Moodle in English: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

This IE problem is becoming more and more a serious thing. The Moodle community should solve this, it gives us a bad name: Open SOurce but not compatible with the rest of the world.

- some users are not allowed to open attachments in IE, firefox is fine

- some users cannot update their profile in IE, firefox is fine

- I opened on the same machine with two monitors the same glossary in Firefox and in IE: I could upload page after page with firefox, in IE I had only problems, loosing page after page: only once the page "hang" in IE and by pressing the upload button again it was saved!

- in DMS there was in the past the same pattern, it was never really solved: view of file was OK, download went wrong in iE, firefox was OK. In the end I dropped DMS

- in the early days we had the same problem with quizz downloads, but that was repaired.

- I did not experience this difference in login, but it fits in the same pattern.

Who has a clue to solve this?

Of course I considered this suggestion:

The problem with IE , solved: the solution is to remove IE big grin

. If this is not possible then ... is more difficult. I found that the error comes from an incompatibility between overlib and wz_dragdrop the library used to build the window. It seems that overlib is only used in the callendar but is included in every page.
I've tried to update both libraries to the last version, but the problem persists.
For me is very difficult to trace both codes. I don't have tools to do so. I'll try to post in some forums asking for help.
Here is my first one...

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Darren Smith - Friday, 7 October 2005, 6:40 AM

This IE problem is becoming more and more a serious thing

Y'know most of our kids use IE and I have not had any problems at all. Are you sure you server is set up properly. Something like opening attachments sounds more like mime type issue to me that a browser setting.

I have had problems with profile updating in both browsers with LDAP which have been solved in the latest release. Is it not an authentication issue? Which version of moodle are you running? Have you raised this in the bug tracker? You do realise DMS is not standard and should be used at your own risk. Why don't you provide your students with a choice of browsers?

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Saturday, 8 October 2005, 5:09 PM

No it is a server setting problem, as I wrote: all was fine before the holidays...

The answer should become available in a MOODLE-FAQ file, when it is solved

One of the problems of Open Source is that idiots like me are allowed to setup a server and change anything. (And to my supprise Moodle can handle that normally very good, with exception of these IE things... now and then: this morning I changed three forms for our Turkish student names, all went ok, IN IE!! Did our staff find the problem??.. and then I tried form four )

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Bernard Boucher - Friday, 7 October 2005, 9:54 AM

Hi Ger,
curious social forum topic mixed

More seriously, like your problem, did you check my answer here?

Do you have the same problem with a very recent IE?

Here we are stuck with an old IE and students computers are jammed with deepfreeze and the IT department keep the password!

To see if it is the same problem as mine, if you give me some student access to your site I will test it with my poor window man stress program .

I hope it may help,

Bernard

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Saturday, 8 October 2005, 4:58 PM

^{Yes Bernard, I saw your comments and I know that it is not a Moodle core problem: We changed IP-range-adresses, Linux-type, Apache-type, PHP-version, MySQL-version and they installed a SAN...}

^{The problem is also in the newest version fo IE and in the multi-window-look-alike AVANT browser. (using the same IE engine?)}

^{BUT WE DID NOT CHANGE A JOTTA TO OUR MOODLE VERSION 1.4.3 THING, with exception of the config.php. Thank God I didn't, because then "they" (our now desperate ICT-guys) would blame new Moodle. (And I checked if the problem would stay when using 1.5.2, it did)}

^{But for me it is a Social Problem: Why is the Moodle developers community neglecting so many IE problems? Why not testing more on IE? This way we end-up with a Moodle that will aks more and more for a very specific tuned Server... What Moodle is missing here is a more professional organised testing program with someone who not only coordinates that BUT ALSO KNOWS HOW TO COMMUNICATE THAT TO THE POOR USERS WITH THESE PROBLEMS. (In the medical world they call this the problem of the Orphan drugs research. ANd yes, I know ,it will come, yes Martin.) Desperate users like me are willing to pay for that service too, so an opprtunity for moodle.com!!}

