Hi,
My Moodle installation is on vesion 1.9.2, running on Debian Linux.
I've been asked to both move the Operating System to RedHat Linux, and upgrade Moodle to 2.2.
My plan would be to get a new server, put the new OS on it, then install Moodle 1.9.2 on it and copy the database across from the old server. I could then run an upgrade to move the Moodle installation up to version 2.2. Would this make sense?
If not, I'm wondering if it would be easier/possible to just backup the course tables from the old server and restore them into a new installation at a different version level?
Has anybody anyt thoughts/experience with this?
Thanks,
David
Think your 'Plan A' is best. One can tar ball the moodle code directory, the moodle data directory. Do a mysqldump of the database. Then one can scp them (the tar ball and the sql file) to the new server.
Apache user/group will change so that's one thing you'll have to adjust. On RHEL apache is user and apache is group on standard installs.
Import the SQL dump ... version of MySQL on old server might be different than on RHEL box so simply copying DB files may not work.
After you've checked functionality and assured that all is working as it did before, then work on the second part ... migrating to 2.
Once assured, tar ball and sql dump for backup purposes and a fall back position should you have issues.
Highly recommend upgrading the 1.9.2 to the highest 1.9.x first if migrating the site. Run tar ball/sql dumps again for fall back position 2.
Also suggest migrating a copy of the functioning 1.9.highest site.
One item concerning RHEL ... if RedHat partitions the drive(s) for you make sure you don't short change /var - that's where the Moodle version 2 DB's will live.
Good time to research installing via git ... it will make upgrades sooooo much easier than any other method.
'spirit of sharing', Ken
Thanks a lot for your comment, Ken - it was very helpful.
David - I have a few "prep" suggestions for this.
I'd recommend that after you setup this new server, that you do a test install of a moodle 2.2 system. That way you will ensure your new server has all the libraries and such. I like my database configured with innodb and having separate files for each table.
I'd also suggest you ask the "person who asked you", if they have used moodle 2.2 yet, whereas moodle 2.2 is a great upgrade, it is quite a bit different in some ways.
The next thing you could do, is install a vanilla/fresh install of moodle 1.9.17, add a course, add some content, then do a test upgrade of moodle 2.2 on that instance.
This will give you plenty of experience in the logistics, so that when you start working with the real data, you've already gone through the basics.
Of course you should read thoroughly the upgrading and installation guides for moodle 2.x.
Steve
here are the yum commands I run to get the needed php libraries and such -
yum install mysql mysql-server httpd php php-gd php-xmlrpc
yum install php-mysql php-dom php-intl php-mbstring
yum install php-soap
yum install openssl
yum install mod_nss
yum install mod_ssl
~
Hi
I'm of the same opinion as Ken and Steve. Just some elaborations:
You wrote:
> My Moodle installation is on vesion 1.9.2, running on Debian Linux.
>
> I've been asked to both move the Operating System to RedHat Linux,
Though both are Linux, the shift is still a "migration", migrating from one server to another. See http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Moodle_migration.
Just a caution on RedHat: If you're not familiar with selinux, deactivate it!
> My plan would be to get a new server, put the new OS on it, then install Moodle 1.9.2 on it and copy the database across from the old server.
I would strictly follow http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Moodle_migration#Migrating_a_complete_Moodle_site_-_method_1 which says, "Copy the Moodle software. You will need to copy the Moodle code itself to the new server ...".
> and upgrade Moodle to 2.2.
As Steve has explained, test Moodle 2 first. From a system administration point of view, don't do two things at once: don't migrate and upgrade in one go.
More important than the move to 2.x is the upgrade to 1.9.latest which is quite safe and necessary due to better performance and security. See http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_1.9.
I'm of the same opinion as Ken and Steve. Just some elaborations:
You wrote:
> My Moodle installation is on vesion 1.9.2, running on Debian Linux.
>
> I've been asked to both move the Operating System to RedHat Linux,
Though both are Linux, the shift is still a "migration", migrating from one server to another. See http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Moodle_migration.
Just a caution on RedHat: If you're not familiar with selinux, deactivate it!
> My plan would be to get a new server, put the new OS on it, then install Moodle 1.9.2 on it and copy the database across from the old server.
I would strictly follow http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Moodle_migration#Migrating_a_complete_Moodle_site_-_method_1 which says, "Copy the Moodle software. You will need to copy the Moodle code itself to the new server ...".
> and upgrade Moodle to 2.2.
As Steve has explained, test Moodle 2 first. From a system administration point of view, don't do two things at once: don't migrate and upgrade in one go.
More important than the move to 2.x is the upgrade to 1.9.latest which is quite safe and necessary due to better performance and security. See http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_1.9.