Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Richard van Iwaarden -
Number of replies: 16
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

We also experience these problems. Teacher are having great difficulty editing courses. We are now trying to get everyone to use Google Chrome instead of IE8, which helps a bit but still...

We have an additional problem - teachers have a great amount of courses. The pages take forever to load.

We are not able to revert back tot 2.2. Is there any way we can speed up things?

Split from the discussion http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=211983.
(Edited by Visvanath Ratnaweera - original submission Tuesday, 25 September 2012, 1:58 PM)

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

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

Since you say there is no return, you must go through the pointers given in the introduction to this forum and list your options first.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Richard van Iwaarden -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Hi Visvanath,

 Sorry for not following correct procedure. I have read the 'performance improvement tips' but they all concentrate on the serverside of things.

Our problems are clientside. We have a lot of Dell D830 laptops in our organisation (around 100). They have always been able to work with Moodle 1.9.

They do not work with Moodle 2.3. The teacher can browse through Moodle, but if they start editing a course they get stuck. We are now trying to fix this with Google Chrome. The combination Windows Xp and IE8 stops working.

We had not expected the Moodle 1.9->2.3 upgrade to be so expensive. Do we really need to buy 100 new laptops?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

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

No problem. It often happens that you get the same symptoms for different reasons.

I am not aware of this client side limitation. http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Installing_Moodle#Software says, "Minimum browser for accessing Moodle: Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 8, Safari 5, Google Chrome 11, Opera 9".

The experts on this are in the "Themes" forum: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=46. You can place a reminder there pointing to this discussion or, alternatively, move this discussion there. Just send me a message.

About those 100 Dell D830 laptops rotting in Windows XP, give them a new life with Linux. You can clean their disks using FAI http://fai-project.org/ or even let the HDs rot by running the system in an LTSP http://www.ltsp.org/ server.
;-D
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Richard van Iwaarden -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

It's not in themes... even if we set it to 'base' we have problems with Windows XP and IE8.

Linux is not an option.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

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

You wrote:
> ... even if we set it to 'base' we have problems with Windows XP and IE8.
>
> Linux is not an option.

What are your options?

If dumping 100 good laptops is one of them, at least donate them. There are people who know how to revive them and, as an added bonus, you'll be happy that the sea level doesn't rise too fast.
sad
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Derek Chirnside -

To clarify:

The Dells: doesn't work with them, but what about other machines?  Say a desk top somewhere with Win 7?  Do they have the same problem?

-Derek

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Richard van Iwaarden -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

We have many laptops, not many desktops. School stuff is all Dell.

The laptops are D830 or D530 which have the most problems. Switching to Linux is not an option.

Most students come with their own new laptops, Moodle works OK on these laptops. But students don't press the 'turn edit on' button.

As far as I can see now, it's the 3-4 year old PC's running Windows XP and IE8 that are unable to edit courses. If we install Google Chrome they work better, but still not perfect.

If we take a D830 laptop and we install Windows 8 and IE 10 on it, it runs far better.

However, Moodle is not the only thing we run. That's why Windows 8 and Linux are not yet options. An upgrade to Windows 7 would help, but we have about 5-6 schools and about 300-400 computers. It's not an easy task. Also the tech guys are not so happy if Moodle pushes them to Windows 7 without further testing what the consequences will be for all other educational software they are running on these machines.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Microsoft Mainstream support for Windows XP finished three years ago.  Extended support is due to finish in about two years. You need to seriously consider upgrading. How much RAM do these older machines have?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Richard van Iwaarden -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

I agree we need upgrading. I think some of the laptops have 1 gb of memory.

As stated earlier, if you put Windows 8 and IE 10 on the same machines they seem to run fine.

It's just hard to sell to the schools that they need to spend a considerable amount of money to keep using Moodle. I'm a bit dissapointed that Moodle is the application that first strikes the limit of these machines, considering Moodle is a webapplication that needs no local installing.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

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

Are you 100% sure that this is a client side problem, in the particular combination of hardware, Windows XP and IE 8? Where is the proof?

After going through the discussion again, it is not clear to me what the problem is. You said initially, the pages take forever to load after moving from 2.2 to 2.3. Then later said, students don't press the "Edit this course" button. Can you present two cases, one where all is smooth and one where the pages taking forever.


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

If you are running machines with XP and 1GB of RAM moodle will not be the only application that will appear to be running very slowly indeed.

From what you have said it looks like the main issue is with teachers editing content, so that implies an upgrade to teachers machines would be a low cost option. You could start by testing an XP machine with 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB, as that can offer a noticable performance benefit  at low cost and is easier than installing a new OS. 

Moodle is not officially used at all where I work (oddly)  and we have many laptops with XP and 1 or 2GB of RAM. Using them gives me such a feeling  of heavy sedation that I have a £200, netbook of my own I bring in as an alternative to those machines.

If you want to PM me a teacher account I could access your system with one of our XP machines and give you some feedback.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by E. L. Cooper -

I have to agree with older low access CPUs creating an issue for the end user. Our office manager had to return her less than a year old win7 4 gig ram laptop for warrenty repair so I shipped her one of my "just in case" old XP machines. Most of what she does in moodle is insert student ID numbers in the profiles and typo fixes when she has time.

2 gig of ram, xp was what I sent- the entire time she was using it her affective abiltys dropped to almost nothing in moodle. The machine was fine with office- general surfing, creating labels in the US Postal system etc. She called me 3 days in a row certain our system had something wrong. She’d reboot, get a couple of things done and crawl again.

A few weeks later when her laptop was back I made the round trip to pickup the older desktop. Side by side same connection- that PC and my 6 month old Qosmio fresh start turn editing on page load time

Qosmio less than a second

Old system about 5 seconds

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Richard van Iwaarden

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Justin Hunt -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

There are definitely ways to speed up Moodle. It does sound like a javascript problem with the old browser, but I would be open to the possibility that it is a server side issue too. We had meltdown levels of slowness when we went from 1.9 to 2.x. It was embarassing (having championed the move). But after lots of tweaking and testing it is back to acceptable.


Are any pages/activities are slower? Is the problem exacerbated when many users are accessing the system simultaneously? Have you eliminated the possibility of a rogue plugin with some bad javascript being the culprit? Why not head over to the demo site on my server currently running Moodle 2.3.2+ .
http://www.demo.poodll.com
It gets reset nightly, so you can mess with it a little. Log in as admin there, credentials are on the top page, do you still get the problem?

How about if you go into site administration -> appearance -> ajax and javascript and turn off ajax. Does that help? That was the big javascript related change in 2.3
Justin

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Justin Hunt

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

by Justin Hunt -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I meant to say, that "drag and drop upload" was the big javascript related change in 2.3. Turning off ajax and javascript disables it.

If the problem is most apparant in edit mode, and did not appear until you moved from 2.2 to 2.3, it would be a likely candidate as the source of the problem, I'd say.

 

Justin

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Justin Hunt

Re: Further slowdown and incompatability in move from 2.2. to 2.3

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

Good point. I was not convinced that this is a client side issue, Dell D830 is not junk! But as you say, the combination of (poorly maintained) Windows XP, IE 8 and the new JavaScript based bells and whistles in Moodle 2.3 could make those laptops unusable.

Some history for those who are interested:
- "2.3 - Is that Big Arrow here to stay?" http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=204763
- "Edit area becoming unresponsive (Moodle 2.3 moodle.org)" http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=208224
Average of ratings: -