^{To give an other example of neglecting IE, Martin: The rounded corners of Martin's main theme are not visible in IE, so Bill Gates should change that. Is that a realistic view? (In the end he will, I see now rounded corner in the latest MSN..) But why not using that solution, offered in the forums to make Moodle less platform dependent? (or at least explain why that is not so handy)}

^{So back to our IE problem: Moodle is nothing to blame, local Linux-experts don't have any idea in which direction to look: It is in the combination Moodle-LINUX-Apache-PHP-MySQL-PROXY-SAN and that is new for them. Suspect number one is the way Moodle handles forms in a not IE friendly way..}

^{So community, if someone wants to have access to our server to have a look to find a stupid wrong setting on our server, please email me..}

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Michael Penney - Saturday, 8 October 2005, 11:29 PM

Suspect number one is the way Moodle handles forms in a not IE friendly way..

More likely IE is exposing a bug in your server set up that would come and get you in some other way even if you didn't use IE.

One good idea that OSS make possible is to keep the old server up and running until the new server is ready to go. Don't turn the old server off and switch users until the new server is ready and thouroughly debugged. This is an option often not available in commercial solutions (for instance we get 1 week to do a BB Basic upgrade).

My guess is that this problem is coming from a misconfigured proxy, which IE can be more sensitive to than others. Have you tried installing some other form on the server and does IE work with that? How does if work if you turn the proxy off? You should ask your support folks to stop looking for blame in the application and get their server set up properly. Other options would be to look for more a host, one who has all this stuff down already...

Email me off list with the details if you would like one of our team to take a look at the server set-up (mmp5AThumboldtDOTedu.

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Sunday, 9 October 2005, 5:37 PM

In despair I said: "give me my old server back!" and then they confessed that it was already used for something else.. (Poor public school

) This way we become the living example of the dangers of using Open Source on your own..

Your hint of the misconfigured proxy could be the golden hint, monday I check (again...) But can you eplain to me why Firefox has no problems with that?

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Sunday, 9 October 2005, 7:15 PM

Someone also suggested to check the adresses in the database also. Which tables should I check?

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Michael Penney - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 8:42 PM

This way we become the living example of the dangers of using Open Source on your own..

I don't see that, if you did the same thing with Blackboard you might be in the same boat, with the difference that you would have had to pay a multiserver license and so would be able to call in their support (which would probably tell you you have a misconfigured server and to call them back when you get that fixed or contract with them above the license fee for them to come in and fix it). Blackboard doesn't come in and configure your servers for you unless you pay them extra (and that can be alot extra).

With Moodle, you can chose to set up an enterprise class server setup (SANs, Proxys, multiple servers, these are things IT depts. spend alot of time planning and testing to get right) without paying for professional support, however I think you are seeing the consequences of being able to make that choice, not directly the effect of using open source vs. closed source.

Firefox seems more tolerant of proxies than IE, I'm not sure of the exact differences in the codebase, however IE problems with various proxys are common and ongoing:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/proxy/iesummary.html

Did you try disabling the proxy?

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Bernard Boucher - Monday, 10 October 2005, 12:18 AM

Hi Ger,
sorry that your problem did not yet find a solution and that your old server is no more available sad

I think, but I am not sure, that if you downgrade your versions of apache-mysql and php at the same time with the same versions as your old server then the hundreds of defaults values of these 3 programs should be corrects with your old browser and the new Moodle 1.5.2+.

Michael and maybe some other offers should help you too.

Here are some examples of default settings that create intermittent IE bugs.

    Apache zlib
    http://www.etomite.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1921

    php umask
    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=157648

    Mysql
    http://status.birdhouse.org/index.php?p=41

    Martin recent example css and js with mod_gzip
    http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum83/547.htm

    Many others examples should be found.

