1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -
Number of replies: 19

I've wasted half a day trying to get 1.5 to work as a clean install. When I looked here on the forum I found a great many people have had the same problem and that there is no resolution. At least withing the first 3 pages of topics. People upgrading from 1.4 have had the same problem.

I got most of the way through and after creating most or all tables everything came to a screeching halt with a blank page. And no errors to work from anywhere.

After trying again with some of the dubious looking "fixes" suggested I noted that other people with this problem had no toruble with 1.4. Sure enough that installed very simply with no problems. At least until the end, when I found it had never asked me to create an admin account so that I can not really do anything with the installation. I'll leave that for another day, if I even continue with this software.

So for anyone else having install/upgrade problems the only real solution that seems to reliably work for multiple people is to use 1.4. Given this situation I personally would recommend staying at least one version behind and watching the forums to see if new ones do indeed work for everyone or whether they precipitate a large number of help requests which go unresolved.

I've spent a lot of time looking through moodle and am excited by its potential, but at this point I am asking myself if this is really the best package to use from the point of view of having to upgrade and administrate it.

Jim

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Stuart Douglas -
What operating system, web server, and database are you using?  What specific problems have you had?

I've cleanly installed 1.5, 1.5.1, 1.5.2 and now 1.5.2+.  I've cleanly upgraded from 1.5 to 1.5.1, 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 and 1.5.2 to 1.5.2+.  I've been running it on Windows and using IIS and MySQL.  Aside from some self-inflicted "adventures" that have messed up otherwise perfectly functioning installations, I've had no problems at all.
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In reply to Stuart Douglas

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -

I'm sure it does install for a lot of people but from these forums its obvious there are quite a few who have a lot of trouble.

I have a Unix FreeBSD environment, a typical verio virtual server on which I have almost full privileges except actual root. (I'm moving to a version 2 which will give me full root, I want to see if this program is feasible before I clutter up the new server with it though.)

Database is mysql, php is a current version with safe mode "no".

It's a pretty typical unix web server environment and I've installed quite a few php and perl scripts over the past ten years. Most with no problems, a few with basic modifications I could make, and very infrequently there is one which is just too much trouble to use.

After installing 1.4 and looking in the FAQ about no admin account I added the three line snippet of code to users.php (in admin/, for the problem supposedly fixed after 1.0.9 according to the faq) and went back and reinstalled the whole thing yet again. It again did not ask for an admin account, although this time it did create the default admin/admin user. I have phpMyadmin running to verify whats in the tables.

Now I cannot view the admin/index.php page and again there are no error messages either on the page or in the logs. I cannot find much on this in a forum search except for somebody that went back to 1.3 to solve it.

So I think I may have a working installation but only very indirect admin access by going to the desired function directly and not having a main index page. Still not a very good start.

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Stuart Douglas -
Although my Moodle experimenting thus far has been done in Windows/IIS, I'm setting up several Linux test environments (NEVER get rid of those old PCs!) as a precursor to to doing our production Moodle site on Linux.  I'm finishing the server setups and I hope to get to actually installing Moodle in the next couple of days, so I'll bee keen to see if I encounter the same problems you did.  Hopefully I won't, but if I do and solve the mystery, I'll be sure to post back.
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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Anthony Borrow -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Jim,

I have played with various clean installs and upgrades of 1.4, 1.5, 1.5.1, 1.5.2, and 1.6 on both linux and windows based servers. My production server is a WinXP IIS machine using PHP 5.0.4 and MySQL 4.1.7. Most of the errors that I have experienced have to do with file permissions or errors with the server and are not actual Moodle errors.

I have imported large amounts of data (over 1000 users) and remain very pleased with the performance and reliability of Moodle. It has even been fairly resistant to some of my own code hacks and customizations.

I would encourage you to do some testing on a development machine. I use my own laptop with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. It allows me to play with a possible change and test it before implementing.

Good luck in your Moodling endeavors.

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by James Robertson -

I have one linux production site and 3 localhost windows sites, each representing various install and upgrade scenarios, some starting from 1.4.4, others from 1.5.0 or 1.5.1.  At present all are running some version of 1.5.1 or 1.5.2.  1.5 has enough improvements that I would recommend starting over with a clean localhost install of the most recent 1.5.x.  You can track what's happening much more easily and make any necessary changes because you have control over all the variables.  When you migrate to a production site, it will help if your provider is familiar with Moodle and has supported other Moodle sites. 

I have seen more difficulties from the 1.4.x to 1.5 upgrade in these forums than from clean 1.5 installs.  Moodle is growing exponentially in capability, so it is well worth any required additional effort to start with 1.5.  I am not aware of any software of this scope that does not run into problems with specific installations.  The vast majority of Moodle installations go forward without trouble.  In your case, it is just a matter of discovering which part is different from what was anticipated.  While I have not run into trouble with PHP and MySQL versions, other users will be able to help you better if you will include versions of all relevant programs.

