MoodleDocs - User contributions [en]

Development talk:Certificate Module

2007-02-28T16:47:25Z

Andreabix:

== The basis ==
In my opinion I'd go for point B, that's would help us with many people testing it. We could also start using as sson as the main features are ok.

Installations 1000 plus

2007-02-22T08:29:26Z

Andreabix:

{{Template:Large Installations}}

==Australia==

*Monte Sant' Angelo Mercy College - [http://montenet.monte.nsw.edu.au MonteNet] is used as our colleges student intranet and e-learning portal. Currently running 1.6dev with a few extra custom features thrown in.

*Monte Sant' Angelo Mercy College - [http://compass.monte.nsw.edu.au Compass] takes moodle and uses it for a purpose that is a little outside the square. Compass is used as the staff intranet. Each course is refered to as a "Space" and is used by each departmentr to store meating minutes, agendas and teaching documentation. Communications tools such as forums allow to facilitate better teacher communication and the events are used to keep the teachers events online and targeted (e.g. year 9 teachers all know when excursions are on, all english teachers know when reports are due, etc).

==Belgium==

*[http://www.ritacollege.be Sint-Ritacollege] We are a school for 12-18 year old students. Currently our database contains about 1600 active users and 130 courses. Always running latest Moodle code since version 1.0.8.

==Croatia (Hrvatska)==

*Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb - [http://omega.ffzg.hr Omega sustav ucenja na daljinu] is used as our faculty-wide e-learning system. Currently running 1.7 stable with more than 3000 users and 180+ courses.

==Czech Republic==

*Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno - [http://www.phil.muni.cz/elf/ ELF], 16,000+ users total, 4,000+ active users in Spring Term 2006, 600+ courses; using Moodle from April 2003.

==Finland==

*Tampere Polytechnic or Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulu ([http://www.tamk.fi www.tamk.fi]), is a around 5000 student college or "a university of applied sciences" located at Tampere, Finland. Our moodle installation hosts around 2500 active students.

*Lahti Polytechnic or Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu is also a "university of applied sciences", located at Lahti, Finland. We have about 5400 students, and a Moodle installation called [http://reppu.lamk.fi Reppu] (Finnish word for "backpack"). We are approaching the 5000 active users mark.

==Italy==

* University of Rome "Roma Tre" - [http://ltaonline.learning.uniroma3.it/ Laboratorio di Tecnologie Audiovisive] hosts two faculties with more than 1600 students.

==Netherlands==

* We are a 5000 people school, one server, 9 locations and using Moodle for almost three years now: https://studiewijzerplus.nl Every schoolyear we start again with counting the number of users and the automatic counter (thanks Penny!) is now pointing at 3103

== Russia ==
*Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) - distance education programme [http://www.globalcompetence.ru Management of Global Processes]

==Spain==
*[http://www.cicei.com CICEI] - Center of Innovation for the Information Society. We have a production [http://cursos.cicei.com Moodle server] having currently 1,042 users in 72 courses covering a wide range of applications (as of February 6, 2006).

==Switzerland==

*[http://moodle.fri-tic.ch/ Centre fri-tic] - Center for ICT Integration of Canton de Fribourg. Currently running 1 moodle for teachers and students from k-12 to High school, with more than 2000 users and about 130 courses. The [http://www.fri-tic.ch/ Centre fri-tic] is also hosting 9 other moodle installations for specific schools.

==United Kingdom==

* [http://moodle.altoncollege.ac.uk/ Alton College] - a Beacon sixth form college with over 2,500 active users.

* [http://egglescliffe.org.uk/ Egglescliffe School and Sixth Form] - a specialist arts school with over 2,000 active moodlers and 345 courses whose usage was the basis of this [http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,,1583832,00.html Guardian article]

* [http://learn.gold.ac.uk Goldsmiths College, London] - over 2,500 active users. See also this [http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2004/timetable/abstract.php?abstract_id=270 presentation at a 2004 conference].

