Problem downloading data.

Problem downloading data.

by Ian Cousins -
Number of replies: 7

Hi,

I am running a Moodle 1.9.10 (Build 2010 1025) on a Linux server.

Can you tell me if there is a limit to the amount of questions you can have in a questionnaire.

I have one with 57 questons broken down as follows:

42 Radio Button
13 Check Box
2 Text Box

So far I have 193 respondants, whose data I can see when I view by responce or graphically when I review all responses, but when I try and download the data as a text file I continually get a server 500 error.

This site has 18 other questionnaires, all under 40 questions with upto 420 respondants, all of which I can download.

Any suggestions or recommendations how to resolve this download problem would be appreciated.

Kind regards,

Ian

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In reply to Ian Cousins

Re: Problem downloading data.

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
A 500 error doesn't really tell you anything useful and there's no point guessing. Turn on Debugging on your site and also check your web server error log. You should get more information about the problem.

It is possible that you are running out of memory building the output. What is memory_limit set to in your php.ini?
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Problem downloading data.

by Ian Cousins -

Thank you Howard for your quick response.

I am fairly new to Moodle so, please bear with me.

memory_limit

When I look at the PHP Info from within Moodle>Site Administration>Server>PHP Info there are two values for memory_limit these are as follows:

Local Value = 96M
Master Value = 20M

This Moodle is being hosted by an external provider and I am struggling to find the php.ini file, any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Debugging

I set Debugging to ALL and got a fairly unimportant result from the in-line data on the front page, which was:

Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$footer in /home/fhlinux221/c/domain.co.uk/user/htdocs/blocks/moodleblock.class.php on line 352

I ran the request to download the questionnaire data at exactly 11:51, when I got the Server 500 error there was no change in the in-line debugging data, I then looked at the server log and the error log I got the following:

Server Log

domain.co.uk: [20/Mar/2012:11:51:33 +0000] ***.***.***.**- - "GET /mod/questionnaire/report.php?instance=2&user=&sid=2&action=dcsv&choicecodes=1&choicetext=1&submit=Download HTTP/1.1" 500 548 "http:// domain.co.uk/mod/questionnaire/report.php?instance=2&sid=2&action=dwnpg&currentgroupid=-1" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; OfficeLiveConnector.1.3; OfficeLivePatch.1.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)"

Error Log

[Tue Mar 20 11:51:33 2012] [error] [client ***.***.***.**] FastCGI: comm with (dynamic) server "/var/www/fcgi/php-cgi" aborted: (first read) idle timeout (30 sec)
[Tue Mar 20 11:51:33 2012] [error] [client ***.***.***.**] FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server "/var/www/fcgi/php-cgi"
[Tue Mar 20 11:51:38 2012] [error] [client ***.***.***.**] FastCGI: server "/var/www/fcgi/php-cgi" stderr: PHP Notice:  Undefined property: stdClass::$footer in /home/fhlinux221/c/domain.co.uk/user/htdocs/blocks/moodleblock.class.php on line 352

Any further suggestions would be much appreciated.

Kind regards

Ian

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In reply to Ian Cousins

Re: Problem downloading data.

by Aled Williams -

Also, see here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=78778

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In reply to Aled Williams

Re: Problem downloading data.

by Ian Cousins -

Thanks for your response, Aled,

I have been on to my hosting provider who is unwilling to alter the "max_execution_time" as I am on a shared server and they feel it would be a security risk to make any changes to the php.ini file as this would affect everyone on that shared server.

Any other advice on how to resolve this problem would be great.

Thanks,

Ian

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In reply to Ian Cousins

Re: Problem downloading data.

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

@Ian,

From your later posts it looks like you are having a timeout on your server. Unfortunately on shared servers you cannot change the timeout limits set by our host. That is the limit of cheaper, shared servers.

On the other hand, the fact that you cannot download that particular "42 radio buttons" questionnaire responses whilst you can download responses to other questionnaires with 40 questions on your site is strange.

There is certainly no limit to the number of questions you can have in a questionnaire but the more questions there are - and the more respondents - does strain your server's database queries. I am only guessing here, but it might be that one of your questions contains (somewhere in its text or in the "possible answers") some coded character or a sequence which your server does not like. In order to experiment with that questionnaire and its responses, you could EXPORT it (backup course with only the questionnaire and students) and IMPORT it (restore) either to a special "test course" on your moodle site or on a local moodle site, and see if you are still getting the problem, and then experiment with deleting some responses or/and some questions, until the timeout error disappears.

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Problem downloading data.

by Ian Cousins -

Thanks, Joseph,

I'll give that a try.

Regards,

Ian

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In reply to Ian Cousins

Re: Problem downloading data.

by Ian Cousins -

Hi Joseph,

Quite some time ago you advised on this issue and it has taken to now for the issue to become serious enough for me to need a resolution.

I have tried your suggestions, asked the service provider to increase the time-out but they hare having none of it, I have tried backing up the course with just the one questionnaire data selected, it is also timing out, I have been able to export the sql files for the 14, is it, questionnaire tables but I don't know what to do with them to interrogate them.

Your advice on this matter would be much appreciated.

If you wish to contact me off list then ian@imagenmedia.co.uk is the best address.

Regards,

Ian

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