You will find that these forums provide a great support network, both for solving technical problems and also for providing suggestions and additional tools.  Once sufficiently described, if your problem proves to be an actual bug, you can be sure that correction for it will proceed quickly.  All that is required is sufficient description, and patience while others read your post and compare it with their experience. 

I realize this can be frustrating, but these problems almost always turn out to be based on implicit assumptions about the setup, which is why full description is so important.  For example, you will see that one of my own recent posts about problems with upgrading turned out to be caused by an assumption about renaming directories when upgrading an add-on module.  I didn't tell anyone I had renamed a previous version directory and copied the new one in beside it(rather than on on top of it), it just didn't seem relevant to the problem -- in fact, I had completely forgotten I had done it.  No one could solve the problem for me because the critical information was missing.

So don't give up, you'll find the problem (likely with help from others), and when you do, post what the reason turned out to be, and you will prevent others from having the same problem.  And most likely a small correction in the Moodle code itself will be the final result.

Good luck,

Jim.

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In reply to James Robertson

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -

Well, still no real solution to this. If anyone figures it out post something since there are quite a few people with what appears to be the same problem, most of whom got no solution and many of whom got no response at all.

In my case here are the system parameters:

OS - Free BSD

Server - Apache 1.3.33

Available space - about 300 MB

Install - Entirely clean, no previous versions, unzipped on server (cvs also tried)

Directory - /moodle/ (ie a dedicated directory with nothing to conflict with)

PHP 4.3.11 - Safe Mode Off, Magic Quotes: gpc on, runtime+sybase off

MySQL 4.0.24

As far as I can tell this is about as typical a webserver environment as you can find. It's leased through Verio and configured specifically as a web server. I generally use telnet access and other than keeping my email on the server it's not used for anything else.

I've installed, upgraded and modified a number of perl and php scripts. The largest probably being phpBB2 which I've added various mods to for a couple different sites and upgraded heavily modified installations with a bit of extra work but no real problems.

Moodle installed until it got to the end of one of the database pages, which stopped without ever showing any submit or continue button. Nothing worked from there on out. Without any error messages at all.

I don't feel like I can afford to get sucked into working with the code when there is not even any indication of where the problem is. I do not have separate servers, I'm pretty much a one person nonprofit. And I wouldn't count on any install solution working on the main server unless it were discovered on a fully identical server environment. Its one thing to test features and mods on a slightly different machine, a bombed install is another thing.

Right now I don't have time to go back to this. I'd like to give it one or two more tries at some point. But I'll probably try out some of the alternatives as well. Even if they're not quite as appealing as this I would prefer anything which meets my basic needs and installs/upgrades with a minimum of trouble and has viable support. (For example, with phpBB I can find an actual solution to almost anything on their forums. Mods, conflicting mods, upgrades, etc. Although I've never encountered a totally failed install with no messages and that is an inherently difficult thing to find help with for any software.)

Jim

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -

Well, I tried it again and one thing I have to give it credit for is consistency. Pretty much the same thing happened. Exact same parameters as above, with yet another entirely clean install from scratch. I downloaded 1.5 "latest stable" version and unzipped it on the server. It kept creating tables and asking for settings until I had specified choices for the moodle parameters, then it went off and produced another long string of table results. All were successful, but after the message that lesson tables were successful it suddenly halted. There was no link to continue or to do anything. And that was it - end of progress. The server error log has no messages in it.

This is the 3rd or 4th try. 1.4 did mostly install but still had problems. (Same environment and variables, exact same system.) And its not the current version, with upgrade possibilites appearing highly uncertain.

I hate to give up on things but at this point there is no indication of how to continue. The forums have lots of encouragement but no solutions. Not here and not for the same issue brought up by others. And there are no error messages. So I need to move on and find something that is more functional. I've been known to get sucked into things and keep at them until they work, even if I have to hack the code and/or spend way too much time on it. So it bothers me to give up, especially since I had a lot of hope for this software. But without error messages, documentation, or solutions here on the forums I guess this will be one of those rare cases.

If anyone ever really figures out exactly what is going on with this problem that has come up here repeatedly please post a solution. I'll give it another shot if somebody is working on this and has a potential solution.

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Jim,

Clearly 'something' is going wrong, but you are not seeing the actual problem. My normal advice here is to find the error in the logs. You first need to check your php.ini file and make sure error logging is switched on. Search for 'log_errors' and make sure it is uncommented and set to On. If you have to make any changes don't forget to restart Apache.

Then... try the install again, immediately after this check the apache error log (or the php one if it is set up that way) - /var/log/apache2/error_log on my system, but it could be in lots of places (particularly under /usr/local/apache(2)).

