Moodle community sites

Hi Don
I had to do something very similar. Here is my solution. Please note that this is a quick trick which worked for my setup. Think of it as a documentation of the necessary steps. DON'T just repeat them, you'll find your site wiped out!

Starting point

There is an active Moodle instance with the following config.php in my server (the values in capitol letters are withheld for you to substitute):

<?php
unset($CFG);
$CFG->dbtype = 'mysql';
$CFG->dbhost = 'localhost';
$CFG->dbname = 'MDLDB';
$CFG->dbuser = 'MDLUSER';
$CFG->dbpass = 'SECRET';
$CFG->dbpersist = false;
$CFG->prefix = 'mdl_';
$CFG->wwwroot = 'http://MY.SITE';
$CFG->dirroot = '/PATH/TO/MOODLE';
$CFG->dataroot = '/PATH/TO/MOODLEDATA';
$CFG->admin = 'admin';
$CFG->directorypermissions = 00777;
require_once("$CFG->dirroot/lib/setup.php");
?>

The idea

To duplicate this Moodle instance by command. The new one comes up as http://MY.SITE/copy/ If that is already there, it will be overwritten.

What is needed

a) The following commands put together as a shell script:

rm -rf /PATH/TO/MOODLECOPY
cp -ra /PATH/TO/MOODLE /PATH/TO/MOODLECOPY
rm -rf /PATH/TO/MOODLEDATACOPY
cp -ra /PATH/TO/MOODLEDATA /PATH/TO/MOODLEDATACOPY
cp -a /PATH/TO/config.php /PATH/TO/MOODLECOPY
rm /PATH/TO/MOODLEDATA/sessions/*
/PATH/TO/mysqldump --databases MDLDB --user=MDLUSER --password=SECRET > mysqldump.sql
/PATH/TO/patch mysqldump.sql mysqldump.diff
/PATH/TO/mysql -u MDLUSER -pSECRET < mysqldump.sql

b) The config.php for the copy. These lines differ from the orignal:

$CFG->dbname = 'MDLDBCOPY';
$CFG->wwwroot = 'http://MY.SITE/copy';
$CFG->dirroot = '/PATH/TO/MOODLECOPY';
$CFG->dataroot = '/PATH/TO/MOODLEDATACOPY';

c) The mysql.diff I've generated by manually editing a copy of the mysqldump.sql I got above and running "diff mysqldump.sql mysqldumpnew.sql > mysqldump.diff". It looks like:

19c19
< -- Current Database: `MDLDB`
---
> -- Current Database: `MDLDBCOPY`
22c22,23
< CREATE DATABASE /*!32312 IF NOT EXISTS*/ `MDLDB` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 */;
---
> DROP DATABASE /*!32312 IF EXISTS*/ `MDLDBCOPY`;
> CREATE DATABASE `MDLDBCOPY` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 */;
24c25
< USE `MDLDB`;
---
> USE `MDLDBCOPY`;

d) Apache configured so that http://MY.SITE points to /PATH/TO/MOODLE and http://MY.SITE/copy points to /PATH/TO/MOODLECOPY. For example

...
DocumentRoot /PATH/TO/MOODLE
...
Alias /copy/ "/PATH/TP/MOODLECOPY/"

Just run the shell script in a) keeping b) and c) in the current directory.