Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

Re: Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

by Joel Coehoorn -
Number of replies: 6

Upgraded to 3.1.1 from 2.7 last week, and it was not working out of the gate.

After much digging and fiddling, I DO finally have it working on our server (CentOS 6.8). 

For others struggling with this, I can give the following advice:

1. Stick with it.

2. Make sure all of the open/libre office stuff is installed.

3. Get a document loaded to your file system, and make it so you can convert the document via the command line/terminal first. This will give you a better idea of where your current errors are.

4. The final error for us was that our apache user was not able to start OpenOffice. I never did figure out why (I think it had to do with the apache home folder), so I eventually put together a couple of scripts/jobs to start unoconv in listening mode as root, and monitor to make sure it's still running.

Now I need to find out how to clean up the blank documents that were generated for faculty during the period before I had it working all the way.

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In reply to Joel Coehoorn

Re: Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

by Eseosa I -

Joel, #4 appears to be the most common case.


Some server configurations typically run in "headless" mode - i.e no display or graphical interface, To address this, install openoffice.org-headless (among the other requirements in document - https://docs.moodle.org/31/en/Installing_unoconv) and run this as a daemon process. 

This should resolve the issue


-Eseosa

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In reply to Eseosa I

Re: Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

by William Stewart -

I just installed the headless version and this helped get the conversion to take place on the command line. I also had to install Java 1.8 and libre office writer.

But while success has occurred on the CLI to convert a doc to a pdf, Moodle still does not recognise unoconv .7. as an appropriate version of the software.


I had some hope after seeing some newer posts and suggestions and while progress has been made, it is still far from being there! Who knew it would be so difficult smile.

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In reply to William Stewart

Re: Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

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

You need to follow all of the documentation including installing a script on the server.  In my case, the magic part was giving the apache (www-data in my case) user the correct permissions on the www folder.

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

by William Stewart -

What does your listener script look like for unoconv?

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In reply to Joel Coehoorn

Re: Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

by Kan Kawasaki -

Hello Sir,

We are having exact same problem. Could you please share the scripts you used to start unoconv in listening mode?

Many thanks!


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In reply to Kan Kawasaki

Re: Online Text Assignment doesn't covert to pdf.

by Maricris Dalupan -
Hi, I'm also having a problem on my moodle instance. 


My unoconv version is 0.7 and I'm having this error message when I clicked the 'Test unoconv path' : 


 Fatal error: Call to undefined method file_storage::test_unoconv_path() in line 51 I don't know what is happening. Do you have any idea on what's going on? 


 Many thanks.

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