One of the courses on our moodle (http://www.shscience.net) is having trouble duplicating quizzes. They have a large question database that they have developed and its been slow to duplicate quizzes all Fall. They have now grown to the point where duplicating a quiz (usually 10 to 15 questions each) just spins until it creates a generic error message. Duplication of other items in the course (like files) works fine.
Any guidance on how to resolve this issue?
J. Rodewald
This a total shot in the dark, but when we went to 2.6 a few months ago we could not import a quiz to build another quiz. (That's how we duplicate quizzes but there may be other ways). Anyway, we kept getting the little wheel that goes round and round forever and finally traced it back to the browser we were using. The browser worked fine for several years with 2.0 - 2.24 but not with 2.6+ We were and still are on XP but we were on IE 8 (the latest for XP) and it won't work. We use Google Chrome and it instantly fixed it.
I don't know what you're running but it might be worth a try to check out another browser. I'm not a tech guy, just know a browser can make a difference.
Mark
Thanks for your thoughts, Mark. That work-around has actually made a difference from time to time on our end with some of the JAVA-related issues we have run into over the years. It didn't work this time, but in the end I think we found the problem.
When we upgraded to 2.6 the install seemed to be working fine. The quiz duplication was a problem, however. The course in question that was having trouble duplicating quizzes actually had somewhere over a hundred different quizzes on it as it was which seemed to be making the database pretty bulky. Rather than dividing their course and all its enrolled students into four different groups (it runs in four different periods) they were duplicating one quiz three times for each "assignment" and then setting new parameters for each one. Needless to say the course swelled significantly. We now have all 130+ students divided into their four appropriate groups and create only one "quiz" per assignment and set parameters for each group as to when they can access it.
As an upside, the course is much more streamlined now and easier to operate for the teachers. The grading is more simplified as they can view by group ("section" or "class") and there is no need to burden the database nor duplicate quizzes the way they had been.
Looking back at the issue, we are on a shared server and I believe we were simply timing out when we tried to duplicate assignments in a bulky course.
J. Rodewald
I'm going to ask what may be a dumb question. How do you normally duplicate a quiz? I thought using the import was the only way to do it. We figured the import out and just kept doing it that way. If there's a better way, please point me in the right direction to duplicate a quiz. It would save us a bunch of time.
Thanks,
Mark
Hey,
there should be a button next to the quizname to duplicate it:
Is this what you are searching for?
Claudia
I just imported courses with a huge question bank into a 2.6 build. It was deathly slow but I was able to complete by doing the following:
1. Increased php.ini settings for max_input_time and max_execution_time.
2. Increased my.cnf (mysql)setting for max_packets_allowed.
3. Turned on debugging. I have a totally unproven theory that the actual act of turning debugging on kept the server alive writing out error messages (of which I had hundreds, literally) and so it did not time out. With debugging turned off, the restore process would just stall out.
4. Went away and did something else for an hour plus for each course with a quiz in it.
There are some tracker items on the problem of quiz restore, especially when there is a large system database, so there is hope for the future but for now, it continues to be a huge problem.
I think I said the wrong thing. It's not quizzes that we duplicate but it's the entire course. Thanks for the tip on duplicating quizzes because there are times it could come in handy. I should have ask if there is an easier way to duplicate an entire course other than creating a course shell and using the import feature?
We went to 2.6 a few months ago and it is super fast on importing courses compared to the 2.2.+ series that we came from. I sure hope we don't run into the slow imports in 2.6 that you are mentioning.
I don't believe that 2.6 is any slower importing questions than 2.5 was.
2.6 backup/restore is a lot faster than 2.5 was in other areas of restore (thank you sam marshall and others) and that might just make other places seem worse, but comparison.
Also, 2.6 backup/restore displays progress bars, which may underestimate how long some bits (e.g. question restore) might take, which is why it might get to 99% then sit there for a long time. That is just an inaccurate progress bar.
I was finally able to import a quiz yesterday. I found that I had some corruption in my question table in the database. I started by dumping and then importing the table. That fixed the corrupted records. Then, by turning debugging on, I found a reference to a question that was having issues. After lots of searching through tables, I was at a loss. I then tried importing to a different course and was able to import two quizzes (took about 15 minutes) so I then realized that the question was in the course I was importing too which for some reason had multiple categories attached to it. I deleted the empty categories and the question that was causing issues (just within the web interface) and then the quizzes did restore (still took about 15 minutes). I used to be able to restore quizzes in about 3-5 minutes so there is a huge time difference. For me, it was not a browser issue. I had tried import, restore and sharing cart. I have about 12,000 entries in my mdl_question table.
Hi Emma: I'm a newbie. How did you identify which question was the problem?
Thanks,
Bill
I turned full developer debugging on before running the backup. The error message that came up during the restore attempt pointed me to the faulty question.
