Restoring a large course - alternatives

Restoring a large course - alternatives

by Elena Sajno -
Number of replies: 3

Hi everybody and thanks for any help in advance.

I have some large courses (more then 250 MB) and I need to put them in a new moodle site.

With my server I cannot modify php.ini, so I'm searching for some alternatives...

I have found this tutorial


But I have the last moodle ediction so...

How can I take my .mbz backup file, opening it changing the name with .zip, taking out some files and having again a .mbz file? 

And then, how can I put again the file I the files I took of? -Both using my site, both using cPanel.

And the last, opening my data site via cPanel where can I find the files of one course?? It seems a treasure hunt and I'm not good with it ;)

Thanks,

Elena


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In reply to Elena Sajno

Re: Restoring a large course - alternatives

by Elena Sajno -

Every kind of suggestion would be really helpful...

In reply to Elena Sajno

Re: Restoring a large course - alternatives

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

If you still have access to the old site, reduce the size of your backups by breaking them in half. Do half course backup, then other half course backup, or if you have lots of student data, do course first, then do user data as two different backups. Restore the User data into the existing course. Or do sections 0 to 5 and half the user data, then sections 6 to 10 with rest of student data. Or use any configuration that ends up with your backup files a lot smaller. Lot more playing around, but will achieve the end result. 

In the meantime, talk to the service providers and see if you can get an increase in size of uploads. Go to 256MB if you can, courses will easily get to that size as they become more sophisticated. Eventually that will need to double again, which is why I am suggesting that where possible, self host on your own dedicated Moodle server. 

As for fixing the mbz file manually, the mbz format is simple to change, rename it to zip and unzip it. The important files will be the xml files and where there used to be only one, there are an awful lot more now. Trying to edit, say by removing the images and video if any, the xml file references to the images and video, then rezip and rename back to mbz is a nightmare, miss one image reference, get one step wrong, and the backup is a dead duck. I wouldn't recommend it unless you are really familiar with xml and the Moodle backup structure. 

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Restoring a large course - alternatives

by Elena Sajno -

The idea of sectioning the courses seems simple and effective!

I'm trying it, thank you so much!

Elena