User Data crashes backup

User Data crashes backup

by James Robertson -
Number of replies: 3

I posted this under Backup/Restore also -- not sure which is the right place.

I upgraded to 1.5.2+ about 12 days ago (2005060220) and tried to backup a course manually a couple days ago.  It hung during Quizzes, so I tried another course without a quiz and it worked fine.  Then I went back and tried again (to confirm a problem) and again it hung during Quizzes.  I tried once more with user data turned off for Quiz only.  This time it completed successfully. 

I recall that under 1.5.1 quiz user data was not backed up but was supposed to be under 1.5.2.  But at that time backup/restore didn't crash, it simply told you that user data would not be included.  Is this a known bug, or is there something I need to do to enable quiz backup with user data? 

Server runs linux, php 4.3.10, MySQL 4.0.24.  I am using IE on WinXP.

Thanks,

Jim Robertson.

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In reply to James Robertson

Re: User Data crashes backup

by Patrick Blaine -
James:

I've dealt with this problem since 1.4.3, and there's never been any clear solution so far as I know, although please correct me if I'm wrong.  I tried for a very long time to fix it, but the only answer I got from some people on the forum is that the backup was intended to move courses, not to backup large amounts of user information.  The advice they gave me (and I'll pass along) is that for large courses with lots of user data, the best way is to do a sql dump in phpmyadmin or command line and save the moodledata folder as well.

It's a pain, but if you're backup isn't working because you're feeding too much info. into it and there are no more suggestions from the forum, it's what you'll have to do to be safe.  Incidentally, I think you'll find that it is possible to do a backup without user data in order to move, duplicate, or save the course itself.

Patrick
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In reply to Patrick Blaine

Re: User Data crashes backup

by James Robertson -

Thanks for your explanation, I guess this has been going on for a long time.  When I am moving/copying a course, I do it without user data as you mentioned.  In this case we have just finished finals for our first-ever term using Moodle and I want to backup the student test data in the few courses that used Moodle for their testing.  My class had 33 students with five 10-question quizzes, two 20-question quizzes, and one 25-question quiz, which I hadn't thought would count as a large course with a lot of data (there were also 34 assignments and 29 forums, but these seem to backup and restore OK).

Jim.

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