* [http://www.thanet.ac.uk/ Thanet College] - a "medium sized general FE college", using Moodle as documented in [http://ferl.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=13423 this Ferl case study]

* [http://www.westnotts.ac.uk West Nottingahmshire College] - an FE college in the East Midlands.

* [http://www.lifeintheuk.org Prepare: Life in the United Kingdom Test] - a free website dedicated to Life in the UK Test.

==United States of America==
*[http://www.glyphdoctors.com Glyphdoctors] is a site with over 1200 registered users (as of Feb. 2006) on a shared server host, [http://www.opensourcehost.com Open Source Host]. It will offer online courses in Egyptology and Egyptian hieroglyphs to the general public. Currently, there is one free public course available and a course in Egyptian hieroglyphs under beta testing with a small number of students.

*[http://moodle.mcm.edu/ McMurry University]has several Moodle instances, the first begun as a pilot project in June, 2005. McMurry is a small (1400 FTE) undergraduate-only institution affiliated with the United Methodist church. Currently the main instance supports 1700 users (650 active), some 60 instructors, and approximately 180 active courses.

* [http://ahshornets.org Aiken High School]has over 2000 registered users in grades 9 - 12 (Feb. 2006).

* [http://academies.culver.org/moodle The Culver Academies] has over 1000 registered users in grades 9 - 12. The school has been using Moodle in the classroom since the 2002-2003 school year. Administratively we have a Moodle "course" for faculty-only announcements and materials.

* [http://online.warner.edu Warner Southern College] began using Moodle in early 2005 as an experiment to move from a simple webboard system into a full learning management system. The experiment went extremely well and a full transition to Moodle was accomplished in the fall term of 2005. Currently, Warner Southern College has one Moodle instance running with over 1200 registered users (500+ active students, 50+ instructors, 80+ courses and two system administrators) offering associate, bachelor and master of arts degree programs for both traditional site based and full online students. Warner Southern College is a small institution affiliated with the Church of God and accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

[[Category:Administrator]]

{{Template:Large Installations}}

Installations 10000 plus

2007-02-16T14:42:15Z

Andreabix: /* Italy */

{{Template:Large Installations}}

Please add your school info here, if you have a Moodle installation catering (or expecting to cater) for 10,000 or more users.

==Canada==

* [http://www.athabascau.ca/ Athabasca University] - Canada's leading distance-education and online university: Canada's Open University, serving about 30,000 students per year. Athabasca has decided to adopt Moodle as a single platform instead of WebCT Vista (i.e. the top of the line version). You can read their [http://www.athabascau.ca/media/index.php?id=132 press release] for more info.

==China==

* [http://english.bit.edu.cn/ Beijing Institute of Technology]

==Ireland==

* [http://www.dcu.ie Dublin City University] 18,000 users in 3,600 courses.

==Italy==

* [http://elearning.uniroma1.it/ CITICoRD - University of Rome La Sapienza] CITICoRD hosts more than 330 courses for about 20.100 students from about 20 faculties, ranging from enginering scientific courses to literature and medicine.

==New Zealand==

*[http://campus.openpolytechnic.ac.nz/ The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand] - 35,000+ students, 6,500+ courses, single sign-on for library services using Ezy Proxy, single sign-on for webmail, using SquirrelMail, uses LDAP for interface with Sears Student Management System. Comments by [https://eduforge.org/wiki/wiki/nzvle/wiki?pagename=Comments%20by%20Ken%20Udas%2C%20Director%20of%20eLearning%20at%20the%20Open%20Polytechnic Ken Udas, Director of eLearning at the Open Polytechnic]

== Spain ==

*[http://aulavirtual.uji.es/ Universitat Jaume I] - 13,000 users in 600 courses.

