This is a setting that needs to be changed in php.ini. You need to increase the max input vars setting.
Until a week ago, I had max_input_vars set to 5000 after reading about this issue. Then since last week, i had set this to 20000. Most likely this happened prior to changing it to 20,000. The question is also how I can bring that data back?
The grades were never accepted. You will need to re-enter them.
The problem is that this is not for just one class. It is for a bunch of courses random assignments and students. Not an easy solution when you have 700+courses for this semester. I am finding that if you unenrol the student from our DB synch (i.e. remove the student from the course) and then add them manually, some or most of the grades show up (so they are stored somewhere).
There still has to be a way to run a report or identify these disprepancies in what is in the grade history and matching it with what has not been updated/posted in the gradebook report. Very frustrating to say the least. This is like asking someone to keep the money with you but then the balances and/or transactions either do not match or are completely missing.
Hey Sal, had the same problem with one course of about 300 people. There is a Moodle Tracker bug report out there (can't find it now).
But yes, the grades are still in the database, just getting dropped from grade book. So, if we could find a Moodle database wiz, I might guess that there is a database field that could be updated. Don't know for sure.
I ended up doing a manual enrol for the students with missing grades. Unfortunately, the Restore Grades function only works for manual enrol, not for CSV upload.
Are you sure the grades are still in the database - it is my thought that the grades are not being accepted at all.
Hey Emma , Can you elaborate on why this works? or what the core problem might be?
Thanks!
Think of the grading sheet as a huge grid. For each student, for each assignment is an entry. If you have quick feedback enabled, this doubles the number of possible entries. So 20 students times 20 assignments jumps quickly to 800 (20*(20*2)) possible entries. Somehow php counts the entries in the grid, when you get to the 2000th entry (normally where input-vars is set) it will not accept any more entries. This means that grades will go in for half the students in an assignment and not the other half because that is where the limit was reached.
Upping the setting in php resolves the issue - I have seen people up this setting to as high as 50,000 with no obvious side effects.
You can also take care of this by entering the grades through the assignment instead of the gradebook or if you are using groups, just select one group and this shrinks the number of possible entries in the gradebook and allows you to enter the grades.
Teacher really should notice this when they are entering grades...
Sweet, thanks.
About the php.ini, I'm in a hosted environment. Two of my many Moodle instances have a php.ini (don't know why) and the root has one.
Should I put a php.ini in the folder of the Moodle instance I was to change, then make the settings change?
I am not sure what environment you are using but the php.ini file is normally in your web server files. In Debian, it is found under apache2. The webserver needs to know where it is to read the settings - for that reason, I do not believe that you can put it in your Moodle folder. You will need to have the people hosting your Moodle make the change for you.