If you are lucky the error that caused the stop will be at or near the end. This will give us a lot of help to sort the problem!

EDIT:

Although as you are on a hosted platform, you might need to enlist the assistance of the administrator.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Charles Levasseur -

I edited my php.ini so that the 'log_errors' is uncommented and is set to on.  The following are also set:
report_memleaks = On
error_log = phperror.log
error_log = syslog

Also, I am not using Apache but IIS and I have full access to the server.

When I run the install again, I get the same problem.  I then look for a log file call phperror.log and it does not exist.  I also looked in my event viewer and I don't see any errord being logged.  I do see that my worksation is connecting successfully.  Any other suggestion?

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In reply to Charles Levasseur

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Ok - firstly you should not have two error_log entries - just one! It should also be a full path - e.g., c:\phperror.log. You should probably also create that file and make sure it has sufficient permissions for IIS to write to it. You don't mention it, but I assume you have also checked for the line 'log_errors = on'? You need to do a 'proper' reboot of IIS - not just start the WWW service. If in any doubt, reboot the whole machine.
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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by John Papaioannou -
All were successful, but after the message that lesson tables were successful it suddenly halted. There was no link to continue or to do anything.

This sounds too weird for it to be a Moodle error. As Howard says, do you have error reporting on? If you don't get errors on screen, what does the error log say? There has to be an error message somewhere. Maybe for example an out-of-memory? (remember that php.ini only allows scripts to consume up to 8MB by default, and installation is probably very memory-hungry).
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In reply to John Papaioannou

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Yes - you *did* get *all* green ticks when the installation routine checks your system right at the start didn't you?? big grin
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In reply to John Papaioannou

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -

Yes, error logging is on. Always has been, and is the default. The defaults on this server, php, and mysql are the correct defaults for the vast majority of web software. Nothing I have ever installed or run has required changing any of this, without exception.

The error log does not show any problems or offer any messages. If I go into config.php and manually change the path then I do get an error in the log. So logging does work when it is handed something to log. And presumably the path is ok since a bad path writes an error and the one the install program used is not cuasing such an error.

The server error log has always been the first place I look when I have a problem and I've checked it on every try with Moodle. But its never had anything in it.

It looks like this might be used more commonly on windows environments than on Unix, which would be something different from everything else I've ever used. Most open source things I've installed and run have been primarily developed on and for unix. I guess most work on windows, but the development and support is usually unix based.

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by David Wilkinson -

Jim,

I run Moodle on Linux RedHat (apache/php/mysql).

Clearly, something else is going on.

I have installed Moodle test versions (1.3 - 1.5+) countless times without errors. It seems as if there is some other problem with your install. Perhaps when you untar the files they are being corrupted? Since you mentioned that you are not root, perhaps the account that you are installing from is not a member of the right group, that has been granted the correct permissions?

I have even managed to install moodle on a godaddy server with minimal permissions. However, I was able to change permissions to get it going.

I think that you have a permissions problem and quite possibly a hardware problem.

What are the permissions that you have setup for programatic access to the directories?

What account owns the directories, and what account has access, and what access rights does the account have?

Have you chmodd'ed or chown'ed permissions so that the web server account has access to the directories?

Are you running on old hardware, perhaps an old disk drive, or an old disk controller, or bad drivers?

Please post a copy of your config.php file, of course replacing replacing the passwords and server names, so we can take a look.

Also post a screen shot or a copy of the text of the top level directories that you have defined for use with moodle using with the ls command to show us the ownership rights and access rights.

Thanks,
David

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by David Wilkinson -

Jim,

Here is shot in the dark.

I noticed that you mentioned that you are on a verio vps server. I had all sorts of problems with moodle until I created the following file "vhost.conf", in my /conf directory which is at the same level as httpdocs directory.

<Directory /home/httpd/vhosts/<mydomainname.com>/subdomains/test/httpdocs>
php_admin_value open_basedir none
AcceptPathInfo on
</Directory>

David

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Shame... A very long shot - check the MySql error log too!

Moodle is primarily developed on Unix platforms by the way. I think it would be fair to say that there have been many more 'challenges' running on Windows!
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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -

Here is the config.php -

<?php  /// Moodle Configuration File

unset($CFG);

$CFG->dbtype    = 'mysql';
$CFG->dbhost    = 'localhost';
$CFG->dbname    = 'moodle';
$CFG->dbuser    = '---';
$CFG->dbpass    = '---';
$CFG->dbpersist =  false;
$CFG->prefix    = 'mdl_';