*[http://www.upc.edu La Universitat Politecnica de Cataluña] on september 2005 started a pilot Moodle installation with 3.000 Students. On september 2006 the migration from the old campus to Moodle will be complete with more than 30.00 students [http://atenea.upc.edu El campus Atenea 4] runs Moodle 1.4.5 y an will be updated to Moodle 1.5.3 in september 2006. [http://www.upc.edu UPC] has developed several applicatons adn bridges between its own informacion systems.
** Integration with the academic management informatio system "Prisma".
** [http://appserv.lsi.upc.es/palangana/moodle/course/view.php?id=18 Internalmail] (developed also in UPC) is used for as email internal system.
** Moodle integration with [http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu the upc library system].
** Adaptation of Moodle grades to spanish university grading system.
** And other stuff

==United Kingdom==

*[http://www.open.ac.uk/ The Open University (OU)] - the United Kingdom's only university dedicated to distance learning. They have around 150,000 undergraduate and more than 30,000 postgraduate students. They are in the middle on a two-year programme to build a VLE based on Moodle. At the start of 2007, the OU's Moodle database contains 200,000 users and 2,500 courses.

:"Now, The Open University’s Learning and Teaching Office has started a new programme worth nearly £5 million to build a comprehensive online student learning environment for the 21st century.

:The development, which will first appear in May of 2006, and be fully operational for February 2007 courses, will see the largest use of Moodle in the world. Moodle is a free, Open Source software package course management system used by educators to create effective online learning communities.

:Currently Open University students use a variety of software in a network to access their course work, interact with tutors and other students, use the library, submit assignments and handle administrative paperwork. The new development incorporating Moodle will ensure the network is much more user-friendly and uniform." Source: [http://www3.open.ac.uk/events/7/2005118_40887_nr.doc OU press release] (.doc format).

*[http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/ OpenLearn] The Open University's open content initiative. Website development began in May 2006 and the site was launched in October 2006, supported by a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. By April 2008, 5,400 learning hours of content will be available online. Currenly (early 2007) over 10,000 unique users.

*[http://www.gla.ac.uk/ The University of Glasgow] - A long-established (founded 1451) and high-profile research university in the UK, with 20,000 students (16,000 undergrad, 4,000 postgrad), 6,000 staff, 12,000 unique users of Moodle (as of Dec 2005). Uses LDAP for integration with Novell and a custom MIS system for user authentication.

==United States==
*[http://moodle.cpcc.edu Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) ] uses moodle for both curriculum and Corporate and Continuing Education. For curriculum it runs in parallel to Blackboard as faculty migrate to moodle over time. There are currently no plans to go moodle only, although many administrators favor this option. The server has 30,000 or so users on it, but the actual number of active users varies widely. It is used for both hybrid and full-online classes. Corporate and Continuing Education runs its own branded instance and uses only moodle for distance education. We have about 80,000 students total, covering the range from GED, adult-ed, curriculum, and other areas serviced by 7 campuses in and around Charlotte, North Carolina.

*[http://ilearn.sfsu.edu San Francisco State University (SFSU) ] uses moodle for more than three years now. We use moodle for our main campus and the College of Entended Learning (CEL). For curriculum it runs in parallel to Blackboard as faculty migrate to moodle over time. The server has about 9,000+ active users on it, and we have integrated Moodle (iLearn) with our SIMS/R system (see http://www.sfsu.edu/sims/overview.htm). We have around 28,950 students total, covering the range from undergraduate, graduate, and first professional students.

{{Template:Large Installations}}

[[Category:Administrator]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:59:12Z

Andreabix: /* Still XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==Still XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

* Download the [http://repository.atlassian.com/atlassian-xml-cleaner/jars/atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar Atlassian XML Cleanr Utility] from the [http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Removing+invalid+characters+from+XML+backups JIRA Atlassian site].

* Unzip the problematic Moodle backup file under one empty folder. Moodle will create the course file folders as long as the unclean moodle.xml file. Please unzip using the Moodle unzip feature.

