Installing and upgrading help

Ok I think I have some information which may be of use to you. I was setting this up for a friend so they can play with Moodle, in the end I just rolled back to 2.4 and doubt I will spend too much time on it.

What I notced relates to installing moodle on a sub domain

1. Clean 2.4 install works
2. Clean 2.5 install fails as it cannot read / write data directory
3. I can install Moodle 2.5 by manually creating config.php but then hit the same file upload error you report. Upgrade 2.4 > 2.5 "should" work (I have not tested this) on the same basis, that the config.php has already been created and copied over from your 2.4 installation

The difference between the two clean installs is that Moodle 2.4 and 2.5 auto detect different paths for the dataroot.

If you enable SSH / Shell access on your host and run (from the relevant point):

ls -l subdomains

You will see sub domains are added with a pointer:

 moodle -> /var/sites/m/moodle.yourdomain.com/public_html

But the main directory for the site would be

/var/sites/y/yourdomain.com/public_html

Notice the /y/ and /m/ letters in the paths generated by the first letter of the domain AND the subsequent creation of the sub domain.

You can therefore resolve the moodle directory on TWO possible paths:

/var/sites/y/yourdomain.com/subdomains/moodle

/var/sites/m/moodle.yourdomain.com/public_html

So, back to the three cases I gave earlier:

1. When you run a clean install of Moodle 2.4 it picks up the correct paths
2. When you run a clean install Moodle 2.5 it uses a the alternative subdomain.domain path which does not work
3. You can get 2.5 to install by manually creating config.php, at which point you will see the file upload error. If you upgrade from 2.4 > 2.5 it should work as that config file was already correctly created by the 2.4 install and copied back over, but you will (are) hitting the same file upload issue after upgrade.

It does not matter whether you create the file manually or copy it over from 2.4 - 2.5, the point is it is pre-created and does NOT use Moodle 2.5 to build it.

This may be coincidental, but I doubt it.

It seems to me that somewhere else in the code Moodle 2.5 may be picking the alternative path again, possibly retrieving it from code (as it does during the installation process) as opposed to using the correct $CFG->dataroot the config dataroot setting.

At least that is my best guess at this time.

To test this further it would be good to know:

1. whether you are also using subdomains
2. what results you see when running clean installs of 2.4 and 2.5

Regards the second point, you do not need to actually install Moodle, just look at the first step of the installation where it asks you to confirm the directory paths.

Regards, Jez

It is indeed a Moodle bug - well a 'feature' I suppose. I have had the same problem on TSOhost cloud hosting which, due to the way it is implemented, does not allow exclusive locking of files in the web space. You can fix this by editing lib/filestorage/file_storage.php and looking for the line

$newsize = file_put_contents($hashfile.'.tmp', $content, LOCK_EX);

.. replace this with:

$newsize = file_put_contents($hashfile.'.tmp', $content);

Issue submitted: MDL-43390

Ken... I think I found an anomaly ... will keep everyone posted.

Hi All

I am also getting this error message "Can not create local file pool file, please verify permissions in dataroot and available disk space".

I am trying to upload a scorm 1.2 file of 24mb. When I click save I get the error message.

I have done the following trouble shooting:

1. We are using Moolde 2.6.2 - I've tried uploading the scorm to other activities to try and figure out if the problem is on Moodle. Also created a new course to see if it's not perhaps something wrong with my course. Unfortunately no success. I then used the same activity to upload a scorm file I know works ; this was successful. So now I now it's something with the scorm file.
2. I am also able to load a much larger scorm file to our site without issues.
3. We are using Articulate Storyline 2. I've asked the author to re-publish the file as in previous case this worked. Unfortunately not this time.
4. I then asked another author to re-publish - same results
5. Went on like this with another 3 authors - same results
6. So now I started thinking it's the source file...
7. Then asked someone outside of our company with Articulate 2 to also publish the file (same source file) ; This file I was able to successfully upload.
8. I then downloaded I Articulate trial version on my home pc and published again - I was also able to successfully upload this file.
9. So now it's safe to say that when publishing from Articulate with our standard issue computers and build (software), the publishing is not working.
10. I can also see that the file size is exactly the same when publishing from my company computer and from my home pc.

Any ideas of where the problem could be.

Attached a copy of the error message.

Thanks
Leon