Quizzes freeze everything up

Quizzes freeze everything up

by Troy Garrett -
Number of replies: 9

Hi All,

Been googling the hell out of this issue to avoid wasting anyone's time, but I'm at a wall.

I have some courses with quizzes attached. At some point in time, trying to access these quizzes to re-mark, edit, etc. causes my browser to hang and if I wait long enough, I get this message:

An interesting thing is that people in other courses are using quizzes fine...so far. My three courses are quiz no-man's land. I've tried different accounts/browsers and the only common thing is that the courses themselves don't like quizzes any more.

I'd love to look for the error log files that I've seen people posting, however, no amount of Googling has revealed where they actually live.

Could anyone suggest where to find them so I may post them for help with a solution to the problem?

 

Moodle v2.2

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In reply to Troy Garrett

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

You need to turn debugging on.  (Found under Server Administration, Debugging).  Then make the freeze happen and normally the error messages will show up on your screen and then you can copy and paste them here so people can help you track it down.  

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Troy Garrett -

Hi Emma, 

Thanks for the reply. I turned on debugging, however, even now trying to attempt to start the quiz, let alone, edit it, makes the browser hang for at least 5 minutes. Then I get a new message from the web server saying:

Aaaargh!!!!

I was hoping to use our new Moodle server to run my end of year tests with one of my classes.

Any suggestions off this?

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In reply to Troy Garrett

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Simon Story -

That error message, '504 gateway timeout' (Probably) isn't coming from your Moodle server.

It is *probably* caused by your Moodle server taking too long to respond to a proxy server in your institution. This could be Moodle's fault, the proxy server's fault or perhaps a communication problem between the proxy server and Moodle. Or something else. It's probably Moodle, but keep that in mind.

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In reply to Simon Story

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Troy Garrett -

Hi Simon,

that's an interesting idea. The organisation installed a new proxy a couple of weeks ago and that may have an impact, however, this behaviour started a few months ago. I don't want anyone else experiencing the same issues I'm having. Quizzes are my favourite part of the whole Moodle thing. It's strange that it only happens to my courses and no one else's.

on a related note, I thought of a hack that may allow me to still run a yearly exam...I created another course and made the quiz in that, then back it up and merge the activities into my original course. No problem so far. I came back to the course to continue adding more questions and lo and behold, now the new course is affected by this quiz rot (I have affectionately named this weird behaviour).

it's like pulling teeth. I will follow up the proxy suggestions with the booffins at HQ on Monday morning, though.

Thanks again for your help.

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In reply to Troy Garrett

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

What happens if you add the extra questions in the other course - does the quiz run ok?  It could be a corrupted question or something corrupted with the course.  Seems like I saw a post a while back with something similar going on.  They disabled the algebra filter - do you have that in your course by any chance?

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Troy Garrett -

Hi Emma,

The amusing thing is, that I tried what you suggested but I couldn't access the questions I made in the other courses to make them public. Going near the question bank will freeze it all up again. 

Is there a way to get at the questions from somewhere else?


Thanks for the support, I really appreciate it.

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In reply to Troy Garrett

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Are you admin in the site or just a teacher?  Either way you should be able to get to your questions by switching categories in the question bank.  You can access the bank from your other course right?

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In reply to Troy Garrett

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

What exactly did you do before your quiz got locked up? Does this happen when you start some slow, long-running process, like re-grading a big quiz?

If so, then that re-grade is probably still running in the backgroud, and holding open a lock on your session, which stops you from doing anything else.

I suspect that if you close your web browser, then log in again, you will be able to continue. (That will start another session for you.)

Also the quiz should not lock-up your session during a long-running regrade. I created MDL-36020 for that.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Quizzes freeze everything up

by Troy Garrett -

Thanks for the suggestn, Tim.

Quizzes worked normally when I created the courses some months ago. I tried a regrade a couple months ago and then it hung for the first time. Now, I can create the quiz, but not put any questions in it. As soon as I try to edit it, bye bye.

There is no sensitive data in it as yet, I have been trialling it for a couple of months with some of my classes, but the rest of the staff are coming on board and I don't want this happening to anyone else.

if you'd like to see the behaviour yourself, you can contact me at troy(dot)garrett(at)bigpond(dot)com.

and I can give you a login to see the behaviour yourself.

 

thanks for the help so far.

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