* Rename the unclean moodle.xml file to moodle-unclean.xml.

* If you don't have access to your Moodle server's command prompt, using the Moodle zip feature, zip the moodle-unclean.xml file only, download the zip file locally and unzip it. It is very important to download the xml file in zipped format to avoid unwanted charachter encoding when transferring from an operating system to another.

* Move the downloaded Atlassian XML Cleaner Utility in the same folder where is your moodle-unclean.xml file.

* Issue the following command from the command prompt:

java -jar atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar moodle-unclean.xml > moodle.xml

* If you launched the utility on your local computer, zip the just created (and hopefully cleaned) moodle.xml file and upload it in the same place from where you downloaded the moodle-unclean.xml file. Once uploaded, unzip it using the Moodle unzip feature.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:57:01Z

Andreabix: /* XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==Still XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

* Download the [http://repository.atlassian.com/atlassian-xml-cleaner/jars/atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar Atlassian XML Cleanr Utility] from the [http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Removing+invalid+characters+from+XML+backups JIRA Atlassian site].

* Unzip the problematic Moodle backup file under one empty folder. Moodle will create the course file folders as long as the unclean moodle.xml file. Please unzip using the Moodle unzip feature.

* Rename the unclean moodle.xml file to moodle-unclean.xml.

* If you don't have access to your Moodle server's command prompt, using the Moodle zip feature, zip the moodle-unclean.xml file only, download the zip file locally and unzip it. It is very important to download the xml file in zipped format to avoid unwanted charachter encoding when transferring from an operating system to another.

* Move the downloaded Atlassian XML Cleaner Utility in the same folder where is your moodle-unclean.xml file.

* Issue the following command from the command prompt:

java -jar atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar moodle-unclean.xml > moodle.xml

* If you launched the utility on your local computer, zip the now cleaned moodle.xml and upload it in the same place from where you downloaded the moodle-unclean.xml file. Once uploaded, unzip it using the Moodle unzip feature.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:56:11Z

Andreabix: /* XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

* Download the [http://repository.atlassian.com/atlassian-xml-cleaner/jars/atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar Atlassian XML Cleanr Utility] from the [http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Removing+invalid+characters+from+XML+backups JIRA Atlassian site].

* Unzip the problematic Moodle backup file under one empty folder. Moodle will create the course file folders as long as the unclean moodle.xml file. Please unzip using the Moodle unzip feature.

* Rename the unclean moodle.xml file to moodle-unclean.xml.

* If you don't have access to your Moodle server's command prompt, using the Moodle zip feature, zip the moodle-unclean.xml file only, download the zip file locally and unzip it. It is very important to download the xml file in zipped format to avoid unwanted charachter encoding when transferring from an operating system to another.

* Move the downloaded Atlassian XML Cleaner Utility in the same folder where is your moodle-unclean.xml file.

* Issue the following command from the command prompt:

java -jar atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar moodle-unclean.xml > moodle.xml

* If you launched the utility on your local computer, zip the now cleaned moodle.xml and upload it in the same place from where you downloaded the moodle-unclean.xml file. Once uploade, unzip it using the Moodle unzip feature.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:43:42Z

Andreabix: /* XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

* Download the [http://repository.atlassian.com/atlassian-xml-cleaner/jars/atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar Atlassian XML Cleanr Utility] from the [http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Removing+invalid+characters+from+XML+backups JIRA Atlassian site].

* Unzip the problematic Moodle backup file under one empty folder. Moodle will create folder as long as the unclean moodle.xml file.

* Rename the unclean moodle.xml file to moodle-unclean.xml

* Move the downloaded Atlassian XML Cleaner Utility in the same folder where is your unclean moodle.xml file.

