Session Timeout cannot login (not even admin)

Session Timeout cannot login (not even admin)

by Pete Chapman -
Number of replies: 5

I am trying to implement moodle at my school and have run into a big problem. 

I can no longer login to the server. I get a session timeout. It orgionally was on a machine setup with ubuntu server with the moodledata on a large drive. Unknown to me the root partition was only 256mb on std installation. Just before transfer moodle gave session timeout to all logins including admin (no space left on root partition). i have transfered it to a new server installation (and even a standalone Xampp) while the courses appear to be ok (most require login) I still cannot login always session timeout. I am concerned that all courses and data are lost. Is there a solution to the problem?

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In reply to Pete Chapman

Re: Session Timeout cannot login (not even admin)

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

If all data was lost one wouldn't see anything of the moodle site, so think it's just an issue with sessions.  With partition running out of room, could be the table used for sessions is a little out of whack!

In your config.php file add a line:

$CFG->dbsessions='0';

This will switch sessions recording from database to file based and a 'sessions' folder should be created in your moodledata folder.

No need to restart apache or any other services.  Just use browser and see if you can login now.

Might want to check the status of your tables - see if any are in need of repairing.  phpmyadmin will help.

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Session Timeout cannot login (not even admin)

by Pete Chapman -

Ken,

Thank you so much really appreicate the help.

Did check the tables but no problems when I ran the check.

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In reply to Pete Chapman

Re: Session Timeout cannot login (not even admin)

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Welcome.  Tables might not be corrupted, but the data contained therein might be incomplete or whacked itself.  Checking for corruption of tables via MySQL wouldn't check the data for validity (I don't think).

Did you add the config line?  Were you able to login then?

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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In reply to Pete Chapman

Re: Session Timeout cannot login (not even admin)

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Pete,

I had the same thing (running out of drive space) happen to me last year. When I set up the new hard drive partition I forgot to make Apache the owner of the moodledata folder and its sub-folders, so my session could not be saved in my moodledata/session folder. Soon as I changed the owner, I could log in again.

Wouldn't hurt to check. I'm not positive what the owner should be for Ubuntu, but I think it is www-data.

Hope this helps,

AL

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In reply to Pete Chapman

Re: Session Timeout cannot login (not even admin)

by Caine Chilima -

The same thing happened at our school after a power interruption. Repairing the mdl_session table in the database solved our login problem. smile

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