For the social part of my post wink

all these don't imply Moodle and it is merely impossible for a Moodle developper to test all these issues when the code developped works well on his platform! Rounded corners are more a feature that a bug. If you find some working on IE then post the links or even better an example of a Moodle page modified to work with it and suggest to integrate these in future versions.

Again, if you give me some access to your site as student or teacher and to the logs of your server, then the analyse of the logs after some access and stress may help to go in the right direction to identify what is missing when pages are not rendered correctly.

I hope it may help and that you will pass soon from a bad lock to a good luck,

Bernard

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 10 October 2005, 3:49 AM

thank you, thank you, I will sent you access rights tomorrow by email.

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Bernard Boucher - Tuesday, 11 October 2005, 10:06 AM

Hi Ger,
just prelimary comments.

1 - Your database is newer that your code. Maybe you dowgraded, but I don't think it affect the display of IE.

2- After navigating with an old IE ( 5.00.3700.1000 ) everything are ok here. No page lost or jam.

3 - The poor window man stress program received in about 2min 45 seconds a request of 21 differents course/view.php of you site. Your logs indicate about 10 request by second. All pages seems received ok here at home.( dsl )

Tomorrow I will try it at work with different ip addresses and a faster access.

I think that Michael suggestion is gaining in probability with some sort of proxy/firewall effect somewhere on your side.

I hope it may help,

Bernard

p.s. Can you specify yours IE versions?

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Tuesday, 11 October 2005, 10:41 PM

Thanks for your time and effort!

It happens on all the computers at school and at home.

On my windows2000 I tested:

- IE 6.0.2800.1106 SP1 + several Q patches.

- Avant (mutitab) Browser version 10.1 build 30

- Firefox 107 NL

On a simple machine also IE 6.0.2800.1106 SP1 + several Q

we, the amateurs, are wondering: the config contains now a real IP adres, should that be localhost?
the server and the LDAP and the MySQL are in the same intranet: could a wrong proxy (as Penny said) make a difference for them?
latin-swedish in the database was explained by somebody else
it mostly happens with forms, for example when you insert Ü or é or é or ç . It is a pattern: first trial fails, next try sometimes works, but almost never the first trial..
Try a form, for example my personal profile (ger tielemans)

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Bernard Boucher - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 1:33 AM

Hi Ger,
few more comments.

4 - From works I lost messages( pages ) a couple of times when accessing your site. Maybe a busy period.

5 - Sometimes I got a warning on 4 screens out of 25 when accessing your site main page. The text of the warnings is:

Warning: unlink(/srv/www/htdocs/studiewijzer/secure-html/moodle/class/log/reported_errors.txt): No such file or directory in /srv/www/htdocs/studiewijzer/secure-html/moodle/class/framework-lite/system/errorhandler.class.php on line 140

Maybe that message will give some inspiration to someone!

6 - Admin access 25 times the main site page require 154 seconds ( I hope I did'nt overload your server )

7 - Displaying 25 differents courses is done quite fastly.

Your new precisions about the your config file raise this points:

8 - IP addresses: wich ones? your site or mysql, local host is completly different.
Can you elaborate a little bit more about theses and the changes done recently?
Can you email me your 2 config.php (old and new ones)?

9 - The form precison with special characters sets is interesting, next investigation.

I hope it may help,

Bernard

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 2:16 AM

This error is indeed a strange thing: The system seems to create everytime a new error log in class/log.. but makes it unwritable?

It never appends errors, so you have always the last three errors.

In the past I had mysql and apache on the same machine, now it is split..

I will send the configs.

