Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Susan Mangan -
Number of replies: 20

Hi Moodle Community!

We are running 2.8.7 and will be upgrading very shortly.  We are long-time users of Moodle and have a fairly large installation running lamp. We will either be upgrading to the latest 2.9 or 3.0 release and I am currently reviewing the tracker items for both versions.  I see significantly more issues with 3.0 but I think that might be normal ... or is it?

I haven't had the time to review issues as I would have normally liked to so I'm wondering if there is any one out there that might have any reason to believe one release might be a better upgrade option than the other?  I realize that the answer to this is likely very dependent on one's specific installation, plug-ins, data, needs, etc. but I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has any input!

Thanks so much!!

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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Emma Richardson -
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I am running 3.0 on three separate sites without any issue...I always think you should go as far as you can when you upgrade!

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Susan Mangan -

Great, thanks.  Moodle has come a long way over the years with providing more stable releases, keeping up on bugs and providing useful documentation (since the early days ;)) so I feel so much more confident going with later releases with our upgrades now.

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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Usman Asar -
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Just one thing to note, if you're using turnitin plagiarism plug-in, then it may not work on latest 3.0.3+, as recently found out, though mail has been sent to plug-in developers, lets see what they come up with.

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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Derek Chirnside -

This is very vague Usman.  "May not work"  ??  I'm a little more binary than that.

Is the dialogue public anywhere?  

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Usman Asar -
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Alright here what happened.

I had to remotely setup IIS with PHP 7 for a school, and moving the Moodle from WAMP to WIMP using PHP 7.5 and moodle 3.0.3, updated plug-ins everything was working beautifully, as we came to the point of setting up CRON, it wasn't working, so manually ran CRON to see it getting stuck at plagiarism plug-in, thinking it would be because of PHP accelerators, so turned them OFF one by one to have same output, swithed to PHP 5.6, same results.  As soon as we uninstalled, CRON started working fine. thought that may be UPDATE to the plug-in has caused issue, so used previous versions of plug-in and as soon after, CRON started showing issues again.

Reference to post here : https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=330953#p1332026

Now Dan mentioned, it may be due to API, or even could be due to PHP 7, but then we tested out PHP 5.6 and yet CRON was coming to halt at plagiarism plug-in only.



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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Marcus Green -
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I would select Moodle 3.0, mainly because of the new to core awesome OU question types. They can really enhance the options for teachers and students.  With reference to Usmans comments on using PHP7, although PHP7 is clearly the future and has significant performance benefits I would wait a while till everyone else has ensured their software runs fine with it. Having said that I have been using it for development for a few months with no error, but the experience of a developer is not the same as for normal humans (™). With reference to 3rd party plugins, test, test and test again.

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Susan Mangan -

Yes, thanks - we are far from PHP7 smile

Because I am a #NormalHuman wink

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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Orinic Pillar -

Moodle 2.9 is best because in it lots of features notification system has come for the teacher as well as students. Whenever there will be any new task to carry on, notifications will go for both users and students can change their answer instantly after answering questions. Earlier, this provision was not there because one needs to wait till end of test to alter answers.

Thanks.


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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Susan Mangan -

I'm noticing a bit of a performance hit.  I'm testing with the same database and moodledata that we have on our production server and it seems significantly slower than our production server which is odd considering it has load and the test server does not.  We have a LAMP setup on VMs.  I'm hoping it's the actual VM setup itself on the test server and nothing new to look at in Moodle config.  Anyone experienced anything similar?

UPDATE this seems to be linked only to Admin user.  I found this and will investigate further https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=328878

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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Hi Susan

You have taken the decision a long time ago. I mean, by choosing 2.8 you've left the LTS path. Now you have no other choice than galloping the version march. (You know that 2.8 series is already discontinues whereas 2.7 gets security fixes till May 2017? See https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Releases.)

If you are not the bleeding edge type, you can reconsider your upgrade strategy from 3.1 on, which will be an LTS.)
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Albert Ramsbottom -

I dont know about everyone's thinking behind this, but I have never been an early adopter and always remain two majors versions behind the most current version

And so do most Universities (all that I have worked for, which is around 25).

In my case I am considering 2.9.4 but still haven't quite made up my mind, but my mind is not the decision maker. In most Universities and corporate environments, one has too develop a compelling reason to upgrade, security, extra features that e-learning might be asking for etc. This is normally done as part of a team and presented to the decision makers.

