the web server and must have permissions so that the web server user can write to it. Other than that it can be located anywhere. Typically, either make it owned by the web server user or give it write permissions for 'everyone'. If it is on a shared/NFS drive then read [[Caching]] - Moodle caches to this disk area by default and a slow share will mean terrible performance.

==Install Moodle code==

* If you downloaded the zip or tgz file earlier, then unzip / untar / move / copy the Moodle code (obtained above) so that it will be served by your web server (e.g. on Debian based Linux, move to /var/www/html/moodle)
* Check the permissions and make sure that the web server does '''not''' have permissions to write to any of the files in the Moodle code directories (a very common root cause of sites being hacked).
* If you need to, configure your web server to serve the Moodle site with your chosen URL.

==Configure Moodle==

* In the Moodle code directory, find the file ''config-dist.php'' and copy it to a new file called ''config.php'' (but read next step, 'Install Moodle', first).
* Edit config.php with your favourite editor and change the appropriate settings to point to your site, directories and database. ''Note: the Moodle install script will create config.php for you if it does not exist but make sure you (re-)set permissions appropriately afterwards''

==Install Moodle==

* Go to the URL for your moodle site in a browser (installation will complete automatically) or run the command line version at (requires cli version of PHP):
<pre>
/usr/bin/php /path/to/moodle/admin/cli/install.php
</pre>
The CLI creates the config.php for you and will not run if you created one in the previous step.
* After completing the install make sure your file permissions are ok for the Moodle program files (not writeable by web server) and the Moodle data files (writeable by web server).

==Set up cron==

You will need a cron job to run periodically. It is recommended that ''the cron is run every minute'', as required for asynchronous activity deletion when using the [[Recycle bin|recycle bin]]. A typical Unix cron entry will be as follows:
<pre>
* * * * * /usr/bin/php /path/to/moodle/admin/cli/cron.php >/dev/null
</pre>
Your site '''will not work properly''' unless cron is running regularly. It is very important you do not skip this step.

See [[Cron]] for details.

==Congratulations!==

You are now ready to use your Moodle site.

If you run into problems, check the [[Installation FAQ]] and visit the [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=28 Installation help forum].

[[Category:Quick guide]]

[[ja:インストールクイックスタート]]
[[de:Installation in Kürze]]
[[fr:Installation_rapide]]
[[es:Inicio_Rápido_de_Instalación]]

MySQL

2017-05-16T09:31:06Z

DanBennett: /* Creating Moodle database */ Fixing conflicting information of database collations

{{Installing Moodle}}
MySQL is one of the supported databases that underpins a Moodle installation.

== Installing MySQL ==

* If you are running Linux your preference should be to install using your distributions package manager. This ensures you will get any available updates. However, you can also use apt-get or yum depending on the distribution that you are running.
* There are installers available for most popular operating systems at http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/.
* It is possible and reasonably straightforward to build mysql from source but it is not recommended (the pre-built binaries are supposedly better optimised).
* Make sure you set a password for the 'root' user (see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/default-privileges.html).
* Consider installing and configuring my.cnf (the MySQL settings file) to suit your needs. The default configuration is usually very conservative in respect of memory usage versus performance. Increase the 'max_allowed_packet' setting to at least 4 megabytes. Also make sure that your collation and character set is using full UTF-8 support. Please view [[MySQL_full_unicode_support#Steps_to_upgrade]].
* If you are going to use Master/Slave replication, you must add binlog_format = 'ROW' into your my.cnf within [mysqld]. Otherwise, Moodle will not be able to write to the database.

== Creating Moodle database ==

These are the steps to create an empty Moodle database. Substitute your own database name, user name and password as appropriate.

The instructions assume that the web server and MySQL server are on the same machine. In this case the 'dbhost' is 'localhost'. If they are on different machines substitute the name of the web server for 'localhost' in the following instructions and the 'dbhost' setting will be the name of the database server.
Databases have a "Character set" and a "Collation". For Moodle, we recommend the Character Set be set to '''utf8mb4''' and the Collation '''utf8mb4_unicode_ci'''. You may get the option to set these values when you create the database. If you are not given a choice, the default options are probably good. An install on an old server may have the wrong settings.

=== Command line ===

* To create a database using the 'mysql' command line client, first log into MySQL
<pre>
$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
</pre>
(Enter the password you previously set - or been given - for the MySQL 'root' user). After some pre-amble this should take you to the ''mysql>'' prompt.
* Create a new database (called 'moodle' - substitute your own name if required). We recommend you use '''utf8mb4_unicode_ci''' for Collation.
<pre>
mysql> CREATE DATABASE moodle DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
</pre>
* Add a user/password with the minimum needed permissions:
<pre>
mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodle.* TO moodleuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
</pre>
...which creates a user called 'moodleuser' with a password 'yourpassword'. Make sure you invent a strong password and resist the temptation to 'GRANT ALL'.

=== phpMyAdmin ===

[http://www.phpmyadmin.net/ phpMyAdmin] is a web based administration tool for MySQL. If this is available you can use it to create a new database. Make sure that you select 'UTF8' as the default character set.

==Which database belongs to which Moodle==
If you have installed several Moodle installations on the same server, there will be several databases in your MySQL server. The names might be quite poor reflections of the content like _mdl1 _mdl2 _mdl3 . So how do I see which database goes with which Moodle installation? You can go in with phpMyAdmin and in the various databases check for the table "mdl_course". There you will easily see the name of that Moodle Installation. In table mdl_config you can see the Moodle version. The main URL for the site is not in the database except where there are absolute links.

== See also ==

* [[MariaDB]]
* [[MySQL full unicode support]]
* [http://www.mysql.com/ The MySQL homepage]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL Wikipedia article about ''MySQL'']
* [http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?24,92131,92131 List of articles on MySQL performance tuning]

[[Category:SQL databases]]

[[ja:MySQL]]
[[de:MySQL]]
[[es:MySQL]]

MoodleDocs - User contributions [en]

Installation quick guide

MySQL