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Justin Zandbergen - Tuesday, 18 October 2005, 4:06 PM

[NL] hey ger jij hier? [/NL}

The "unlink" error is i think caused by the following:

something can not be found by client A
client A opens a log file and is writing in it
something can not be found by client B
client B is writing in the same logfile as client A
client A and client B are ready with writing the log-file and client A closes it and deletes it
the file is closed and gone
client B tries to close the file but the file is gone.
Warning unlink error...... @ client B

but then i wonder why the file is being deleted....

well that is what i think... maybe any of you has an different idea?

thanks a lot,

back to work

cheers

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Justin Zandbergen - Tuesday, 18 October 2005, 4:21 PM

update: you can't see the warning anymore because i edited the /etc/php.ini

but it is still there.

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Bernard Boucher - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 9:57 AM

Hi Ger,
I tried to change my profile with éèçàçèé ...

Sometimes it fails with IE.

From your experience is there particulars fields that are more sensibles?
( all fields of a form are not validated with the same php code depending of the nature of the field. Maybe one validation is more sensitive with éèçàç stuff )

Also is there other forms that are sensible? And specify fields if possible.

I hope it may help,

Bernard

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Thursday, 13 October 2005, 3:49 AM

I am suprised that you say "somtimes it fails": as if longer distance (more internet nodes?) gives IE and the server more time to get the job finished...

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Bernard Boucher - Thursday, 13 October 2005, 10:38 AM

Hi Ger,
it is not clear if it is a time ( load ) problem. This morning I was able to change my profile about 20 times without problem. That evening I got 10 errors in line without success.

I decided to renew with an "old friend" Etherreal. When things go wrong then there are a lot of reset, Encrypted Alert and Dup Ack on the network. Sometime IE think ( I m not sure it is able to think ) that the protocol http is used instead of https and display a warning that some none encrypted data will be send to the server.

Here are 2 screens comparing a bad IE profile update with a good one.

More cogitation is required thoughtful

I hope it may help,

Bernard

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Question for Moodle experts: is this normal behavior?

by Ger Tielemans - Thursday, 13 October 2005, 6:27 PM

Our system seems to wait until in the directory /class/log the file reported_errors.txt is rewritten (Why not append?). It is as if more then one Moodle function has write access here: the properties are sometimes set to:

rw-r--r--

and other moments I see:

rw-rw-rw-

In between I see sometimes for seconds NO FILE and hangs the system...

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Re: Question for Moodle experts: is this normal behavior?

by Bernard Boucher - Thursday, 13 October 2005, 10:04 PM

Hi Ger,
if you check the link PHP umask of that post you will have an example of a similar problem.

I hope it may help,

Bernard

p.s. What is in you moodle/class directory? I don't have it here on standard installation.

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Re: Question for Moodle experts: is this normal behavior?

by Ger Tielemans - Saturday, 15 October 2005, 6:53 PM

I think/hope you found it: Class is introduced by the company that created our extensions for Moodle... well, well

...Nop, A clean install of 152-latest and 16-cvs show the same problem behavior

Monday I will pick it up with our admins, thanks

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Re: Question for Moodle experts: is this normal behavior?

by Bernard Boucher - Sunday, 16 October 2005, 2:47 AM

Hi Ger,
I think you have 3 indentified and unrelated problems in your site now:

1 - The php umask with your particular class directory.

2 - Maybe some database integrity : For example if you check that page :
https://studiewijzerplus.nl/mod/quiz/index.php?id=1045
and try to see the 46 attempts of the first quiz at : https://studiewijzerplus.nl/mod/quiz/report.php?q=1760 you see only one. Is it a new hack?

3 - Your IE intermittent submit problems and constant ethereal reported errors or retries ( not presents with firefox ) even when pages appears correctly:

Is it possible to access your old Moodle server to compare it sslvxxx traffic with the traffic sslv3 of your new server? Maybe some "tuning" of mod_ssl and mod_setenvif may help.

I hope it may help,

Bernard

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Martin Dougiamas - Friday, 7 October 2005, 10:58 AM

I think this may be only a problem in your location ... we fix IE bugs like this all the time.

