Amazon Cloud services install

Amazon Cloud services install

by Brian Lockwood -
Number of replies: 2

I have documented the EC2 installation that was problemetiic for someone the other day. The docs are here

http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Amazon_EC2_Cloud_Services_Installation

Any suggestions for improvment, testing or just improvements would be useful.

Brian L 

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In reply to Brian Lockwood

Re: Amazon Cloud services install

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi Brian

Very useful, specially considering that there is a free service.
smile

Here are some random observations from the ground level.
wink

- Generally I try to mark various command-line environments by using different prompts.
For example # for shell as root, $ for the shell as a non-privileged user, mysql> for the
MySQL client.

- Is this server sudo based? Depending on that mention "$ sudo -s" or "$ su -".

- Your instructions are valid for all the maintained Moodle versions, I guess. May be
you can indicate that by using the URL http://docs.moodle.org/en/Amazon_EC2_Cloud_Services_Installation, i.e. without /22/. It'll jump to /22/ any way,
you can't do anything about that. May be you can mention that it is valid for all
maintained versions.

- Your git command will fetch the latest Moodle version. May be you can link to http://docs.moodle.org/en/CVS_for_Administrators on how to get all version. In that case
don't forget in install cvs at the beginning.

- "The assumptions are that you have an Amazon 32 bit EC2 Linux server setup and you have ssh & http access to it."
It would be nice if that part too is on the same page.

- Are you sure that ./moodle need to be writable by the web-server?

- About zip.so: If php-common does not provide it, can't you fetch it via yum. Maintaining
it withing moodle.org makes the doc less robust.
BTW, there is a typo zip.zo in place of zip.so.

P.S. The right forum for this discussion is the "Moodle documentaion" forum http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=5838 I believe.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Amazon Cloud services install

by Brian Lockwood -
 
Thanks for your observations.

- Generally I try to mark various command-line environments by using different prompts. 
For example # for shell as root, $ for the shell as a non-privileged user, mysql> for the
MySQL client.
I find that users at the level I am talking about are a likely to think that the symbol is part of the command. 

- Is this server sudo based? Depending on that mention "$ sudo -s" or "$ su -".
No, it is key-pair based and you do not use su-  etc . There is good documentation in EC2 on these issues and I wanted to keep the docs clean and about Moodle, not authentication, but I could link I guess or at least flag the issue.

- Your instructions are valid for all the maintained Moodle versions, I guess. May be
you can indicate that by using the URL http://docs.moodle.org/en/Amazon_EC2_Cloud_Services_Installation, i.e. without /22/. It'll jump to /22/ any way,
you can't do anything about that. May be you can mention that it is valid for all
maintained versions.
I did not think about that. I am not a regular wikiwiz on Moodle docs. I think I did one of the original ubuntu installation docs and this one.
 
To add to that point in generak, as there are a multitude of cloud services I can see this documentation drifting away from standard linux installs.

- Your git command will fetch the latest Moodle version. May be you can link to http://docs.moodle.org/en/CVS_for_Administrators on how to get all version. In that case
don't forget in install cvs at the beginning.
Uploading to the file system on this thing is not trivial, I found that even wget would not work easily, consequently I though a straightforward git would be the simplest way to get a working version.
Dut to the limitations of this free service, I advise (in the docs I think) against using the free version for a working, scaleable moodle
 
- "The assumptions are that you have an Amazon 32 bit EC2 Linux server setup and you have ssh & http access to it."
It would be nice if that part too is on the same page.
 
Maybe I will do that later. Anyone with an EC2 is free to add it themselves to the wiki. 
 
- Are you sure that ./moodle need to be writable by the web-server?
No, but does it do any harm? would you use chmod and leave root as the owner? Perhaps you could link to the docs on that issue?

- About zip.so: If php-common does not provide it, can't you fetch it via yum. Maintaining
it withing moodle.org makes the doc less robust.
 
True and I have reported the zip.so issue on the EC2 forum, I think the package is broken and so if you try to use yum at the moment you get "Nothing to do" as yum thinks zip.so is already in, which it isn't (anywhere in /!) This was a response to that problem as reported in this forum.
 
BTW, there is a typo zip.zo in place of zip.so.
I will fix that, thanks. 

P.S. The right forum for this discussion is the "Moodle documentaion" forum http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=5838 I believe.
I only did it as a response to a problem reported in this forum. I had not used cloud svcs for Moodle before. 
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