Converting .mbz to older version

Converting .mbz to older version

by Zaphod Desiato -
Number of replies: 6

If this is in an inappropriate section, please move it to an appropriate one.

 

My problem:

I have created several Moodle lessons on the testservers demo.moodle.net and test.moodle2.de, and made .mbz-backups of them - which are of version 2.3.2.

Unfortunately, I need to restore those .mbz-lessons on a different Moodle server which uses version 2.3.1+. That did not work, the server went into a timeout, and if the restoring did work at all, the lessons could not be opened.

 

Now, is there any way I could convert those .mbz files to a lower version? Is there a testserver that uses an older Moodle version? I am absolutely clueless and thankful for ANY help.

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In reply to Zaphod Desiato

Re: Converting .mbz to older version

by Colin Fraser -
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Yes, and it is very simple. Rename the file to the .zip extension. However, that is not the problem. The problem is backwards compatibility. There should be no reason why it has stopped, unless there has been a significant database change from v2.3.1+ to 2.3.2. I don't think that is the problem, so it has to be something else. Is there a plugin or block in the v2.3.2 that you are not using in the 2.3.1+? Has there been a mod in either that is not present in the other? These are the most likely candidates for preventing a restore from working. When startign the restore, did you get any kind of error/warning/notice message? Think about these things as well as, when you made the backups, was there any issue that arose? Was there any kind of error/warning message there?

Oh.. another thought. When I do backups of courses for transfering to another Moodle, I never, never include student/user data, nada, nothing. Is it possible that user data has been included here? Think about it...

 

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Converting .mbz to older version

by Zaphod Desiato -

Thanks a lot for that quick answer!


When one of the two testservers (which I mentioned before) was still running on the older version, backwards compatibility was usually never a problem. So yeah, probably the problem is something else; I can't figure out what though.

I also left out any student data simply because it wasn't needed, and the features I use in the lessons are just the basic ones: Text, mimetex formulas, images, I don't even use the "regular expressions" option in short-text questions; no plugins, nothing.

 

Although I'm not sure if that will make any difference, I will now try the .zip-renaming and importing the zips. Thank you!

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Converting .mbz to older version

by ben reynolds -

There were at least two changes to Lesson in 2.3.2

http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.3.2_release_notes

Not sure how major they are, but, if they changed the database tables, that's probably the source of your time out. Sorry to say, I don't know what a fix might be.

I'd write the folks who did the 2.3.2 Lesson fixes, or ask this question in the Lesson forum.

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In reply to Zaphod Desiato

Re: Converting .mbz to older version

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Hi

I'm testing some scripting on a VPS. It is not a problem for me to give you admin access to a fresh installation on that server for a couple of days. Send me a personal message through this site. Don't forget to mention the exact Moodle version.
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In reply to Zaphod Desiato

Re: Converting .mbz to older version

by Zaphod Desiato -

Just to bring this thread to a finish:


We still have not found a way to properly restore the lessons, so instead we started to copy them page by page.

We assume the problem to be a difference in databases; our server uses MSSQL, the testservers use MySQL. As a change of databases would have been too time-consuming, we did not pursue this any further.

 

In any case, thanks a lot for the help!

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In reply to Zaphod Desiato

Re: Converting .mbz to older version

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

THat would have been handy to know first up... the differences are not in the databases, the difference is in both the DBMS and the data extraction layer. ... However, having said that, unless there is another reason, I do not think that there should be any problem in switching a course from one DBMS to another during a backup... so there has to be something else at work here.  Can the lessons be extracted from the original backups, or perhaps from a course, restore the rest of the course, then redo the lessons? That might save some time, rather than having to redo entire courses?   

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