Moodle & Netware 6.5

Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Simon Coxson -
Number of replies: 22

Hello All

We are in the process of moving moodle from a Windows Server (currently running on a workstation PC) to a Netware 6.5 server

We are having trouble with the following (being somewhat newb's at this tongueout ):

1. Installation of the gd library. We have downloaded the librarys from the Novell site for php, but their is not any documentation on getting this going, even a google search didn't come up with any worthy results.

2. Moodle is kept on the sys: volume (becasue of Apache), but we want to store the data on the data: volume but the moodle installation will not allow us. We have tried the following, but to no avail mixed

  • DATA:\moodledata
  • \\MOODLE\DATA:\moodledata
  • MOODLE_DATA:\moodledata

Can anyone possibly help at all?

We are using Novell Netware 6.5 (no SP2 - yet!)

Simon, Taunton's College

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Simon Coxson

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Ian Meaton -
Simon,

I have just installed moodle on an oes nw server as we will be deploying moodle soon.
This is the settings that moodle has set for here

$CFG->wwwroot = 'http://192.168.1.xxx/moodle';
$CFG->dirroot = 'VOL1:/vle/moodle';
$CFG->dataroot = 'VOL1:\vle/moodledata';

Hope this helps for the syntax.

You can setup another instance of apache on the data volume.  This is what I am testing at present to see if moodle/php/apache will fail over.

IanM

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ian Meaton

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Peter West -

Hi Ian

Just a quick question, but does your unzipping work with it set up like that : I get path creation fail errors.

Mich

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Peter West

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Ian Meaton -
Not tried unzipping yet.

Though when I got php 5 working moodle insisted that the folders were changed to the following

$CFG->wwwroot   = 'http://192.168.1.xxx/moodle';
$CFG->dirroot   = 'VOL1:\\vle\\moodle';
$CFG->dataroot  = 'VOL1:\vle/moodledata';

IanM
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Simon Coxson

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Harald Sander -

Hello,

We are also working to get moodle working on a NW 6.5. But the gd and zlib library is not working as we expected.

Has anyone finsihed a  installation which running (with gd an zlib working fine) on NW 6.5 ?

We are looking for tips!

Harald

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Harald Sander

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Simon Coxson -

Thank you for that Ian, I will give it a go.

As for adding php_gd and php_zlib libraries, I have tried what it says under Novell Documentation:

I opened the php.ini file and under Netware Extenstions I added:

  • extension=php_zlib.nlm

I also added to the autoexec.ncf file before it loads the apache web server:

search add sys:/php/ext

I restarted the server so it will pick up the new settings. I checked to see if the libraries were loaded, but it failed to load the php_gd.nlm, but loaded the php_zlib.nlm file - blah!

Any help would be appreciated

Simon

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Harald Sander

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Peter West -

Hi Harald

Ive never had a problem running gd on NW 6.5. My the Zlib library loads fine, but i get path creation fail errors when i unzip !! Typical

If you tell me wher you are with the gd library - Ill give you a hand with that.

Might be worth downloading the latest 4.3.10 php

Try this  address

http://www.gknw.com/php/dev/?D=A

It includes the gd and zlib in the download ( and actually guenthers phps are normally better than the straight novell ones anyway)

Pete

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Peter West

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Harald Sander -

Hello!

At the first look the gd_lib seems to work fine, but  when a  jpg is uploaded only a black jpg is being saved and on the side the missing picture link occurs.

Harald

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Harald Sander

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Ian Meaton -
Harold,
We are getting the similar results here, gd works fine with other php scripts it loads and checks out ok, but in moodle we just get the red x where the images should be.

IanM
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ian Meaton

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
On  Admin >> Configure >> Variables try manually changing the GD version to version 1 or version 2 and see it that helps ..

What does your Admin >> PHP Info page say about GD?
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Ian Meaton -
We have found the problem on our server, it was the slasharguments that was wrong, changing it to the .php?file option fixed gd and the documents link.

IanM
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ian Meaton

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Peter West -

Has anyone solved the Zlib problem = path creation fail ?

Pete

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Peter West

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Ian Meaton -
I haven't yet.  zips are created by moodle by they are always corrupt.
Our server is working using apache 2.0.52 and php 4.2.4, I will try 4.3.x soon too see if that brings any success.

I was wondering if there was a way to backup with the compression switched off, we have ample space available on the system. (note I am the netware guy here and don't do a lot of work with the inner workings of moodle.)