* Issue the following command from the command prompt:

java -jar atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar moodle-unclean.xml > moodle.xml

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:36:08Z

Andreabix: /* XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

* Download the [http://repository.atlassian.com/atlassian-xml-cleaner/jars/atlassian-xml-cleaner-0.1.jar Atlassian XML Cleanr Utility] from the [http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Removing+invalid+characters+from+XML+backups JIRA Atlassian site].

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:35:01Z

Andreabix: /* XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

* Download the Atlassian XML Cleanr utility from the [http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Removing+invalid+characters+from+XML+backups JIRA Atlassian site].

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:32:50Z

Andreabix: /* XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

* Download the Atlassian XML Cleanr utility from the [JIRA Atlassian site][http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Removing+invalid+characters+from+XML+backups].

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:28:31Z

Andreabix: /* XML error: how to clean xml borked file */

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the steps described in the previous paragraph. In such cases you may want to try the following:

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Backup and restore FAQ

2007-02-02T11:25:58Z

Andreabix:

{{FAQ}}
;Site backups
:Site backups, as explained in [[Upgrading_Moodle#Backup_important_data|upgrading Moodle]], are recommended in order to have all data saved with the best confidence and the shortest recovery time.

;Course backups
:Course backups, configured on the [[admin/backup|backup]] page, are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer. Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred site backups). In order to make scheduled backups, you have to setup CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==How do I backup my whole Moodle site?==

There are two main things you need to make a copy of - the database and the uploaded files. The Moodle scripts themselves are less important, since you can always download a fresh copy if you have to.

There are many ways to do such backups. Here is an outline of a little script you can run on Unix to backup the database (it works well to have such a script run daily via a cron task):

cd /my/backup/directory
mv moodle-database.sql.gz moodle-database-old.sql.gz
mysqldump -h example.com -u myusername --password=mypassword -C -Q -e -a mydatabasename > moodle-database.sql
gzip moodle-database.sql

For the files, you can use rsync regularly to copy only the changed files to another host:

rsync -auvtz --delete -e ssh mysshusername@example.com:/my/server/directory /my/backup/directory/

'''Character Encoding'''

When dumping the entire Moodle database, Administrators should be careful to watch for possible character encoding issues. In some instances, backups created with mysqldump or phpmyadmin may not properly encode all of the data resulting in spurious A characters. One solution is to use mySQL Administrator 1.1 or another tool that will force a UTF-8 dump of the data.

==How do I restore a backup of my whole Moodle site?==

If you have followed the above instructions and created a backup of a moodle site, you may need to know how to restore the site backup you created. Here is a set of basic steps that make up the restore process.

1. Rename the original moodledata directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodledata directory in its place.

2. Rename the original moodle directory to something different (so you still have it) and copy the backed up moodle directory or a newly downloaded moodle directory in its place.

3. If you are running mysql, a backup of the database should be a .sql, .gz or .tar.gz file. If it is .tar.gz or .gz you need to extract it until it is an sql file.

tar -xzvf moodlesqlfile.tar.gz

4. If you are running mysql, import the sql file back into a newly created database on the mysql server. Be careful here, some backups try to import right back into the same working database that moodle is connected to. This causes database problems that damage a moodle installation. The best thing to do is make a new database, restore the backed up database into it, and change the moodle config.php file to connect to this new database (this way you still have the original database).

once you have created the new database:
mysql -p new_database < moodlesqlfile.sql

==What data is not contained in course backups?==

By selecting all the options when setting up the backup you can include almost all the data in the course. However you should be aware of the fact that some things are not backed up:
* Quiz questions are only backed up if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz.
* Scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity.

==Error: An error occurred deleting old backup data==

This part of the backup (or restore) procedure tries to delete old info, used in previous executions, performing the following tasks:

* Delete old records from "backup_ids" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old records from "backup_files" table: Check the table exists, repair it and try again.

* Delete old files from "moodledata/temp/backup": Delete the dir completely and try again.

There are various ways of repairing tables, including using MySQL Admin.

==XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line YYYY==

This problem can appear at any point in the restore process. It's caused when the XML parser detects something incorrect in the backup file that prevent correct operation. Usually, it's caused by some "illegal" characters added in the original course due to some copy/paste of text containing them (control characters, or invalid sequences...).

The best method to handle this issue is:

* Unzip the problematic backup file under one empty folder.

* Open the moodle.xml with Firefox. It will show you where (exact char) the problem is happening.

* Edit the moodle.xml file with some UTF8-compatible editor and delete such characters. Save changes.

* Test the moodle.xml file again with Firefox until no error was displayed.

* Zip everything again (all the folder contents but the folder itself!).

* Restore the course. It should work now.

* Restore still not working? See the next paragraph.

Also, if possible, it's highly recommended to solve those problems in the original course too from Moodle itself. Once "repaired" there, problems will be out if you create new backup files in the future.

==XML error: how to clean xml borked file==

In some cases XML backup files may contain charachters causing the restore process to abort, even after the process described in the previous paragraph.

==Some of your courses weren't saved!!==

There are three possible causes of this problem:

1. Error - this happens when the backup procedure has found an error and so hasn't finished the backup of a particular course. These are "controlled" errors and the scheduled backup continues with the next course.

2. Unfinished - this happens when the backup procedure dies without knowing why. When the cron is next executed it detects that the last execution went wrong, and continues skipping the problematic course. A possible solution would be to raise the PHP/Apache limit in your installation (memory, time of execution...). By taking a look to your log tables you should be able to see if the "crash" is happening at exact time intervals (usually a problem with the max_execution_time php's variable), or if there is some exact point were all the courses are breaking (generally internal zip libraries, try to switch to external executables instead).

3. Skipped - this happens when a course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last month (31 days). This isn't an error situation - it's a feature, especially useful for sites with many unavailable old courses, saving process time.

==Restoring pre 1.6 non-ISO-8859-1 backups to Moodle 1.6 - Unicode==

Any backup files with contents which are not 100% ISO-8859-1 will be a problem to restore to Moodle 1.6 (and upwards) running under Unicode. Instead, please try the following:

# Make a clean install of Moodle 1.5.x (the latest version available)
# Restore all your courses there (they should work if they were working originally)
# Upgrade your site to Moodle 1.6 and run the UTF-8 migration script
# Backup your courses again

This will produce a new set of backup files that will be 100% UTF-8 and you will be able to use them with Moodle 1.6 without any problems.

==Why are some courses being skipped?==

From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students AND have not been changed in the last month.

== See also ==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=128 Backup and Restore forum]
*[[Backup restore]] Version 1.6 description of screens for both
*[[Restore]] almost same as backup_restore
*[[Roll courses forward]] new Version 1.7 option

== External links ==

*[http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/10897_3300511_2 Repairing Database Corruption in MySQL]

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:Backup]]

[[es:FAQ Backup]]
[[fr:FAQ de sauvegarde]]

Installations 10000 plus

2006-05-25T14:10:11Z

Andreabix:

{{Template:Large Installations}}

Please add your school info here, if you have a Moodle installation catering (or expecting to cater) for 10,000 or more users.

==Canada==

* [http://www.athabascau.ca/ Athabasca University] - Canada's leading distance-education and online university: Canada's Open University, serving about 30,000 students per year. Athabasca has decided to adopt Moodle as a single platform instead of WebCT Vista (i.e. the top of the line version). You can read their [http://www.athabascau.ca/media/index.php?id=132 press release] for more info.

==China==

* [http://english.bit.edu.cn/ Beijing Institute of Technology]

==Ireland==

* [http://www.dcu.ie Dublin City University] 18,000 users in 3,600 courses.

==Italy==

* [http://elearning.uniroma1.it/ CITICoRD - University of Rome La Sapienza] CITICoRD hosts more than 230 courses for about 11.000 students from about 20 faculties, ranging from enginering scientific courses to literature and medicine.

