Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Joey Barclay -
Number of replies: 10

I created another post about the error "Mixed Moodle Versions" message screen I am getting. I am going to move my installation or just start over but cannot do that now. I need to figure out what triggers this message, stop it, so CRON will start again.  I cannot access the root of the server as I am on a GoDaddy VPS running Linux. It is totally ridiculous. Had I known when my person who set this up did it I would have never done it this way. Anyway he is gone and I need to see if I can stop the warning about the installation being started but stopped and see if I can get CRON to start running again. I just need to finish out the rest of our quarter and then do the right thing but for now I just need to band-aid it to get by.

Looked for a "Search" folder to remove as one post mentioned and cannot find it. Been looking in a thousand PHP files for something resembling the error and cannot find that either.

If anyone could help me figure this out or tell me what I should go and look for I would really appreciate it. Moodle Version 2.8, I think he installed over 2.7.

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In reply to Joey Barclay

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Fundamental problem: If you are for Linux and Open Source don't go for Godaddy: Read "Go Daddy! (Where to?)" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=193106.

Now to your immediate problem: I can not understand in you expect? Obviously if the installation is partial there is no cron job to be run! Or, to put it another way, executing "php /path/to/moodle/admin/cli/cron.php" wouln't do anything sensible.

And you say
> I cannot access the root of the server as I am on a GoDaddy VPS running Linux.

So you have shell access. So your VPS should have its own "root" (/). Why do you need the root of the (host) server?

Most difficult:
> Moodle Version 2.8, I think he installed over 2.7.

What is the morale of that?
;-P
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Joey Barclay -

I didn't go for GoDaddy, the person that worked here that setup our Moodle LMS did because he used to work for GD and then he up and quit leaving me to deal with the LMS.  

What I wanted to do is to STOP the installation or the "trigger" that is stopping CRON. The system seems to be running fine so I was hoping to turn off the error because the page that comes up does not allow me to do anything. I cannot access any pages in Moodle because of that "Mixed Versions" error page. There is only a single button to finish the install. I have to just type a different URL in the address line in order to get to the Administrative pages in Moodle when logged in as the Administrator user. I wanted to stop it to allow CRON to run because the error has stopped CRON from running. I have to add 200 more classes, 500 new student users, plus 60 teacher users, then enroll them into all of their courses before next Wednesday 6/1.  I need to be able to use the email function to send out usernames and automatically generated passwords for all of my student users which is why I need CRON to run. I want to see if I can make it work as if it NEVER checked for the update and never stopped waiting for me to upload and install a new version. Another post explained I already tried to upload and install a new version "clean" and ran into issue after issue after issue so I just want to temporarily make it work if possible. Then make plans to move to another host because I am not used to not having complete control over something and GoDaddy obviously doesn't allow complete control for the end user. Plus honestly I am a windows guy and would prefer to deal with Microsoft's idiosyncrasies as I am used to them.  


Regarding the "root" of the server. I just needed to check and change permissions on the folders and in order to change them I apparently have to call godaddy tech support and have them do it for me. At least that is what the tech person I spoke to told me I had to do. If there is another way I am unaware of it. The only access I have is the "Plesk" panel which is like a File Manager and really nothing else. Thanks for your response though. 

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In reply to Joey Barclay

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi

Is this, "Mixed Moodle versions detected" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=226738, your previous enquiry?

Is the previous person sabotaging the Moodle a possibility?

Did you read:
- https://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_Moodle
- https://docs.moodle.org/en/Upgrading and
- https://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_migration ?
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In reply to Joey Barclay

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

While I understand totally the wanting a quick fix so that you can be functional, honestly, I would be very scared to put that much work into a system that is not working correctly.  If you have started the install, you really need to finish it.

If you are on GoDaddy, I would imagine that they have backups.  Can you not restore to before you started with the installation?

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Elaborating on what Emma wrote: The three things I mentioned: installation, upgrade and migration, all all go-no-go operations. I mean, there is nothing "partial", either you are successfull as a whole or your throw away the full operation. Your options are either fall back to a (complete and operational) backup or start from scratch. (Well, an expert might be able to recover a "partial" thing, but if you are an expert, you won't be asking me. ;-D)
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In reply to Joey Barclay

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Hold on, are you talking about a full Moodle upgrade or just a plugin?  Moodle does not prompt you to upgrade - it will tell you about a new version but will not upgrade itself through the browser. 

What happens if you click the button to finish the install? 

If this is just a plugin, just go into the folder the plug in is in and delete it or if you say you can get to your admin pages, go to your plugins page and try to uninstall it there.

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Joey Barclay -

First I want to say Thanks to both you and Visvanath for trying to help me with this.