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 10 October 2005, 5:28 PM

The question of the rounded corners for IE, solved by a user in the forum and solved by Mike for MoodleFN, long ago, is still open. Is that a difficult one?

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Julian Ridden - Tuesday, 11 October 2005, 1:42 PM

rounded corners is just a matter of theming, not moodle code. (unless I am mistaken)

We acheived rounded corners using css in our theme stylesheet. I would not see this as a moodle bug.

If I am wrong, let me know what you mean. We have rounded corners working in our IE moodle. Maybe I can assist.

We incorporated the code from this site into our theme and it works great on IE.

http://pro.html.it/articoli/id_599/idcat_31/pag_1/pag.html

Let me know if you need more help

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Tuesday, 11 October 2005, 10:43 PM

It is a blind spot in your eye if you say that your audiance is the whole world but only NON-IE-users are seeing this standard format corners. (took me two year

) Creating your own CSS is more difficult then it seems: ending up with hidden parts of pictures on the screen, colors in boxes that look like a color-shift-error of your printer: red is to much to the right etc..)

In these cases is cloning the standard format easier, and gives Moodle a more modern look. (managers ask for that, not more modules or blocks..)

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Julian Ridden - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 8:17 AM

Ger,

I am by no means saying IE is the only uer base. We are a mixed OS school with Macs and PC and tech savvy users using a mix of Firefox, IE, Safari and even a few good old Netscaep users.

It is due to this that our style sheets have to be carefully constructed to work across the board. My point earlier was that Moodle design is controlled through the CSS in the themes. I could not see how visual interface design could be listed as a bug (unless of course the core moodle theme shipped as default doesnt play ball)

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Michael Penney - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 10:45 AM

unless of course the core moodle theme shipped as default doesnt play ball

It doesn't play ball with Mac IE. Unfortunatly, OS 9 users don't have much option in browsers (Moz 1.3 works great but halfway breaks the HTML editor).

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 2:16 PM

One of the remarks of Martin against current (Full blown) Sakai and BB is that they need more and more a dedicated server with a trained staff: Full blown Moodle - not crippled Moodle - should work with inexeprienced staff on almost any server. ("Fresh Waters") At least the default settings should do..

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Michael Penney - Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 8:29 PM

It is never a good idea to have inexperienced staff run a server where important (e.g. mission criticial) applications or even web pages run.

Moodle can be run on inexpensive web hosts, many of whom do know what they are doing (but you have to shop around). Blackboard certainly can't be run on an inexpensive host, you need a server with a reasonably skilled administrator just to get started. Sakai looks like it will have higher staff requirements than Blackboard.

For 10,000 users, you are well beyond the level where you can use an inexpensive server and inexperienced staff, though. Sakai certainly seems like it will need more experienced staff to run than Moodle (and you will lose a number of features you are probably used to) while Blackboard (in our experience running both) requires a similar number of trained staff to Moodle...but costs much more for the license (and the worry of how their business model might change once your courses are entirely dependent on their system...which you rent, not buy).

Certainly a teacher with a decently skilled web host can run a few classes in a Moodle without spending too much time, however once you start running a number of courses with hundreds-1000s of users, it's about time to start treating the LMS as a mission critical application with a dedicated staffing budget (you may want to outsource set-up to a Partner or other experienced Moodler and then run the site with inexperienced staff). Initial server setup is generally the hardest part of the process, especially when you start getting into mission critical setups with multiple servers, proxys, etc.

It really seems to me that if you are running a large Moodle site that requires (and has a budget for) proxys, SANs, and multiple servers then you should also require and budget for skilled staffing (at least a budget enough to get experienced help when you need it).

You can be pretty sure that doing the same thing with Blackboard or Sakai would cost you quite a bit more

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Re: Moodle is up to date! I FOUND THE FIRST MOODLE PATTERN

by Ger Tielemans - Thursday, 13 October 2005, 3:47 AM

Small remark: staff is skilled and certified... but in other ICT sports

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