==New Zealand==

*[http://campus.openpolytechnic.ac.nz/ The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand] - 35,000+ students, 6,500+ courses, single sign-on for library services using Ezy Proxy, single sign-on for webmail, using SquirrelMail, uses LDAP for interface with Sears Student Management System. Comments by [https://eduforge.org/wiki/wiki/nzvle/wiki?pagename=Comments%20by%20Ken%20Udas%2C%20Director%20of%20eLearning%20at%20the%20Open%20Polytechnic Ken Udas, Director of eLearning at the Open Polytechnic]

== Spain ==

*[http://aulavirtual.uji.es/ Universitat Jaume I] - 13,000 users in 600 courses.

*[http://www.upc.edu La Universitat Politecnica de Cataluña] on september 2005 started a pilot Moodle installation with 3.000 Students. On september 2006 the migration from the old campus to Moodle will be complete with more than 30.00 students [http://atenea.upc.edu El campus Atenea 4] runs Moodle 1.4.5 y an will be updated to Moodle 1.5.3 in september 2006. [http://www.upc.edu UPC] has developed several applicatons adn bridges between its own informacion systems.
** Integration with the academic management informatio system "Prisma".
** [http://appserv.lsi.upc.es/palangana/moodle/course/view.php?id=18 Internalmail] (developed also in UPC) is used for as email internal system.
** Moodle integration with [http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu the upc library system].
** Adaptation of Moodle grades to spanish university grading system.
** And other stuff

==United Kingdom==

*[http://www.open.ac.uk The Open University (OU)] - the United Kingdom's only university dedicated to distance learning. They have around 150,000 undergraduate and more than 30,000 postgraduate students. They recently announced their adoption of Moodle:

:"Now, The Open University’s Learning and Teaching Office has started a new programme worth nearly £5 million to build a comprehensive online student learning environment for the 21st century.

:The development, which will first appear in May of 2006, and be fully operational for February 2007 courses, will see the largest use of Moodle in the world. Moodle is a free, Open Source software package course management system used by educators to create effective online learning communities.

:Currently Open University students use a variety of software in a network to access their course work, interact with tutors and other students, use the library, submit assignments and handle administrative paperwork. The new development incorporating Moodle will ensure the network is much more user-friendly and uniform." Source: [http://www3.open.ac.uk/events/7/2005118_40887_nr.doc OU press release] (.doc format).

*[http://www.gla.ac.uk/ The University of Glasgow] - A long-established (founded 1451) and high-profile research university in the UK, with 20,000 students (16,000 undergrad, 4,000 postgrad), 6,000 staff, 12,000 unique users of Moodle (as of Dec 2005). Uses LDAP for integration with Novell and a custom MIS system for user authentication.

==United States==
*[http://moodle.cpcc.edu Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) ] uses moodle for both curriculum and Corporate and Continuing Education. For curriculum it runs in parallel to Blackboard as faculty migrate to moodle over time. There are currently no plans to go moodle only, although many administrators favor this option. The server has 30,000 or so users on it, but the actual number of active users varies widely. It is used for both hybrid and full-online classes. Corporate and Continuing Education runs its own branded instance and uses only moodle for distance education. We have about 80,000 students total, covering the range from GED, adult-ed, curriculum, and other areas serviced by 7 campuses in and around Charlotte, North Carolina.

{{Template:Large Installations}}

[[Category:Administrator]]

Installations 10000 plus

2006-05-25T14:09:09Z

Andreabix:

{{Template:Large Installations}}

Please add your school info here, if you have a Moodle installation catering (or expecting to cater) for 10,000 or more users.

==Canada==

* [http://www.athabascau.ca/ Athabasca University] - Canada's leading distance-education and online university: Canada's Open University, serving about 30,000 students per year. Athabasca has decided to adopt Moodle as a single platform instead of WebCT Vista (i.e. the top of the line version). You can read their [http://www.athabascau.ca/media/index.php?id=132 press release] for more info.