Second, I never started any installation which is really the biggest issue. To answer your last post question Emma it is a full version install and not just a plugin. Those I have done without much trouble but the error message I get is one that just showed up one day. I did not start any installation and not finish it, I would have never done anything like that. I have attached a PDF of that page for both of you to see. When I login with my Administrator account in Moodle that is the page that comes up. As you will see there is no way to get out of it, only to "Reload" and restart the installation which I never started in the first place. I honestly have no idea of how it happened because you're right, Moodle doesn't update itself automatically.

That other post one of you spoke of was me. I did try to install the upgrade by creating a new Moodle folder, etc.. only to find that there is no Moodle folder and it is called httpdocs instead of Moodle. Anyway, i am now creating a new folder called httpdocs_new and am uploading the Moodle 2.9 version into it, copying my moodledata folder, I will painstakingly look for all plugins that are marked as "Additional" and find any 2.9 versions, download and unzip them into their correct directories (I hope), then I will copy the config.php file and finally I will call GoDaddy to have them run the commands on the folders to change the permissions to match exactly what the current httpdocs folder and its sub-folders have as their permissions. Since they will not allow me to do that myself since it is a VPS that is all I can do. I believe the permissions may have been the reason the upgrade would not continue before when I first saw the error screen. If that does not work I will just bypass that error screen by logging in as a fake student account, going into a course, copying the url from the address bar and then log back in as Admin and paste that url into the address bar and then I can access the system to add my classes and students etc... I know I shouldn't do that but I really don't have much choice at this point. I only have a couple days. Cron will still not be working but I will just have to let all 800 people know the link to reset their password will not work since the system cannot email them a link. They can just email my help desk and I will fix it manually for now.

Sorry for all of the useless text above. I just figured I would explain the actual issue so both of you knew I wasn't that dumb to actually start an upgrade/install and then want to stop it in the middle.

And finally, the person who started this wouldn't sabotage me. Honestly, I would feel better thinking he may have done it. At least I would know how it happened, Now I am left not knowing how and if it will ever happen again.

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In reply to Joey Barclay

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi

I still believe that you are confusing installation with upgrade.

Anyway, let's start from the beginning (in this "you" means "you or your predecessor"):
1. Until April 2013 you had a Moolde vesion running?

1.a) Which version? Who is the hosting provder? Which package? How did you installed Moodle there?

1.b) Was there content, users, etc. which you can not lose?

2. In April you tried upgrading the Moodle

2.a) How exactly?

2.b) According to https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=226738 it broke. Did you get it going? If not, did you do a fresh install? Answer 1.a and 1.b for this fresh installation.

3. What are you trying to do right now?

3.a) Just login as 'admin' to your Moodle.

3.b) Get the cron.php running in a non-working Moodle?

3.c) To upgrade a non-working Moodle?

You don't need to repeat the whole story. Just quote my questions and write the answer just below the question for each question.
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In reply to Joey Barclay

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

You say this just turned up one day but something must have been done to precipitate it.  It sounds more like you might have tried to copy over your existing install which could well have left some older files and really confused things.  Alternatively, there could possibly have been some changes initiated by GoDaddy which caused the problem.

At this point, I still think that you should not just patch it or create courses and let students in.  There is a lot more that will probably show up missing.  Continue creating the new httpdocs folder.  Make sure that you look in your old for any .htaccess or php.ini files that are sometimes part of your hosts way of implementing your site and copy those over to the new folder.  Before the upgrade, make sure that you also backup your database.  You only need to copy your moodledata folder for backup.  Unless it is in your httpdocs folder (which it shouldn't be but some hosts require it).  

What version are you upgrading from?  Make sure that you read all the upgrade documentation for 2.9 - if you are on an older version, there might be interim steps that you have to take.


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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Need to start CRON but partial install has stopped it. HELP!

by Joey Barclay -

Again thanks to both of you. I actually just made it work!!!!

FYI: The moodledata folder is in the httpdocs folder and there is no Moodle folder at all.

The issue to complete the install was as I suspected the permissions. I had to call GoDaddy and have them change them 2 times because I started with 755 and that didn't work. Only 757 on the folders would allow the install to finish. Why I do not know? Neither of you are running permissions of 757 on your Moodle/httpdocs folders are you? (scary) I want to change them back to 755 but I will read up on that before I do it.

I went from 2.8.5 to 2.9+ and it was super easy! All because I did everything I needed to do prior to pushing that reload button. Had I not made sure the plugins were correct it probably would not have gone well.

All seems to be working great. It actually was working fine even though I kept getting that screen which is why I just wanted to shut it off. (the error) but this was a much better plan. Now I can add those 500+ users and allow the system to send out emails with auto-generated passwords. I wish I knew more about the self-enrollment to make that happen as well but for now I will just create and enroll using a CSV file.
THANKS AGAIN!

Thanks again for both of your support.
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