IanM
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ian Meaton

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Peter West -

Hi Ian

Not that I know of - not from within moodle, but you can always use myysqldump and back up the data directory independently.

I can zip / backup without any problems, it the unzipping  that I can do !! The archives it creates are valid and can be unzipped outside Moodle. 

Pete

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Peter West

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Rudy Scott -

Hi Pete,

Have you had any luck with this [path creation failure error in moodle with zlib on Novell]?  I'm facing the same problem.

Thanks!

--Rudy

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Rudy Scott

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Carlos Ruiz -

After digging and digging into the php scripts (painfully, 'cause I don't know php scripting) I found the solution!!!

In pclzip.lib.php look for line 2760 (aprox, I've changed the code a bit), string:

I suppose it would be better change the line codes for the conditions i order to they support Netware, but for now it is faster.
I can't get Scorm work yet. If anyone runs scorm in his Netware please let me know.
Regards
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Carlos Ruiz

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Daniel Stockwell -

Great, that worked a charm!

I now have moodle 1.53+ running on a test Novell 6.5 SP3 server using apache 2, PHP 4 and all the nlms that one has to poke into the mix! After getting the zlib nlm's from Novell I was suffering the same corruption errors as everyone else when restoring zip backups. Commenting out that line in pclzip.lib.php solved the problem in one fell swoop. all I would say is to manually search for the string in the PHP file, it may vary on different versions, for me it was on line 28xx, just a little further down than you obviously found. Only one instance was in the file so there was no doubt what to edit.

many thanks again, isnt this a good collection of knowledge, coming together to solve each others problems smile

Daniel Stockwell
Network Technician
Central Sussex College

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ian Meaton

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Dang Truong -

Hello Ian,

  How do you change slasharguments? and where is "slasharguments"? is it in php.ini?

Thanks

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Peter West

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Stuart Holtby -
Hi,
 
I am struggling with a installation that requires php_gd (Moodle.org) and I'm having trouble installing the extension (PHP/Moodle and all else works great) the error.log in the PHP5 directory has the following:
Unable to load dynamic library 'sys:/php5/ext\php_gd.nlm' - (dlfcn) Unknown error in Unknown on line 0

The Netware OES (Netware 6.5 latest and greatest) server that it's running on throws an exception:

Module PHP_GD.NLM cannot be loaded until PHPLIB is loaded

Any thoughts on where you get the PHPLIB or what steps are required to fix?
 
Much appreciated....

Stuart
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stuart Holtby

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by John Sovitsky -

I am experiencing the same issues. Have you made any progress?

John Sovitsky

Stafford County Public Schools

jsovitsky@staffordschools.net

Average of ratings: -
In reply to John Sovitsky

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by Stuart Holtby -

I opened a support call with Novell.  They acknowledge the issue... the support tech assigned is going to "MAKE" a new php_gd.nlm that calls the correct library - i.e. recompile the source to reference the correct php5lib.nlm

I hope to hear back from him soon.

Stuart Holtby

Allstar Technologies Canada

sholtby@allstartech.com

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stuart Holtby

Re: Moodle & Netware 6.5

by John Sovitsky -
Hello all,

I am a new 'Moodler' and am installing a new "Moodle" server for our county schools. I have noticed that very little open source help is available for our platform. All sorts of ???nix and windoze tips, but precious few for our Netware implementation. I'd greatly apperciate any pointers to resources I might have overlooked in my searches.

I have a server dedicated for the test and have installed:

NW6.5 (OES) SP3 (overlay install)
  This server is located in the DMZ of our WAN. It also exists in its own tree at this time. We are still not sure if this will cause any issues later.

NAMP  consisting of:
  NW6.5 (OES) SP3 (overlay install)
  (This server is located in the DMZ of our WAN. It also exists in its own tree at this time. We are still not sure if this will cause any issues later.)

   Apache 2.0.52 (NetWare) mod_jk /1.2.6a
   PHP 5.0.3
   MySQL 4.0.22a

Moodle - 1.4.4 (last stable release)

My main difficulties so far consist of (but are not entirely limited to):
 - gd support (Mr. Holtby has stated that he is awaiting delivery of the compiled module from Novell at this time)
 - the desire to host all Moodle services & databases on another volume (DATAsmile
   (How does one tell MySQL that the data is elsewhere)
 - whether I can authenticate against my existing users in the tree on the other side of our inner firewall.  Any LDAP  guru out there is welcome to make suggestions (of a technical nature, please)

I am new to MySQL and PHP and have only very limited Apache experience.

Thanx,

John Sovitsky

Average of ratings: -