Zip Performance in Moodle

Zip Performance in Moodle

by Dale Davies -
Number of replies: 1

We've been having a few issues when teachers attempt to create a zip archive of all files submitted for an assignment, for all students etc. It seems that when there are particularly large files, this exceeds the script execution time and burns CPU - this has caused the whole site to hang on a few occasions.

Looking at the performance recommendations for Moodle 2.4, it is recommended to use the system zip commands, however I cannot find this in the settings for our 2.4 install...

https://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Performance_settings

Is this a mistake in the docs? If so can anyone recommend a solution?

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In reply to Dale Davies

Re: Zip Performance in Moodle

by Howard Miller -
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Yes - it's a mistake, that option was (iirc) last seen in Moodle 1.9. 

I'm not entirely surprised - compressing files is a CPU heavy activity. You will need to make sure that the maximum execution time is set appropriately. FWIW, it's not my favourite part of Assignment - it would be nice to be able to select the files to download rather than just *all*.

Do I also need to mention that you are running an old, unsupported version and there may have been improvements and fixes in newer versions?