Backup and restore

Hello

I am also having this problem restoring old backups from various versions of Moodle to 1.9.4. Exactly the same symptoms.

If anyone monitors this thread I can provide access to the site in question.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Richard Jones

Thanks Glenys. Do you mean that you do a backup with all user data, but then do the restore without the user data for forums?

I just tried doing the backup with user data except for the forums and the restore balked again at creating course modules: "Could not restore modules!". Alas.

Guess I'll try some different combinations of data included and see if I have any success. It *is* encouraging to know that you got a restore to work to completion, even if it's not exactly as you'd hoped.

Anyone else with any clues?

Thanks much!
Pauline

Hi Glenys,

I think we have the same backup forum issue here... i recentrly tried to restore a backup from a older version (moodle 1.8.4) to the moodle 195, but unfortunatelly for my surprise there's this message "could not restore modules"...

here's the trick:

go to your older moodle version and open this file:

MOODLE_FOLDER/backup/restorelib.php

and look for this function :

-----------------------------------------------------

//This function creates all the structures for every module in backup file
//Depending what has been selected.
function restore_create_modules($restore,$xml_file) {

global $CFG;
$status = true;
//Check it exists
if (!file_exists($xml_file)) {
$status = false;
}
//Get info from xml
if ($status) {
//info will contain the id and modtype of every module
//in backup_ids->info will be the real info (serialized)
$info = restore_read_xml_modules($restore,$xml_file);
}
//Now, if we have anything in info, we have to restore that mods
//from backup_ids (calling every mod restore function)
if ($info) {
if ($info !== true) {
if (!defined('RESTORE_SILENTLY')) {
echo '<ul>';
}
//Iterate over each module
foreach ($info as $mod) {
if (empty($restore->mods[$mod->modtype]->granular) // We don't care about per instance, i.e. restore all instances.
|| (array_key_exists($mod->id,$restore->mods[$mod->modtype]->instances)
&& !empty($restore->mods[$mod->modtype]->instances[$mod->id]->restore))) {
$modrestore = $mod->modtype."_restore_mods";
if (function_exists($modrestore)) { //Debug
$status = $status and $modrestore($mod,$restore); //bit operator & not reliable here!
} else {
//Something was wrong. Function should exist.
$status = false;
}
}
}
if (!defined('RESTORE_SILENTLY')) {
echo '</ul>';
}
}
} else {
$status = false;
}
return $status;
}

-----------------------------------------------------

okay, now you find the function, you're gonna look for your newer moodle version and replace it !

remember after restore your backup, return to the original function.

Hi Howard,

I had debugging on "ALL", will now change to "DEVELOPER" and run through a restore again. Be right back...

It would be fantastic if you try with the backup file I have, thank you! I'll find a place to put the backup file and let you know via email, OK?


Thanks!
Pauline

OK, here's another save of the errors shown. It looks like maybe it's not finding an image file. I'm going to try another restore with the experimental split restore enabled too. Will attach that to a separate post.

And here's the debugging from a restore done with experimental split enabled. There are 3 html files in a zip archive.

Thanks again!
Pauline

Well.... this all depends on the problem....

* Did it fail because the field should not have been "not null"?
* Did it fail because the code should not have been writing a null to that field?


I have no idea........ let's just hope you backed the right horse as it where

Ok.... I had a look at the backup file you sent me.

Fundamentally, the problem was with the backup part of the process not the restore. This has happened because there (almost certainly) where NULLs in the database field 'reference' in mdl_resource. I would want to check if that was a possibility.

I had a quick look at the db code and it doesn't look like anything has changed in those definitions for years (the oldest site I have is 1.6 and that is still 'not null'). So if it turns out, in the source Moodle, that you have NULLs in that field you have a kind of low-level data corruption. If your Moodle site has been upgraded a few times this is quite a common occurrence (due to inconsistencies in the db upgrade code).

Without doing some more digging that field's contents are dependent on what resource type it is. If a file link it will have the file reference otherwise it contains a number (always an empty string for me for 'html' resource types) but I don't remember what that means.

EDIT:
Just checking.... is the 1.9.3 install using MySQL?