Is it just me or do most people on these forums think they own their Moodle's, rather than the people they work for? Or is it that most people on these forums do actually own and run their own Moodle's for commercial enterprise?

Sorry for the rant


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In reply to Albert Ramsbottom

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Marcus Green -
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I get paid in my day job for looking after the organisations Moodle. For that reason I take a cautious view of upgrading so am currently considering 2.9 or 3.0. Version 3 for the OU Quiz questions, version 2.9 for the sake of extreme caution. On the other hand I know that the differences between 2.9 and 3.0 are modest. 

If we went for 3.0, by the time it started to be seriously used Moodle 3.2 would be at the beta stage so it would be nearly 2 version behind the latest. That assumes that the release schedule of the past can be extrapolated into the future, your mileage may vary, close cover before striking.

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In reply to Albert Ramsbottom

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by AL Rachels -
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Not bleeding edge, but I am an early adopter and I "own" my Moodle. My normal practice over the past 4 years was to upgrade to the latest Moodle about 4 to 6 weeks after it was released. That way any last minute problems had a good chance of being found and fixed before my own upgrade. My upgrades were always a new implementation of Moodle, with the previous one, still there and available, just hidden. I only had to "jump back" once for about a week. Often times there are so many nice, new features, I have difficulty understanding why someone wants to wait months and years to have access to them.

I also always run a development site that runs the latest code so I have an idea of what's coming in the new release. I also started participating in the pre-release Quality Assurance testing of new Moodle versions. Running QA tests, I found that I learned a whole lot more about Moodle than I ever would have discovered on my own. I try to run as many of the tests as I can, especially ones that test the parts of Moodle I use the most. Many of the QA tests I run may already be passed by someone else but I test them so that I become familiar with any changes to the "old" parts  of Moodle as well as the new stuff and the way it works.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Richard Oelmann -
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I have been managing my University moodle sites for the last 5 years. I have always done an upgrade each summer with the latest version - ie the May release, as an August upgrade. But I will have been using the master dev version right through development, including running on my own local dev environment and then on a  development server that mirrors our live site. I also take part in the QA process, usually using my mirror dev site to run tests as well as the Moodle HQ QA site.

Installing 2.9 this summer (ie 2 versions behind) would mean that bug fixes are not supported even before the academic year starts and security fixes are dropped during the academic year

Bug fixes for general core bugs in 2.9.x will end 9 May 2016 (12 months).
Bug fixes for security issues in 2.9.x will end 14 November 2016 (18 months).
Likewise even 3.0 will run out during the academic year

Bug fixes for general core bugs in 3.0.x will end 14 November 2016 (12 months).
Bug fixes for security issues in 3.0.x will end 8 May 2017 (18 months).
So the options become LTS (currently 2.7) and dealing with the fact that we don't get some of the new features for upto 2 years) or a balance between early adoption and losing bug/security support.

2 versions behind is an option that many take, but its not entirely clear cut that its the best option - and 2 versions behind at installation, becomes 4 by the next upgrade, installing 2.9 this summer means 3.3 will be out before the next upgrade. You benefit stability and security at the front end, but potentially lose it with no bug/security support by the back end of the time frame (unless you also do mid-year upgrades, which I don't think many institutions are keen on)

So, yes early adopter, but with caution and full testing.

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Marcus Green -
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I'm currently working on the assumption that my next live upgrade in a month or so will be 2.8 to 3.0.

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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Susan Mangan -

Sorry Visvanath, I'm not sure what you mean re LTS?  mixed

I do see what you mean re security patches though:

Bug fixes for security issues in 2.9.x will end 14 November 2016

For the record we did choose 3.0.  I will try to post anything we come across that trips us up.  So far just the one bug that I mentioned in my above-noted post which affects both 2.9 and 3.0.

Bug in 2.9x and 3.0x with Event Viewer.  Apparently only affects performance when Admin logged in.  Can disable Event Monitor to increase performance.

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-51833

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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Richard Oelmann -
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LTS = Long Term Support

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Or, some longer answers, if you have the time (and energy):
- "Re: HEADS UP: Moodle 2.9 and minor versions coming next week" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=313040
- "Next Moodle LTS?" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=315301
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Upgrade from 2.8 to 2.9 or 3.0? Any reason to choose one over the other?

by Susan Mangan -

Ahhh thank you!  good to know.  I really need to find more time to stay current on here!!

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