Backup and restore

After having flawless backup and restore for a full year, my 1.8.1 version suddenly froze up at the last leg of the procedures.

Thanks to George, I'm up and running, at least as far as backup is concerned.  The import function also functions but generates twenty or so small errors.  The restore function stilll hangs up.

I'm trying to make sense of the Spanish.

Aaron

After having flawless

So when the backup and restore functions ceased to work, I was surprised and than a bit alarmed.  Moodle has worked so flawlessly for the last year, that I had become rather complacent about its invulnerability.

My first thought was that the problem was created by our server in San Diego, so I gave them a phone call and asked a good dozen questions.  No, nothing changed on their end.

So, then I began taking a closer look at Google php files.  Moodle did generate a code error telling me that the problem was the following:

Notice

Thanks to my earlier work in programming, I knew very well what an "undefined variable" was but I didn't have a clue as to where "nonrestmod" gets its content and, more importantly, why (suddenly) after a full year of flawless operation, it suddenly failed to get its content.

So then I went to the discussion boards for Moodle.  Quite fascinating really!  Tens of thousands of users are recording their successes and failures, their improvements and their revisions to Moodle.  So I did a search for ver. 1.8 and "failure to backup."  This brought it down to ten posts.  It was comforting to know that others were experiencing exactly the same problem that I was.

After a few hours of altering small bits of code (always clearly recording what changes I made so that, if the whole thing crashes, I can always go back to an earlier working condition), thanks to the discussion of George M., I was up and running, at least as far as backup is concerned.  The import function also functions but generates twenty or so small errors.  The restore function still hangs up.

Some of the posts were in Spanish so I was stretching my feeble language abilities to make sense of it.  Then I thought of using the Google language translator.  Here is the first line of a post:

Bom.. o mesmo problema acontecia comigo e no meu caso foi observado o seguinte:  pós avaliar os fonts do site constatei o seguinte:

The translator (

Bom .. Comigo same problem or event and my case was not observed or Seguinte:
postoperative fonts do you evaluate the site or constatei Seguinte:

What?  This is barely intelligible.  Why isn't "comigo" (the verb, ending suggests first-person singular subject) being translated?  From context, I could guess that "sequinte" means "the following," yet it too is not translated.  Could it be that the Spanish user is using technical words that the Google translator is incapable of translating?  Maybe.  Yet, I wouldn't expect this to show up in the first line.  So maybe it's not Spanish.  So, I try Portugese and get this:

Good. The same problem happened to me and in my case was noted:
after assessing the site's fonts found the following:

Ah, much better.  So it is Portugese!  Here are the changes I made:

Found solution at

Original code in both places: } else if ($launch == "execute") {

Changes made:

line 125 (backup.php)
} else if ($launch == "execute" or $launch == "ute") {

Line 154 (restore.php)
} else if ($launch == "execute" or $launch == "ute") {

While exploring the php files, I came across this ominous note:

This directory contains my try to create a backup/recover
admin option to moodle. I don't know when and how it'll be
finished, but I'm going to try it, sure.

Some day, if this is fully functional, it could be integrated
into the main Moodle distribution (ask uncle Martin).  

Code here may not be tested - so there are no guarantees as
to the quality of the code in here, even if part of a stable
Moodle release.

So what is the upshot of all this?

1. The backup and restore functions that worked flawlessly for one year now demonstrate deep flaws (bugs).  Why?  I don't know. . . . and I don't have the time to find out.  [Help appreciated!]

2. I want to upgrade our current Moodle 1.8.1 to following the advice of the managing director of Moodle,

Each of the new releases contains long lists of minor bug fixes (see the ...

I note also that the 1.9 version has upgraded the grading system and the  teacher's grade book--features that are of no current interest to us.  Moreover, since this is my first upgrade and since I notice many posts regarding features that fail to work after an upgrade, I do not want to make the leap to 1.9 until maybe a year in the future.  So here is what I plan:

1. In the next two weeks, I'm going to upgrade our Moodle system to 1.8.6.

2. I will choose the date to fall on the day after our server in San Diego does its weekly system backup.  This will allow us to scrap the entire upgrade and to revert back to 1.8.1 just as we left it SHOULD SOMETHING DRASTIC GO WRONG.

3. I've also made a CD-rom copy of our entire Moodle system as it exists on my hard drive in my office.  Since I've made a half-dozen code changes that improve the system, this will allow me to recover any or all of these changes and to import them into the new php files that will be overwritten in the upgrade.

If you have any suggestions for me, they will be very welcome.

Thanks,

Aaron