$CFG->wwwroot   = 'http://www.csac.org/moodle';
$CFG->dirroot   = '/usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts/csac/moodle';
$CFG->dataroot  = '/usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts/csac/moodle/data';
$CFG->admin     = 'admin';
$CFG->directorypermissions = 00777;  // try 02777 on a server in Safe Mode

require_once("$CFG->dirroot/lib/setup.php");
// MAKE SURE WHEN YOU EDIT THIS FILE THAT THERE ARE NO SPACES, BLANK LINES,
// RETURNS, OR ANYTHING ELSE AFTER THE TWO CHARACTERS ON THE NEXT LINE.
?>

Here is a ls -l output:

-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser      943 May 24 00:03 README.txt
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser     1024 Aug 25 20:04 admin
drwxr-xr-x  14 iworld  vuser      512 May 24 00:03 auth
drwxr-xr-x   4 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 backup
drwxr-xr-x  23 iworld  vuser     1024 Aug 28 20:08 blocks
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 calendar
-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser    15087 Jul  4 20:13 config-dist.php
-rw-r-----   1 iworld  vuser      717 Aug 30 03:33 config.php
drwxr-xr-x   3 iworld  vuser     1024 Aug  2 20:15 course
drwxrwxrwx   4 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 30 03:16 data
drwxr-xr-x   3 iworld  vuser      512 Jun 18 20:11 doc
drwxr-xr-x   8 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 enrol
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 May 24 00:04 error
-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser     5931 Jul 12 20:16 file.php
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 files
drwxr-xr-x  10 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 filter
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 Aug  4 20:20 grade
-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser     4893 May 24 00:03 help.php
-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser     7529 May 24 00:03 index.php
-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser    23503 May 24 00:03 install.php
drwxr-xr-x  65 iworld  vuser     1024 Aug 28 20:08 lang
drwxr-xr-x  16 iworld  vuser     1536 Aug 28 20:08 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 17 20:05 login
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 May 24 00:07 message
drwxr-xr-x  17 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 mod
drwxr-xr-x  10 iworld  vuser      512 May 24 00:07 pix
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 rss
drwxr-xr-x   3 iworld  vuser      512 Aug  1 20:25 sso
-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser  2923484 Jul  6 00:09 tags
drwxr-xr-x  15 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 28 20:08 theme
drwxr-xr-x   3 iworld  vuser      512 Aug 10 20:01 user
drwxr-xr-x   2 iworld  vuser      512 May 24 00:07 userpix
-rw-r--r--   1 iworld  vuser      515 Jul 22 10:58 version.php

This is all as moodle made it, I haven't screwed with any of it. The file permissions on the .php files (and the ownership) aree typical of other php files on the server.

And no, there is no tar or gzip problem. I used the zip version and unzipped it on the server. I do this all the time. zipping is a pretty reliable action.

And I would hope there is no old hardware. I pay Verio to handle that end of things. They own, maintain and upgrade the hardware. For the last 7-8 years I have never had a single hardware related problem and uptime of probably 99.5%+ (over the entire time).

The iworld account is the server process on this account. (The upgraded environment will have a different server identity and different accounts I can control. This server has only one account which has permissions for most things.) There is no problem connecting to the db since many table are created before it halts. And up to that point I am prompted via the web for a variety of things, so I am seeing moodle on the web up to that point. After that all pages have tags like this: <body> </body>

I have not done anything further since I'm really in the middle of transferring everything to the newer environment. This already involves a lot of script and program modifications due to path changes and new users for different processes. Thats a priority at the moment. My hope was to experiment with moodle on the server I'm leaving since I don't care much about it as the move progresses. At some point even security will not be of any concern. But it is increasingly accessed only by IP number. The domain moodle is on still has its dns to the "old" server and will be the last and most complicated domain to move.

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -

Two questions:

It died after a list of messages that tables had been created ok. On the last attempt it was the "lesson" table or tables. What does it do next after that in the installations process? With that information I'd at least have some idea what it needs to do at that point that it can't do. Since the logs are not a source of elightenment.

How many table should there be in the end? Is there documentation someplace with a list or diagram of the database? I don't even know if it finished all the db things and then died or if it got hung up on a particulate table. Since it created a great many tables I suspect the first case, but I could better determine that if I knew how many table I'm ultimately looking for.

Jim

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In reply to Jim Frankenfield

Re: 1.5.x Does Not Install or Upgrade - Use 1.4

by Jim Frankenfield -

Well this evening I just installed Dokeos. Very quick and easy with no apparent problems. I haven't done anything with it yet but it installed very easily.

I also found a full many-page pdf description of all of the databses used. I'm still wondering if Moodle installed all the databases it wanted to before it died or not.

Originally I researched opinions on the educational aspects of the available packages. (These two plus a third I can't remember.) But at this point I feel like there is a huge difference in the ease of installation and support.

I'm not saying I'm commited to using Dokeos or anything else yet, but at least I can go ahead and play around with some courses and features for the next ten days on the server which will be defunct soon.

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