==China==

* [http://english.bit.edu.cn/ Beijing Institute of Technology]

==Ireland==

* [http://www.dcu.ie Dublin City University] 18,000 users in 3,600 courses.

==Italy==

* [http://elearning.uniroma1.it/ University of Rome La Sapienza's CITICoRD hosts more than 230 courses for about 11.000 students from about 20 faculties, ranging from enginering scientific courses to literature and medicine.]

==New Zealand==

*[http://campus.openpolytechnic.ac.nz/ The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand] - 35,000+ students, 6,500+ courses, single sign-on for library services using Ezy Proxy, single sign-on for webmail, using SquirrelMail, uses LDAP for interface with Sears Student Management System. Comments by [https://eduforge.org/wiki/wiki/nzvle/wiki?pagename=Comments%20by%20Ken%20Udas%2C%20Director%20of%20eLearning%20at%20the%20Open%20Polytechnic Ken Udas, Director of eLearning at the Open Polytechnic]

== Spain ==

*[http://aulavirtual.uji.es/ Universitat Jaume I] - 13,000 users in 600 courses.

*[http://www.upc.edu La Universitat Politecnica de Cataluña] on september 2005 started a pilot Moodle installation with 3.000 Students. On september 2006 the migration from the old campus to Moodle will be complete with more than 30.00 students [http://atenea.upc.edu El campus Atenea 4] runs Moodle 1.4.5 y an will be updated to Moodle 1.5.3 in september 2006. [http://www.upc.edu UPC] has developed several applicatons adn bridges between its own informacion systems.
** Integration with the academic management informatio system "Prisma".
** [http://appserv.lsi.upc.es/palangana/moodle/course/view.php?id=18 Internalmail] (developed also in UPC) is used for as email internal system.
** Moodle integration with [http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu the upc library system].
** Adaptation of Moodle grades to spanish university grading system.
** And other stuff

==United Kingdom==

*[http://www.open.ac.uk The Open University (OU)] - the United Kingdom's only university dedicated to distance learning. They have around 150,000 undergraduate and more than 30,000 postgraduate students. They recently announced their adoption of Moodle:

:"Now, The Open University’s Learning and Teaching Office has started a new programme worth nearly £5 million to build a comprehensive online student learning environment for the 21st century.

:The development, which will first appear in May of 2006, and be fully operational for February 2007 courses, will see the largest use of Moodle in the world. Moodle is a free, Open Source software package course management system used by educators to create effective online learning communities.

:Currently Open University students use a variety of software in a network to access their course work, interact with tutors and other students, use the library, submit assignments and handle administrative paperwork. The new development incorporating Moodle will ensure the network is much more user-friendly and uniform." Source: [http://www3.open.ac.uk/events/7/2005118_40887_nr.doc OU press release] (.doc format).

*[http://www.gla.ac.uk/ The University of Glasgow] - A long-established (founded 1451) and high-profile research university in the UK, with 20,000 students (16,000 undergrad, 4,000 postgrad), 6,000 staff, 12,000 unique users of Moodle (as of Dec 2005). Uses LDAP for integration with Novell and a custom MIS system for user authentication.

==United States==
*[http://moodle.cpcc.edu Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) ] uses moodle for both curriculum and Corporate and Continuing Education. For curriculum it runs in parallel to Blackboard as faculty migrate to moodle over time. There are currently no plans to go moodle only, although many administrators favor this option. The server has 30,000 or so users on it, but the actual number of active users varies widely. It is used for both hybrid and full-online classes. Corporate and Continuing Education runs its own branded instance and uses only moodle for distance education. We have about 80,000 students total, covering the range from GED, adult-ed, curriculum, and other areas serviced by 7 campuses in and around Charlotte, North Carolina.

{{Template:Large Installations}}

[[Category:Administrator]]