I'm currently troubleshooting some backup/restore issues in Moodle 2.x.
In previous years, when we were running Moodle 1.x, we created a block called sidebar. Recently, when it came time to restore our courses in Moodle 2.3, our server would time out. From what I can tell so far, the sidebar block seems to be the culprit here.
Sidebar uses section 1000 to store resources and activities. When courses are backed up, Moodle includes ALL sections up to 1000, even though they are empty. This is just too much pie for Moodle 2.x, so it chokes.
The easiest fix seems to be be to remove all the superfluous sections directly from mdl_course_sections in the database. On our Moodle site, for example, courses are 8 weeks long so I deleted all mdl_course_sections greater than 8.
This seems to do the trick, but I'm wondering if this is the way to go or if anyone else has other suggestions.
Thx,
Fernando